Black Camelot

In the wake of the Kennedy era, a new kind of ethnic hero emerged within African-American popular culture. Uniquely suited to the times, burgeoning pop icons, such as Muhammad Ali, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and Pam Grier, projected the values and beliefs of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and reflected both the possibility and the actuality of a rapidly changing American landscape. In Black Camelot, William Van Deburg examines the dynamic rise of these new black champions, the social and historical contexts in which they flourished, and their powerful impact on the American scene. By the 1970s, whenever the average American watched a soul singer perform, took in a black cast film, or urged their favorite professional sports team on to victory, he or she was compelled to admire and identify with heroes who happened to be Afro-Americans. In all, this African-American heroic epitomized a grand and empowering vision - a multiracial society in which an individual's intrinsic human worth could be universally recognized and respected together with his or her unique ethnic identity.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.