| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Jump for Joy: Jazz, Basketball, and Black Culture in 1930s America. By Gena Caponi-Tabery. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008. xxii, 260 pp. Cloth, $80.00, ISBN 978-1-55849-662-0. Paper, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-55849-663-7.)
Jump for Joy is a remarkable book, an example of cultural studies as well as a history of dominant motifs in African American and U.S. culture before the civil rights movement. Gena Caponi-Tabery traces the protests of the 1950s back to foundations established during the depression. She analyzes a variety of topics—jazz music and dance, athletics, ring shouts, and spirit possession in Protestant worship, and the unique style of black basketball teams. The impact of jitterbug dancing and the jump shot, for example, on national pastimes such as swing dancing and professional basketball is also explored.	1
Caponi-Tabery has astutely identified the African American desire and ability to run fast, leap, and soar as a dominant motif during these years. Black athletes' exploits at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the fights of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, and basketball players who livened up the game with fast breaks and dazzling behind-the-back passes, inspired African Americans as much as the Big Apple and other jitterbug dances. Like the Harlem Renaissance, these successes served for blacks as definitive proof of their abilities and that they deserved the rights and privileges bestowed automatically on white citizens.	. . .

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