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How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement 1st Edition

4.6 out of 5 stars 38

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Winner of the Benjamin L. Hooks National Book Award
Winnter of the Michael Nelson Prize of the International Association for Media and History


In 1964, Nina Simone sat at a piano in New York's Carnegie Hall to play what she called a "show tune." Then she began to sing: "Alabama's got me so upset/Tennessee made me lose my rest/And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam!" Simone, and her song, became icons of the civil rights movement. But her confrontational style was not the only path taken by black women entertainers.

In
How It Feels to Be Free, Ruth Feldstein examines celebrated black women performers, illuminating the risks they took, their roles at home and abroad, and the ways that they raised the issue of gender amid their demands for black liberation. Feldstein focuses on six women who made names for themselves in the music, film, and television industries: Simone, Lena Horne, Miriam Makeba, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, and Cicely Tyson. These women did not simply mirror black activism; their performances helped constitute the era's political history. Makeba connected America's struggle for civil rights to the fight against apartheid in South Africa, while Simone sparked high-profile controversy with her incendiary lyrics. Yet Feldstein finds nuance in their careers. In 1968, Hollywood cast the outspoken Lincoln as a maid to a white family in For Love of Ivy, adding a layer of complication to the film. That same year, Diahann Carroll took on the starring role in the television series Julia. Was Julia a landmark for casting a black woman or for treating her race as unimportant? The answer is not clear-cut. Yet audiences gave broader meaning to what sometimes seemed to be apolitical performances.

How It Feels to Be Free demonstrates that entertainment was not always just entertainment and that "We Shall Overcome" was not the only soundtrack to the civil rights movement. By putting black women performances at center stage, Feldstein sheds light on the meanings of black womanhood in a revolutionary time.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ruth Feldstein's important new book...is an original exploration of the little-known but central role that black entertainers, especially black women, played in helping communicate and forward the movement's goals...Ms. Feldstein brilliantly demonstrates the ways these women, their images and performance strategies animated transformative struggles for social change."--The New York Times

"Feldstein's time-capsule views of Greenwich Village and Harlem in the late 1950s and early '60s are fascinating, as is the roster of performers she introduces from the realms of jazz, folk, theater and cinema."--Dallas Morning News

"One of the many remarkable aspects of Ruth Feldstein's How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement is that it manages simultaneously to trace histories of black thought, activism, and performance, while reconstructing histories of how journalists, writers, and others imagined blackness through the civil rights era."--Los Angeles Review of Books

"Feldstein shows how these women's actions promoted, interacted with, and anticipated both black power and second-wave feminism. Many of the battles discussed are still being fought by contemporary black artists, and Feldstein's investigation provides valuable context for the ongoing struggle, 'render[ing] these social movements in all of their messy complexity and richness.'"--Publishers Weekly

"Ruth Feldstein has decided to focus on black women entertainers and successfully produced a detailed, informative and easy read, which firmly places these talented ladies in the history of the civil rights and feminist movements of the '50s-70s..."--New York City Jazz Record

"By placing black female musicians and actors at the center of Civil Rights history, Ruth Feldstein has written a tremendously important study that challenges readers to consider the imaginative activism of artists who performed progressive representations of black womanhood. How It Feels to Be Free takes readers on a critical journey across the mid-twentieth century freedom struggle by way of women performers who rehearsed, remixed, and renegotiated civil rights and black power politics, as well as emergent feminisms...Feldstein places their lives and careers in conversation with one another and, in doing so, recuperates the crucial role that black women of music, film and television played in transforming our contemporary world."--Daphne Brooks, Princeton University

"In this meticulously researched and brilliantly argued study, Feldstein shows how black women entertainers expanded the very meaning of politics as they performed, contested, and reshaped race and gender at the dynamic intersection of the civil rights movement, culture industries, and global mass culture. This stunning reinterpretation of women, gender, and the civil rights movement is essential reading for anyone interested in feminism, black activism, and the transnational cultural and political dimensions of 1950s and 1960s U.S history."--Penny M. Von Eschen, author of Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War

"How It Feels to Be Free stands out as an enormous act of historical recovery. Ruth Feldstein masterfully illuminates the way in which black women entertainers actively participated in the civil rights struggle and helped to transform American and international race relations. A powerful and thought provoking book that will change the way we look at gender, civil rights, and the black freedom movement."--Peniel E. Joseph, author of Stokely: A Life

Book Description

Biographical approaches to numerous popular female entertainers during the Civil Rights movement

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (December 24, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195314034
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195314038
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.28 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.3 x 0.9 x 6.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 38

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
38 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2021
Excellent history about incredible African African women
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2014
that ended up being a great read, I purchased it for my kindle but I wish I would have gotten a hardcopy. Such an interesting book if you are interested in the civil rights movement circa 1950-1978
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2023
Enjoyed viewing
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Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2021
I came back to this book after watching the wonderful PBS documentary (produced by Alicia Keys) based on Ruth Feldstein's brilliant examination of the political significance of black female entertainers during the Civil Rights era. The book is both fascinating and accessible--Feldstein writes cultural and political history that sings. The chapter on Nina Simone is breathtaking. Any reader compelled by the urgency of our contemporary reckonings with racism, sexism, "intersectional" politics, and the meanings of popular culture should read this book.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2014
The author's two-fold argument that culture played a critical role in the civil rights movement and that black women entertainers exemplified this proposition is really appealing. However the book is a mile wide in looking at the lives of six performers – Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, Nina Simone, Abby Lincoln, Lena Horne, and Miriam Makeba – and an inch deep in that not much about each or about all of them together is covered. The author relied upon the written record for information. Since these performers – and black women in general – have not received their just due in the media and books, not much has been documented. I wish the author had interviewed the two living legends – Carroll and Tyson – so that she could have captured their own words about how they think about their work in the context of the civil rights movement.
7 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2021
Gave as a gift.
Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2021
Enjoyed every page!
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2014
I'm fascinated by the ways that popular culture plays a role in politics, and Feldstein's book does an excellent job of showing how black female performers were making civil rights real in their music, TV roles, and movies. Each chapter takes on a different performer (or two), and they are all fascinating and surprising, taking up figures like Lena Horne, Cicely Tyson, and Abbey Lincoln, and showing how the choices they made mattered to the ideas of equality, black pride, and feminist consciousness. But my favorite chapters are the ones on the South African singer Miram Makeba and the glorious songstress Nina Simone. Makeba's story was new to me: she was first presented in the 1950s as an exotic bit of Africa by her mentor Harry Belafonte; she later became far more political and even married Stokely Carmichael. And Simone .... wow. The discussion of her as a singer and a political activist -- I loved hearing more about the song "Mississippi Goddam." Overall, this is a great book, that people should have on their go-to list to give to friends or family.
5 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars livre au format attendu
Reviewed in France on March 15, 2014
Coup d’œil diagonal peu convaincant: listes de noms et anecdotes.
J'espère en avoir un peu plus, vu que l'auteure a une réputation qui la précède.
Donc notation à revoir après lecture.