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Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles and American Stereotyping. By Kenneth W. Goings. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1934. xxvi, 123 pp. Cloth, $35.00, ISBN 0-253-32592-7. Paper, $22.50, ISBN 0-253-20881-5.)
Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture. By Patricia A. Turner. (New York: Anchor, 1994. xvi, 238 pp. Paper, $12.95, ISBN 0-385-46784-2.)
Black-faced collectibles arc like that embarrassing relative no one mentions out of politeness. Yet these stereotype-laden knickknacks continue to fascinate as they stare out at us from antique dealers' curio cabinets. Rastus, Diaper Dan, Jocko--their very names excite the imagination even as they cause discomfort. Vivid reminders of a time when whites assumed that real-life African Americans differed little from their ceramic and chalkware counterparts, the novelty figurines, postcards, and period advertisement are, today, prized by memorabilia collectors. But what is their sociocultural meaning? What can they tell us about the relationship of Blacks to the American mainstream? New studies by Kenneth W. it Goings and Patricia A. Turner address these se and other questions of interest to researchers who treat material and popular culture artifacts as historic "texts."
Goings, a history professor at Florida Atlantic University, traces the rise, the civil rights and Black Power era decline, and the eventual resurrection of such "surrogate African Americans" from their origins in the trade cards of the 1880s to today's plastic cookie-jar reproductions. He does so in only 68 pages of text, half of...