Prologue: Black humor...what it is
Slavery "don't nobody know my name but me"
Minstrelsy...the die is cast
Black minstrelsy to vaudeville...black on black
Pt. 2. The outside: African-American comedy on stage, screen, and radio
Vaudeville and early twentieth-century Black humor...the blackening of America
Hollywood's silent years...the curse of a nation
The new Negro: Harlem and Hollywood...exotics, imposters, and other misshapen identities
Radio and early television...racial ventriloquy, black soaps and servants
Pt. 3. The real side: invisible lives and clandestine humor.
Race records and black films...sounds and visions in black and blue
The theatre owners booking association and the Apollo theatre...changing the joke and slipping the yoke
Literary reflections of African-American humor...depictions of things unseen
Folklore and street humor..."if you grinnin', you in 'em"
The new comics...what you see is what you get
Pryor and thereafter...on the real side.
