Black dreams: a cultural history of the American dream in Black popular culture in the 20th and 21st centuries

This dissertation explores how the American dream has been understood in Black popular culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, providing a cultural history of the idea in three distinct periods in Black America: the great migration, the civil rights movement, and the hip-hop era. Although the dream has been an accessible and prevalent way to explore notions of success and mobility in America, it also has been a problematic myth that has not adequately described lack of opportunity in Black America. African American popular culture has therefore responded to the ideology of the dream through both a material lens of upward class mobility but also a moral frame of a struggle for justice and freedom. By complicating our interpretation of the Black American dream, we can better understand the history of this marginalized community and how hope and aspiration were deployed in the Black community from the great migration to the age of President Donald Trump.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference