Introduction -- Black humor ... what it is -- Slavery ... "don't nobody know my name but me" -- Minstrelsy ... the die is cast -- Black minstrelsy to vaudeville ... black on black -- Vaudeville and early twentieth-century black humor ... the blackening of America -- Hollywood's silent years ... the curse of a nation -- The new Negro : Harlem and Hollywood ... exotics, imposters, and other misshapen identities -- Radio and early television ... racial ventriloquy, black soaps, and servants -- Race records and black films ... sounds and visions in black and blue -- The Theatre Owners Booking Association and the Apollo Theatre ... changing the joke and slipping the yoke -- Literary reflections of African-American humor ... depictions of things unseen -- Folklore and street humor ... "if you grinnin, you in 'em" -- The new comics ... what you see is what you get -- Pryor and thereafter ... on the real side.