Representing African Americans in Transatlantic Abolitionism and Blackface Minstrelsy

In this intriguing study, Robert Nowatzki reveals the unexpected relationships between blackface entertainment and antislavery sentiment in the United States and Britain. He contends that the ideological ambiguity of both phenomena enabled the similarities between early minstrelsy and abolitionism in their depictions of African Americans, as well as their appropriations of each other's rhetoric, imagery, sentiment, and characterization. Nowatzki reveals how the most popular form of theatrical entertainment and the most significant reform movement of nineteenth-century Britain and America helped define cultural representations of African Americans.