Stephen A. Berrey

Black Song: A Manifesto for Music and Justice centers acts of musical creation and performance that emerge from Black experiences, affirm Black humanity, and connect to Black communities. Written for scholars, performers, and music fans, the book shows that learning about Black Song and its creation is central to understanding both American music and Black American experiences. By providing a more inclusive, just, and accurate understanding of the art of Black Song, the authors disrupt and expand musical canons. Black Song shines a spotlight on the response, resistance, and community building that occur in musical creation in Black spaces, past and present. The authors explore histories and performances across musical styles—from classical to country to hiphop to opera to jazz to gospel to many others. They offer practical advice on how to perform, research, teach, and listen to this music. As they center Black Song in American history and music, they show that this music is a valuable tool for promoting productive and healing dialogues about race, justice, and history. Encouraging empathy and understanding, Black Song shows how to approach Black music and spaces with knowledge and respect.

The South's system of Jim Crow racial oppression is usually understood in terms of legal segregation that mandated the separation of white and black Americans. Yet, as Stephen A. Berrey shows, it was also a high-stakes drama that played out in the routines of everyday life, where blacks and whites regularly interacted on sidewalks and buses and in businesses and homes. Every day, individuals made, unmade, and remade Jim Crow in how they played their racial roles--how they moved, talked, even gestured. The highly visible but often subtle nature of these interactions constituted the Jim Crow routine.In this study of Mississippi race relations in the final decades of the Jim Crow era, Berrey argues that daily interactions between blacks and whites are central to understanding segregation and the racial system that followed it. Berrey shows how civil rights activism, African Americans' refusal to follow the Jim Crow script, and national perceptions of southern race relations led Mississippi segregationists to change tactics. No longer able to rely on the earlier routines, whites turned instead to less visible but equally insidious practices of violence, surveillance, and policing, rooted in a racially coded language of law and order. Reflecting broader national transformations, these practices laid the groundwork for a new era marked by black criminalization, mass incarceration, and a growing police presence in everyday life.