Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Negro beat: "distinguished colored men" and their representative characters -- Passing into diplomacy: US Consul James Weldon Johnson and the autobiography of an ex-colored man -- Diplomatic and modern representations: George Washington Ellis, Henry Francis Downing, and the myth of Africa -- Metonymies of absence andpresence: Angelina Weld Grimke's Rachel -- Diplomats but ersatz: the hip-to-matic Pan-Africanismof W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida Gibbs Hunt -- The practice of hip-to-macy in the age of public diplomacy: Richard Wright's Indonesian travels -- Epilogue: hipster diplomacy's fall and Barack Obama's forms of things unknown.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2013. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries.