It was the age of Jim Crow, riddled with racial violence and unrest. But in the world of Our Gang, black and white children happily played and made mischief together. They even had their own black and white version of the KKK, the Cluck Cluck Klams—and the public loved it. The story of race and Our Gang, or The Little Rascals, is rife with the contradictions and aspirations of the sharply conflicted, changing American society that was its theater. Exposing these connections for the first time, Julia Lee shows us how much this series, from the first silent shorts in 1922 to its television revival in the 1950s, reveals about black and white American culture—on either side of the silver screen. Behind the scenes, we find unconventional men like Hal Roach and his gag writers, whose Rascals tapped into powerful American myths about race and childhood. We meet the four black stars of the series—Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison, Allen “Farina” Hoskins, Matthew “Stymie” Beard, and Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas—the gang within the Gang, whose personal histories Lee pursues through the passing years and shifting political landscape. In their checkered lives, and in the tumultuous life of the series, we discover an unexplored story of America, the messy, multiracial nation that found in Our Gang a comic avatar, a slapstick version of democracy itself.

Chronicles more than seventy years of the "Our Gang" series using revealing photographs to commemorate such cultural mainstays as Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Buckwheat, Porky, Butch, Farina, and Petey the Dog.

Our Gang provides a fascinating historical portrait of the Jewish criminal world from the era of mass immigration through Prohibition and beyond. Jenna Weissman Joselit traces the origins, nature, patterns, location, and impact of Jewish crime from the early years, when it was inextricably bound up with the East Side community as a whole, with criminals living among the more or less law-abiding citizens they preyed upon, to the post-World War I period and the gradual assimilation and absorption of Jewish crime into the mainstream of the American underworld. Parallel with this theme is a broader one: the New York Jewish community's reaction to Jewish crime, evolving from disbelief to denial to concern and the establishment of a network of correctional and preventive agencies, and finally—as the nature of Jewish crime changed, and as the community itself felt a growing sense of security—a sort of acceptance.

This is the autobiography of one of the original members of the much loved "Our Gang" comedy films featuring the Little Rascals: Spanky, Buckwheat, Alfalfa & of course, Butch. Bond played with many of the great stars of the golden age of Hollywood including Eddie Cantor & Laurel & Hardy. Mr. Bond was also the first Jimmy Olsen in the early Superman films. His story is a delightful look at life as a child star with the many luminaries of the time of glitter & imagination that still delight audiences & "Our Gang" fan clubs around the country. DARN RIGHT IT'S BUTCH is the only autobiography of a member of "Our Gang."

Collects the classic 1940s comics based on the Our gang and Lil rascals shorts. Written and drawn by the author after he had worked for Walt Disney but before he created his legendary Pogo comic strip.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in the epicentre of the California hot rod explosion, Ed Roth created automotive forms purely from his own imagination. He transformed car design, reinvented American hot rod culture and put Detroit on notice. Each of his creations transcended function and form to turn the American automobile into rolling sculpture.