Julia Lee ’ s Our Gang : A Racial History of the Little Rascals . Minneapolis , MN : University of Minnesota , 2015 . By Heather Lusty
Julia Lee ’ s new cultural history of The Little Rascals , one of the most popular TV shows of all time , is a striking , thorough investigation into the complexities of racial relations of early twentieth-century America . The Little Rascals , an American short film comedy featuring poor neighborhood children ’ s misadventures , was the first television show to put girls and boys , blacks and whites , together in situ – an uncommon picture of American childhood , one that showed interracial children playing together as friends . Launched as a franchise in 1922 , converting to sound in 1929 , the production enjoyed an unusually long life span — twenty years in an original run , with 220 episodes and a feature film , and syndicated for television from 1955 onward . During its original production ( pre-Universal Pictures ’ 1994 reboot ), it featured 41 child actors . Our Gang ’ s most important contribution to American culture , in a time rife with racism , Klan activity , and Jim Crow laws , was its influential shaping of perceptions of black-white relations .
Lee highlights the ways stereotypical tropes of grotesque and abysmal in Our Gang presented a contradictory and radical revisionist portrayal of American race relations that set the bar for American television shows . Lee concentrates on the gang ’ s four African- American stars : Ernest “ Sunshine Sammy ” Morrison , Allen “ Farina ” Hoskins , Matthew Stymie ” Beard , and Billie “ Buckwheat Thomas ;” drawing attention to both their studio lives and external social experiences , Lee underscores the importance of the show ’ s groundbreaking portrayal of a racial utopia , which encouraged black
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