Black Meme

A history of Black imagery that recasts our understanding of visual culture and technology

List of Illustrations

Overture: Black Planets / Black Memes / Black Acts

1. Strange Fruit, Gone Viral: The Souls of Moving Image
2. Eating the Other: Emmett Till’s Memory, Myth, and Black Magic
3. Selma On My Mind: Protest, Media, and Viral Witness
4. Sporting the Black Complaint: John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Silent Blackness, and Memetic Nationhood
5. Viral Zombiism: Michael Jackson and "Thriller"
6. Paris is Burning: Viral Ballrooms and Memetic Royalties
7. Reality, Televised: On the Rodney King Generation
8. Refusing Symbolism: Anita Hill and Magic Johnson
9. "The Dancing Baby": Birth of a [Gif] Nation
10. The Shadow, The Substance: Renty and Delia as Viral Daguerreotypes
11. Meme Afterlives: Lavish Reynolds In Broadcast (And, Anyway, Arrest the Cops That Killed Breonna Taylor)

Outro in Remix: Lyric for the Black Meme

Acknowledgments
Notes