Censoring Racial Ridicule

“Censoring Racial Ridicule makes a signal contribution to the history of censorship and free speech, showing that calls to ban or to revise controversial theater and film productions were often based on a gender- and class-inflected antiracism. The history of opposition to hate speech is thus greatly deepened by this study, which demonstrates that what we take to be a very modern concern with political correctness is heir to longstanding controversies.” — David Roediger, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

“This meaningfully interdisciplinary new book enriches our understanding of the earliest civil rights efforts of Irish, Jewish, and African Americans, and helps us to understand how 'civil rights' came to be defined so broadly as to include stage and screen performances and visual representations. Censoring Racial Ridicule will further cement Kibler’s reputation as one of the very finest historians of popular culture.” — Matthew Pratt Guterl, Brown University

“Richly researched. . . . An excellent and necessary book [that] deepens our understanding of crucial debates in American democracy.” — Journal of American History

“An excellent comparative study of the antidefamation activism undertaken by Irish American, Jewish American, and African American organizations in the opening decades of the twentieth century.” — Journal of Southern History

“Meticulously researched. . . . Serves as a timely reminder that the freedom of speech, habitually referred to as the essence of democratic self-government, has a checkered and contested history.” — American Jewish History

“Demonstrates the rich interpretive results of not only utilizing a broad archive of both cultural and legal texts but also of combining the analogous struggles of several ethnic groups in America to overcome prejudice. . . . An estimable new chapter indeed in the history of the great American social experiment.” — Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“Kibler’s analysis is especially strong in its critique of gendered racial and ethnic representations of the Irish.” — CHOICE