Ebook: Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery

W. C. Handy waking up to the blues on a train platform, Buddy Bolden eavesdropping on the drums at Congo Square, John Lomax taking his phonograph recorder into a southern penitentiary—Wagner gives a new account of black culture by reading these myths in the context of the black vernacular tradition’s ongoing engagement with the law.