"Friedman illuminates the brief profusion of African American musical features and shorts at the dawn of sound cinema, showing how these films emerged out of their era and set the stage for Hollywood treatments of Black images and sounds for years to come."
— Arthur Knight, author of Disintegrating the Musical
"Hollywood's African American Films is a compelling exploration of the complex and often contradictory position(s) embodied by African American performers in early sound film. It is a model of rigorous research and textual analysis that analyzes Hollywood’s troubled nexus between race and representation and offers scholars new conclusions to old questions."
— Paula J. Massood, author of Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film
"Hollywood's African American Films is a compelling exploration of the complex and often contradictory position(s) embodied by African American performers in early sound film. It is a model of rigorous research and textual analysis that analyzes Hollywood’s troubled nexus between race and representation and offers scholars new conclusions to old questions."
— Paula J. Massood, author of Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film
"Friedman illuminates the brief profusion of African American musical features and shorts at the dawn of sound cinema, showing how these films emerged out of their era and set the stage for Hollywood treatments of Black images and sounds for years to come."
— Arthur Knight, author of Disintegrating the Musical