Judith E. Smith is a scholar, teacher, and author. Her areas of interest include the study of U.S. social and cultural history, film and history of media, ethnicity and immigration, women’s history, and urban history. Read more about Judith Smith …
Smith’s most recent book is Becoming Belafonte: Black Artist, Public Radical (University of Texas Press, 2014). A son of poor Jamaican immigrants who grew up in Depression-era Harlem, Harry Belafonte became the first black performer to gain artistic control over the representation of African Americans in commercial television and film. Forging connections with an astonishing array of consequential players on the American scene in the decades following World War II—from Paul Robeson to Ed Sullivan, John Kennedy to Stokely Carmichael—Belafonte established his place in American culture as a hugely popular singer, matinee idol, internationalist, and champion of civil rights, black pride, and black power. Read more about the book …
Other books by Judith E. Smith include: