The omni-Americans : some alternatives to the folklore of white supremacy. The Omni-Americans (The Omni-Americans (A natural history : E pluribus unum ; White norms for black deviation ; Paleface fables, brownskin people ; The blues idiom and the mainstream)) ; The illusive black image (Introduction ; Image and unlikeness in Harlem ; Oneupmanship in colorful America ; The illusive black middle class ; Two case histories (Claude Brown's soul for white folks ; Gordon Parks out of focus) ; Who that say, what dat, every time us do that? ; A clutch of social science fiction fiction (Star-crossed melodrama ; Warren Miller and his black face vaudeville ; William Styron and his troublesome property) ; James Baldwin, protest fiction, and the blues tradition) ; Getting it together (Identity, diversity, and the mainstream (A short history of black self-consciousness ; The role of the pre-American past)) ; Black pride in Mobile, Alabama ; Black studies and the aims of education) ; Epilogue : Situation normal : all fouled up
South to a very old place. New York ; New Haven ; Greensboro ; Atlanta ; Tuskegee ; Mobile ; New Orleans, Greenville, Memphis
The hero and the blues. The social function of the story teller ; The dynamics of heroic action ; The blues and the fable in the flesh
Stomping the blues. The blues as such ; The blues face to face ; The blue devils and the holy ghost ; The blues as music ; Blues music as such ; Singing the blues ; Playing the blues ; Swinging the blues ; Kansas city four/four and the velocity of celebration ; The blues as dance music ; Folk art and fine art ; The blues as statement
The blue devils of Nada : a contemporary American approach to aesthetic statement. The intent of the artist (Regional particulars and universal implications) ; Two all-American artists first-person singular (Duke Ellington vamping till ready ; Comping for Count Basie) ; The Armstrong continuum (The twentieth-century American herald) ; The Ellington synthesis (The vernacular imperative ; Storiella Americana as she is swyung, or, The blues as representative anecdote ; Armstrong and Ellington stomping the blues in Paris) ; The visual equivalent to blues composition (Bearden plays Bearden) ; The storyteller as blues singer (Ernest Hemingway swinging the blues and taking nothing)
From the briarpatch file : on context, procedure, and American identity. Antagonistic cooperation in Alabama ; Context and definition ; Academic lead sheet ; Art as such ; Riffing at Mrs. Jack's Place ; Made in America : the achievement of Duke Ellington ; Me and old Duke ; Me and old Uncle Billy and the American mythosphere ; The HNIC who he ; Soul brothers abroad ; Freedom bound U.S.A. ; The good old boys down yonder ; The "reconstruction" of Robert Penn Warren ; Louis Armstrong in his own words ; Manhattan in the twenties ; The blue steel, rawhide, patent leather implications of fairy tales ; An all-purpose, all-American literary intellectual
Other writings. "The problem" is not just black and white ; U.S. Negroes and U.S. Jews : no cause for alarm ; "Soul" : thirty-two meanings not in your dictionary ; "Stone" : definition and usage ; Two nations? Only two? ; Bearden in theory and ritual ; Three omni-American artists ; Jazz : notes toward a definition
Chronology.