Enjoy African-American literature and entertainment. From its rudimentary beginnings to its worldwide dominance today in many fields, African-American culture demonstrates resilience, creativity and brilliance. This journal studies Black contributions to entertainment - live performances, music, film, and television - and literature over centuries.
The impact of African Americans in entertainment transcends time and barriers. From the earliest live performances to the worldwide dominance of African-American musicians, filmmakers and television stars, Black culture has enriched and changed the entertainment industry in unprecedented ways. This part looks at how African Americans have contributed to live events, music, film and television, starting with their early influences to the present day.
Live performances have always been important for African-American artists to express their talent, creativity and resilience. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when opportunities were scarce and racial segregation pervasive, African-American performers still found ways to entertain audiences - often in segregated theaters, small clubs and underground venues. These performances became spaces for resistance, celebration, and cultural expression for Black artists in relation to their communities and the wider society.
The late 19th and early 20th-century vaudeville era saw African-American performers making a comeback in an industry almost entirely without them. Vaudeville variety shows included comedy and dance, and Black entertainers such as Bert Williams and George Walker became national stars. In particular, Williams was one of the few African-American performers on largely white vaudeville circuits. His witty observations and inventive performances mainstreamed African-American culture amid the racist dynamics of the time.
By the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance had become the cultural hotbed of black artists in New York City. Harlem nightclubs like the Cotton Club and Apollo Theater became centres of Black entertainment featuring the era's most famous musicians, dancers and comedians.
Such places raised legends as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Josephine Baker, whose live performances were culturally and commercially successful. While audiences were often segregated - often featuring African-Americans playing for white patrons - these venues became launch pads for Black performers who wove audiences with their skill and charisma.
Black performers became popular in large, mainstream venues. By the mid-20th century, Black entertainers were staples of casino showrooms - especially in Las Vegas - where live entertainment was high stakes. But even this new fame brought segregation to Black performers. Old-time entertainers like Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald entertained predominantly white audiences in casinos but were denied entry to the hotels where they performed because of racist policies.
Sammy Davis Jr., one of the Rat Pack members, broke down racial barriers in Las Vegas. Davis's live shows - comedy, singing, dancing - attracted large audiences and broke down segregation in the entertainment industry. More Black entertainers entered the casino scene and their shows became must-sees - giving Black performers hope of finding some acceptance and success in venues that had previously denied them.
The most significant contributions by African Americans to entertainment have been through music. From enslaved African spirituals to today's hip-hop and RnB, African-American artists have reshaped popular music into a vehicle for cultural expression, social change and artistic innovation.
Late 19th-century blues appeared in the Deep South as a blend of African rhythms and European harmony. Artists like W.C. Handy popularized this music about hardship, love and resilience. The blues became a form of self-expression for African Americans, expressing their lived experience and emotions in a segregated society.
Then, in the early 20th century, jazz took the world by storm out of African-American traditions in New Orleans. Jazz was a break from classical European music - improvisational style, syncopated rhythms, and new harmonies. Black musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday pioneered this new sound, which spread to the United States and Europe.
Jazz was more than music - it was a cultural movement that reflected the newfound freedom and creative expression of African Americans post-slavery era. Around this time Black musicians also started receiving more mainstream performance opportunities - some at Carnegie Hall. Yet jazz was also a way for African Americans to challenge those social and racial hierarchies by using music as resistance and empowerment.
In the 1940s and 1950s there appeared Rhythm and blues (RnB), a hybrid of jazz, Blues and gospel. Artists like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and Ruth Brown took R&B into mainstream audiences with tender ballads and upbeat tracks about love, heartbreak, and joy. Songs like Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come became anthems for racial equality on R1and1B's Civil Rights Movement soundtrack.
The genre evolved through the decades, with Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Whitney Houston merging it with other styles, including funk and pop. Today, R&B remains a major force in music, with current artists like Usher, Alicia Keys, and Beyonce following in their predecessor's footsteps.
By the 1970s, black music was hip-hop again. Hip hop emerged in the Bronx, New York, from the experiences of black youth in economically deprived areas. Hip-hop developed from spoken word, DJing & graffiti art.
Artists including Grandmaster Flash, Run-D.M.C., and Public Enemy used hip-hop for political commentary on poverty, police brutality, and systemic racism. It was for the voiceless - African Americans complaining and hoping. In The 90s, Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. infused storytelling with lyrical ability to create timeless tracks that define today's hip-hop.
Modern hip-hop has seen a new generation of African-American artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Music by Cole, and Cardi B address current issues like mass incarceration, racial inequality, and mental health.
Films and television moments that broke stereotypes and represented Black life have been created by African-American filmmakers, actors, and directors. From early representations in silent film to today's celebrated auteurs, the African-American presence in Hollywood has evolved.
Movies like Do the Right Thing (1989) by Spike Lee and Moonlight (2016) by Barry Jenkins expose African-American struggles and triumphs rawly. Such films portrayed Black life as well as social justice issues affecting Blacks.
Directors like Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler, and Jordan Peele reshaped African-American storytelling. DuVernay's Selma (2014) profiled Martin Luther King Jr. These films demonstrate the range of African-American directors in capturing Black identity and experience.
Stars like Denzel Washington and, Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman show range and emotional depth. Washington was a legend in Malcolm X (1992) and Training Day (2001), and Viola Davis's Fences (2016) won her an Academy Award-the first African-American woman in Hollywood.
Black literature has long documented African-American experience and offered insights into community struggles, resilience, and hopes.
It began in the 19th century with writers like Nathaniel Turner, a figure in African-American history. Turner is better known for starting a slave rebellion, but his confessions became a text that illuminated the horrors of slavery and started the abolitionist movement.
Authors such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs recounted their own experiences of slavery to show the dehumanization of the system. The authors 'works are still studied as stories of perseverance and dignity.
The 1920s Harlem Renaissance produced some of the most famous figures in African-American literature.
The great literary figure James Baldwin dealt in his novels and essays with race, identity and the Black experience in America. Works including Go Tell It on The Mountain (1953) and The Fire Next Time (1963) still appeal to readers today.
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) remains a classic of African-American literature and offers an intimate portrait of Southern African-American women. Langston Hughes of The Harlem Renaissance captured The voice of Black America in his poetry and essays - the Weary Blues (1926) being a social commentary of pure beauty.
Another important early work is Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), dealing with issues of racism, trauma and self-empowerment.
A new generation of African-American authors continues today to explore issues of identity, race, and belonging. Writing like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jesmyn Ward, and Colson Whitehead is generating critically acclaimed works that address current issues while paying homage to their predecessors.
Coates' Between the World and Me (2015) was contemporary African-American literature at its best-a letter to his son about being Black in America today.
The novels of Jesmyn Ward include Salvage the Bones (2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), which won her two National Book Awards.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Underground Railroad (2016), Whitehead reimagines the historical escape route of enslaved people as magical realism, combining history and fiction in a poignant reflection on race in America.
From electrifying live performances in casinos to genres of music that changed the world, including jazz, RnB, and hip-hop, from iconic films to timeless literature, African-American contributions to culture continue to shape the world. The legacy of African-American creativity demonstrates both the struggles and the resilience of a community and also its ability to inspire and innovate across generations.
