Jim Crow's Counterculture: The Blues and Black Southerners, 1890-1945

In the late nineteenth century, black musicians in the lower Mississippi Valley, chafing under the social, legal, and economic restrictions of Jim Crow, responded with a new musical form--the blues. In Jim Crow's Counterculture, R. A. Lawson offers a cultural history of blues musicians in the segregation era, explaining how by both accommodating and resisting Jim Crow life, blues musicians created a counterculture to incubate and nurture ideas of black individuality and citizenship. These individuals, Lawson shows, collectively demonstrate the African American struggle during the early twentieth century.

By uncovering the stories of artists who expressed much in their music but left little record in traditional historical sources, Jim Crow's Counterculture offers a fresh perspective on the historical experiences of black Americans and provides a new understanding of the blues: a shared music that offered a message of personal freedom to repressed citizens.

Author: R. a. Lawson
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 03/11/2013
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780807152270

About the Author
R. A. Stovetop Lawson is professor of history at Dean College and associate editor of the New England Journal of History. He lives in Bellingham, Massachusetts.