About this item
It was the age of Jim Crow, riddled with racial violence and unrest. But in the world of Our Gang, black and white children happily played and made mischief together. They even had their own black and white version of the KKK, the Cluck Cluck Klams - and the public loved it.The story of race and Our Gang, or The Little Rascals, is rife with the contradictions and aspirations of the sharply conflicted, changing American society that was its theater. Exposing these connections for the first time, Julia Lee shows us how much this series, from the first silent shorts in 1922 to its television revival in the 1950s, reveals about black and white American culture - on either side of the silver screen. Behind the scenes, we find unconventional men like Hal Roach and his gag writers, whose Rascals tapped into powerful American myths about race and childhood.
About the Author
Julia Lee is an assistant professor of English at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she teaches African-American literature. She was born in Los Angeles and received her undergraduate degree from Princeton and her Ph.D. in English from Harvard. In 2014, she was named an Emerging Scholar by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine.
