Jookin'

This study is the first to examine how the jook developed. Created by the Black working class, the jook was a grassroots social institution, and the author places it alongside other African-American dance venues. The account starts with how the Middle Passage reshaped the traditional dances of enslaved Africans, then follows the distinct, largely self-governing dance life that took shape in the rural South. As with the blues, these secular dances and their venues moved north with Black migrants and became urban. Some elements of Black dance were absorbed into white popular culture in Northern cities and turned into commercial products.

The book covers ten dance venues from slavery through the mid-twentieth century. These include jooks, honky-tonks, rent parties, after-hours joints, licensed membership clubs, dance halls, cabarets, and the social dances of the Black elite. Jook houses appeared during Reconstruction and can be read as a community's response to newly won freedom. Within them, much of core Black culture found room to flourish when few other secular institutions did: food, language, fellowship, courtship, music, and dance. Jooks and their offshoots also offered economic opportunity outside the mainstream economy, through activities such as illegal lotteries and numbers games.

Dances such as the Charleston, the shimmy, the snake hips, the funky butt, the twist, and the slow drag began in the jooks, and some can be traced to Africa. The author argues that social dance connects African Americans to their African heritage more strongly than any other part of their culture. Alongside these venues, the book describes black dance styles, formal rituals such as debutante balls, and the impact of Black dance on white culture.