Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly, was published by the Macmillan Company of New York in 1936; two years after Lead Belly's final prison release, published after the breakdown of his relationship with the elder Lomax, and decades before a proper account of Lead Belly's life would be written. John and Alan Lomax, as well as music transcriber George Herzog are credited as writers for the book, but not Lead Belly, who told his story and had his songs and their stories recorded. Lead Belly did not approve of the way his stories were written, and the portrayal of himself in the book. Reading, one can understand why. The language is awfully dated, and the power dynamics between the elder Lomax and Lead Belly become quite clear. It is by its very existence, a problematic book.

Free scan & PDF download through Archive.org.

by: Jason Haslam

Chapter 2: “Slavery and American Gothic: The Ghost of the Future”. (pp. 44-59)

Free PDF chapter download

Essays featured in the work of author J.W. Thurston:

Patreon
Amazon
Featured Articles

by: Leila Taylor

Part memoir and part cultural critique, Darkly: Blackness and America's Gothic Soul explores American culture's inevitable gothicity in the traces left from chattel slavery. The persistence of white supremacy and the ubiquity of Black death feeds a national culture of terror and a perpetual undercurrent of mourning. If the gothic narrative is metabolized fear, if the goth aesthetic is romanticized melancholy, what does that look and sound like in Black America?

by: Robin Coleman

Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films. Throughout the text, the reader is encouraged to unpack the genre’s racialized imagery, as well as the narratives that make up popular culture’s commentary on race.