SOURCE: “Shaping the Popular Image of Post-Reconstruction American Blacks: The ‘Coon Song’ Phenomenon of the Gilded Age,” in American Quarterly, Vol. 40, No 4, December, 1988, pp. 450-71.
In the following essay, Dormon examines the popularity during the Gilded Age of ‘coon songs’ (songs about, and many times by, black Americans). Dormon suggests that the songs disseminated racist images and language in order to justify continued segregation and discrimination.
