Hoodlums

Van Deburg traces a recurring figure in American life and entertainment: the Black villain, from enslaved people accused of menace and frontier outlaws to serial killers and gangsta rap personas. He calls this an unusually thorough study of the 'black badman' and of how that image has complicated race relations in the United States.

The book opens with the early Republic, where the stereotype first took shape in writings that defended slavery by appealing to scriptural interpretation. From there Van Deburg examines antebellum slave codes, minstrel performance, and proslavery polemics to show how white Americans came to see Black people as members of a lesser and dangerous race.

The second half turns to African American writers and artists who pushed back against these images. Works by Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois are discussed alongside blaxploitation films such as Black Caesar and The Mack. Van Deburg argues that Black communities reworked the badman idea through the story of the social bandit, a figure whites condemned as wicked but many Black Americans honored as a rebel and agent of revolt.