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Black Liberation Without Apology: Reconceptualizing the Black Power Movement Author(s): Peniel E. Joseph Source: The Black Scholar, Vol. 31, No. 3/4, BLACK POWER STUDIES: A NEW SCHOLARSHIP

(FALL/WINTER 2001), pp. 2-19 Published by: Paradigm Publishers Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41069810 Accessed: 26-03-2015 22:18 UTC

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Black Liberation Without Apology: Reconceptualizing the Black Power Movement

by Peniel E. Joseph

recent emergence of historical schol- arship related to Black Power radicalism

represents a new phase of civil rights history that might best be described as "Black Power Studies." In contrast to the thick historical scholarship on the Civil Rights, the systemic study of the Black Power era has, until recently, remained elusive for at least four reasons.1 First, the last quarter-century has witnessed a full-scale retreat from the protest politics that were a hallmark of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Second, historians and professional scholars have been, for the most part, unwilling to research the movement on it own terms, pre- ferring instead to characterize Black Power as the "evil twin" that wrecked civil rights. Third, the seeming lack of archival material on this era has served as a drawback to in- depth research. Only recently have impor- tant papers of key activists been archived and made accessible. Many more will need to be unearthed before historians can craft a fuller view of this period. Finally, the Black Power era has not been taken seriously by main- stream scholars. While we have a good num- ber of autobiographies from movement par- ticipants, scholars have only begun to scratch the surface of the rich history, insights, and lessons that this era can offer. The negative association of violence with political radical- ism only partially explains this scholarly eva- sion. Black Power remains a "hot potato" that many are fearful of touching, lest they be burned by the forces of reaction that con- tinue to demonize this era.2 However, renewed interest in black political radicalism by both professional scholars and political

activists reflects the continued resonance of postwar black political radicalism.

The new Black Power scholarship fits with- in a conceptual framework that situates the civil rights and Black Power eras (1954-1975) as part of a broader black liberation move- ment.4 Significant aspects of the first half have been elegantly rendered by major his- torical studies, while the second half has lan- guished. This is unfortunate since black radi- cals existed, and very often struggled alongside of, more reform-minded political activists and organizations. The intellectual and cultural commentary, critiques, and books produced during the Black Power movement provide the raw materials for the field of Black Power Studies. However, this is not to suggest that Black Power was primarily an academic exercise. On the contrary, Black Power was a political movement whose rever- berations touched major aspects of Ameri- can and global intellectual culture - which paved the way for thousands of works, both political and polemical, analyzing and advo- cating multiple political agendas and per- spectives. The focus on Black power intellec- tual production is not an attempt to reduce the era's concerns to ideological, cultural, and political debates. While these were undoubtedly important, the Black Power movement advocated the radical transforma- tion of American society. Nor am I suggest- ing that Black Power Studies existed simulta- neously with the Black Power movement. Rather, I argue that the Black Power move- ment opened up new and innovative fields of intellectual inquiry. At times this was done very consciously by specific activists and ort-

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ganizations. At other times it was the indirect outcome of fierce political struggles for sur- vival.

The intellectual production during the Black Power era displayed at least three dis- tinct tendencies. Black Power political activists produced numerous pamphlets, books, speeches, and essays for the sake of social, political, and cultural transformation of American and world society. While much of this material was intellectually sophisticat- ed and is useful for contemporary scholars, the purpose was less an academic exercise than a training, critical thinking, and methodological creativity to fashion a theo- retical basis for the Black Power movement. This black intelligentsia merged activism and intellectual production, arguing that the movement for social and poltical transforma- tion required a critical and politically engaged community of black scholar- activists. The final group consisted of disen- gaged academics who analyzed the politics of the era, while not participating in either poolitical or intellectual activism. Black Power radicalism was a direct outgrowth of the creative, ideological, and political ten- sions during the first phase of civil rights, which was marked by direct action and a strategic adherence to non-violence.

essay examines the latest phase of Black Power Studies through an exami-

nation of the strengths and weaknesses of recent historical, literary, and political works. It defines and examines four phases in Black Power Studies and suggests that the latest stage provides the foundation for a historical framework for the study of black radicalism in the post war era. The first stage occurred during the immediate Cold War years and predates the formal declaration of Black Power in 1966. The second stage was both a documentation and by-product of ongoing Black Power activism. The third stage pro- ceeded in the aftermath of the Black Power era. The fourth and most recent stage has witnessed the most systematic analysis of the movement to date.

The literature reviewed, with few excep- tions, was written by the black women and men who were active participants, observers,

activists, and intellectuals during and after this era. This is not to ignore the works of the white historians and journalists who have analyzed the movement. Rather, my analysis, similar to the Black Power movement itself, places black folk and their activities at the center of a radical social and political move- ment that attempted to transform American and world society. The Black Power move- ment provides an important prism for the examination of a host of issues including but not limited to urban studies, black electoral politics, the Black Arts movement, feminism, labor movements, black studies, prison movements, and international decoloniza- tion efforts.

The First Stage: "A New Perspective Opens Up"

FIRST STAGE OF BLACK POWER STUDIES

originated in the Cold War political repression of the 1950s.6 The works pro- duced during this period were the products of contentious political struggle that com- prise a towering legacy for the discipline of Black Power Studies. This era ushered in a winter for radical politics in general, and was catastrophic for black luminaries including Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, Alphaeus Hut- ton and W.E.B. Du Bois. Although severely hampered by Cold War liberalism, black rad- icalism continued to percolate beneath the surface of civil rights orthodoxy and, at times, held center stage in dramatic fashion.7 During this era African-Americans joined arms with people of color globally to stave off political oblivion. Looking outward for a way forward at home, black radicals were inspired and invigorated by global events including anti-colonial uprisings in Ghana, Cuba, and the African Congo. Domesticated African-American perspectives on the Black Power era ignore connections to internation- al global politics.8 Richard Wright's insightful works {Black Power, The Color Curtain, and White Man Listen!) of the 1950s ushered in a scintillating wave of political and cultural criticism that anticipated the major themes of radical internationalism, Third World soli- darity, and anti-colonialism that would char- acterize the Black Power era.9 Published in

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1954, Wright's presciently titled Black Power placed political developments in the soon to be independent republic of Ghana (the for- mer Gold Coast) within a larger historical con- text. Two years later, Wright's The Color Curtain further developed this global perspective, by arguing that the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia represented a repudiation of West- ern imperialism by the Third World.10 The final part of Wright's anti-colonial trilogy, White Man Listen! (1957), analyzed the ways in which non-whites perceived white supremacy. Similar to Wright, Paul Robeson's defiant autobiography Here I Stand challenged white supremacy even in the face of "thunderbolts of... displeasure and rage."

Richard Wright and Paul Robeson represent cogent examples of black rad-

icals being deeply influenced by internation- al events. The legacy of the black anti-colo- nial Left was also reflected by individuals such as Vicki Gar vin, William Worthy, and Robert F. Williams. Garvin's political activi- ties led to her expatriation to Ghana, while Worthy became the black radical foreign cor- respondent of the era traveling to Indonesia, Cuba, and Africa at great personal and pro- fessional cost. Williams' s Negroes with Guns (1962) documented the ex-NAACP leader's heroic efforts to counter anti-black terror in Monroe, North Carolina; a stance that ulti- mately led to Williams' exile in Cuba, China, and Africa for almost a decade. One year later, veteran labor radical James Boggs, who mentored several generations of black radi- cals, including future Black Power militants, published The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker's Notebook (1963), in which he examined the intersection of race and class politics on the urban terrain.

Black Power internationalism not only permeated these works, but also the black radical press. Periodicals such as Shirley Gra- ham Du Bois's Freedomways (a continuation of Paul Robeson's short-lived Freedom newspa- per), Robert Williams's self-published Cru- sader, the Nation of Islam's Muhammad Speaks, the Revolutionary Action Movement's Soulbook and Black America, Dan Watts's Liber- ator, and Presence Africaine highlighted the international dimensions of domestic civil

rights struggles. This first set of historical writ- ings, analyses, and editorials anticipated, and at times explicitly articulated, themes of anti- colonialism, self-defense, class struggle, and radical humanism15 that characterized the sec- ond stage of Black Power Studies. For exam- ple the New York City based newspaper On Guard argued that "Cuban events have a direct bearing on our century long struggle against segregation and lynch justice, our legal battles and mass demonstrations for equality of opportunity and rights against the government's continuing Jim Crow policy and practices. A new perspective opens up." This last line reflected a growing radicalism that existed alongside Cold War excess and perme- ated aspects of the Civil Rights movement.

The Second Stage: From Autobiography to Political Analysis

A UTOBIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS have histori- jljl cally dominated works documenting the Black Power era.17 Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) repre- sents the first salvo in the most self-referen- tial stage of Black Power Studies. Written with the journalist Alex Haley, the posthu- mously published Autobiography was an imme- diate bestseller that revealed both the impor- tant themes that would characterize Black Power literature during this period and the growing acceptance of radical writings in the mainstream publishing industry. At first blush, the autobiography's riveting narrative of Malcolm's ascent from prison to respected international leader seems to represent what John Edgar Wideman has described as a "neoslave narrative." According to Wideman, such narratives erase the possibilities of radi- cal systemic change by focusing on the exploits of heroic individuals:

Although the existing social arrangements may allow the horrors of plantations, ghettos, and pris- ons to exist, the narratives tell us, these arrange- ments also allow rooms for some escape. Thus the

arrangements are not absolutely evil. No one is

absolutely guilty, nor are the oppressed (slave, prisoner, ghetto inhabitant) absolutel^^uiltless. If some overcome, why don't the others?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X remains sig- nally important in that it transcends the

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clichés of both the antebellum and the con- temporary slave narrative. Malcolm's person- al transformation provides the context for his prolonged radical political engagement. More then just a narrative history describing individual transformation, the Autobiography details the processes that surround attempts at systemic political transformation against extraordinary odds. Malcolm X's death heightened the contradictions within Ameri- can democracy - triggering Shockwaves that emboldened African-American radicals.

PUBLISHED ON THE HEELS of this explosion

Stokely Carmichael's and Charles Hamil- ton's Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967) provided the richest, and in many ways, the most important theoretical and political definition of a movement that would remain ill-defined during, and long after, its heyday. The increasingly strident Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and polit- ical scientist Charles Hamilton intended Black Power to pragmatically shape the bur- geoning and somewhat inchoate Black Power movement. Simultaneously, the work was a theoretical piece of committed scholar- ship that represents an enduring classic in the field of Black Power Studies. Indeed, written amid the urban upheavals when it seemed as if America would burn in atone- ment for its racial sins, the book provided a glimmer of hope against what most observers saw as an uncertain future:

This book presents a political framework and ide- ology which represents the last reasonable oppor- tunity for this society to work out its racial prob- lem short of prolonged destructive guerrilla warfare. That such violent warfare may be unavoidable is not herein denied. But if there is the slightest chance to avoid it, the politics of Black Power as described in this book is seen as the only viable hope.

Although presented as laying the groundwork for the political framework of the movement, Carmichael and Hamilton took pains to make no claims of a monolithic concept of Black Power. Accordingly, the authors argued that the movement's dynamism lay in its creativity and experimentation:

[B]lack people must organize themselves without regard to what is traditionally acceptable, precise- ly because the traditional approaches have failed.

It means that black people must make demands without regard to their initial "respectability," precisely because "respectable" demands have not been sufficient.... We must begin to think of the black community as a base of organization to control institutions in that community.

!

This experimentation would ultimately lead to a redefinition of black citizenship:

Black people must redefine themselves, and only they can do that. Throughout this country, vast segments of the black communities are begin- ning to recognize the need to reclaim their histo- ry, their culture; to create their own sense of community and togetherness. There is a growing resentment of the word "Negro," for example, because this term is the invention of our oppres- sor; it is his image of us that he describes. Many blacks are now calling themselves African-Ameri- cans, Afro-Americans or black people because that is our image of ourselves.22

At once a political and polemical historical work, Black Power's stress on experimentation and redefinition connected political trans- formation to an ideological framework based on creativity, innovation, and flexibility. In other words, a program that could meet the explosive changes that were daily occur- rences during this era.

Carmichael and Hamilton looked toward the future, Harold Cruse's Cri-

sis of the Negro Intellectual (1967) attempted to analyze the era by examining the past with a vengeance. Even before the publication of his magnum opus, Cruse was one of the most widely read and controversial social critics of the era. Considered a hero and sage by young radicals during the Black Power era, Cruse became the movement's chief critic during the 1960s and early 1970s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual became a best-seller and the unofficial bible of revolutionary nation- alists. Praised as much for its strident cri- tique of the white Marxist Left24 as it was for its repudiation of assorted black leaders, the book revealed major schisms within black politics. Yet to read Cruse's major work as simply an ideological attack on Marxism would be a mistake. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual was the culmination of Cruse's long attempt to construct a philosophy of rev- olutionary black nationalism that stood out- side the parameters of conventional interpre- tations of black radicalism. Moreover, Cruse,

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who fought to craft an indigenous theory of black American resistance, analyzed the cul- tural politics of race in American society and the role of black intellectuals in the Ameri- can cultural and political arena.25

/Criticized now and at the time of its pub- '^>l lication as being personally motivated and containing historical and conceptual inaccuracies, Cruse's writings and political activism remain crucial to understanding the trajectory of African-American political thought during the Black Power era. The enduring strength of Cruse's work has less to do with its historical accuracy than the tone and timing of its publication. For a genera- tion of young black radicals, Cruse's work was their first introduction to the complex history of black radicalism. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, Cruse's concluding chapter, "Postscript on Black Power - The Dialogue Between Shadow and Substance," leveled a cogent critique against the conservative poli- tics inscribed within Black Power discourse. Recognizing the conservative black econom- ic nationalism that undergirded strains of Black Power rhetoric, Cruse asserted that the "slogan actually represents a swing back to the conservative nationalism that Malcolm X had just departed."27

While many dismissed The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual as a personally motivated attack on the black Left by a disgruntled opportunist, radical political theorist Robert L. Allen focused on the theoretical implica- tions of Cruse's treatise. Published in 1969, Allen's important book Black Awakening in Capitalist America, while acknowledging the significance of Cruse's work and its impact on black nationalist thinking, found Cruse's construction of cultural hegemony within American political economy flawed. Accord- ing to Allen, one of the book's central errors was its "failure to establish, by argument or evidence, his central thesis concerning the salience of the cultural apparatus and the projected cultural revolution."28 Moreover, Allen argued that Cruse over-emphasized the power of black intellectuals. Therefore, Cruse, while ostensibly calling for a dynamic and creative black intellectual elite, failed to

critique the elitism that was intrinsic to the conception of the "talented tenth." Finally, Allen charged Cruse's solution of black con- trol of America's cultural apparatus as being piecemeal, rather than radical. Black Awak- ening in Capitalist America's chief strength is in its unapologetic intellectual analysis and interrogation of the Black Power movement.

the decade of the 1960s drew to a tumultuous close, Allen was by no

means alone in attempting to make sense of it all. The movement's intellectual shock- troops consisted of rank-and-file activists, workers, student journalists, and intellectu- als. At the grassroots level, James and Grace Lee Boggs best represented this intelli- gentsia. A black radical auto-worker, Boggs and his Chinese-American wife Grace Lee, were permanent fixtures among Detroit's vibrant black radical community. A one-time ally of the Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James, Boggs provided vivid theoretical and practi- cal insights that went beyond "Black Marx- ism" to craft a framework for Black Power in urban centers in pursuit of a radical humani- tarian philosophy. In addition to numerous pamphlets, Boggs's Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Workers Notebook (1970) and Revolution and Evolution in the 20th Century (1974), written with Grace Lee Boggs), provide the best examples of the attempts by activists to undergird Black Power rhetoric with both a practical and intellectual base.30 By the late 1960s and early 1970s black radical books and other publica- tions cropped up on virtually every college campus and major city in the U.S. Leading periodicals, in addition to Muhammad Speaks, Liberator and Freedomways, included Negro Digest/Black World, The Black Scholar, Soulbook, and The Black Panther Intercommunal News Ser- vice. In addition to thse sources, a radical intelligenstia that incldued Vincent Harding, William Strickland, Stephen Henderson, and Howard Dodson attempte dto provide a practical and theoretical framework for Black Power through the ambitious Institute of the Black World (IBW).31 This intellectual movement sought to contextualize the rapid- ly growing Black Power phenomenon, reach- ing its peak during the first half of the

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1970s.32 Of course black activists and intellectu- als were not the only ones analyzing the era. At times white analysis of the period crossed the line of professional inquiry into overt fetishism and venality. In other cases heartfelt attempts such as August Meier and Elliot Rudwick's Black Protest in the Sixties (1970) fell short of fully comprehending the period's complex redefinition of black nationalism and identity.34

many instances attempts to articulate a theory behind Black Power were over-

whelmed by the immediacy of developing political events. Instead, political memoirs and autobiographies dominated both the second and third stages of Black Power Studies. This phenomenon was based in part of the success of trade publishers in marketing the move- ment through iconic personalities and organi- zations - most notably the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers, the most widely publicized and arguably the most influential, as well as the most misunderstood Black Power advo- cates, published both political memoirs and autobiographies during this period. Eldridge Cleaver's Soul On Ice (1968), although written before he joined the Black Panther Party, solidified his growing reputation as a hero of the radical Bay Area New Left.35 Black Power advocate H. Rap Brown's Die Nigger Die (1968) was a simultaneous serving of autobiography and polemic that remains a sharp example of the apocalyptical sentiments that permeated the era. Panther chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale's Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (1970) was both a political history of the party's for- mation and a polemical repudiation of the incarceration of Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton.3 Huey Newton followed with the autobiographical Revolutionary Suicide (1972) that, similar to the experience of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver and George Jackson, revealed the author's spiritual and psychologi- cal transformation while incarcerated.38 New- ton would write two more books and a doctor- al dissertation that detailed his political philosophy and experiences with the party.39

WORKS OF BLACK PRISON activists received popular attention during this

era. George Jackson's writings raised the pos-

sibility that Black Power held the keys to transcendence for the thousands of blacks who remained in prison.40 Angela Davis, a philosopher, activist, and committed Marxist, was instrumental in publicizing the condi- tion of black prisoners, a stance that led to her incarceration during the early 1970s. Written at the height of black political radi- calism and state-repression, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974) stands out as a narrative history of Davis's political journey and one of the rare works that gave full voice to the role of black women during the Black Power era.41 More expansively, Toni Cade Bambara's semi- nal anthology The Black Woman (1970) pre- sented a tour de force analysis of the intersec- tion of race, class, and gender that would shake the foundation of the black, women's, and leftist movements in America. Written amidst the Shockwaves of late 1960s political unrest, James Baldwin's No Name in the Street (1972) reflects both the author's and the era's increasing radicalization amid the Black Power movement. Critiquing American lib- eralism as a sham, Baldwin attacked American foreign and domestic policy:

Now in the interest of the public peace, it is the Black Panthers who are being murdered in their beds, by the dutiful and zealous police. But, for a policeman, all black men, especially young black men, are probably Black Panthers and all black women and children are probably allied with them: just as, in a Vietnamese village, the entire population, men, women, children, are consid- ered as probable Vietcong. In the village, as in the ghetto, those who were not dangerous before the search-and-destroy operation assuredly become so afterward, for the inhabitants of the village, like the inhabitants of the ghetto, realize that they are identified, judged, menaced, murdered, solely because of the color of their skin. This is as curi- ous a way of waging war for a people's freedom as it is of maintaining the domestic peace.44

Baldwin was not the only radical to highlight the contradictions of American public policy. James Forman's The Making of Black Revolution- aries (1972) elevated the craft of autobiography to new political and theoretical heights while highlighting the ideological vibrancy and para- doxes of the era. Black Power's radical human- ism transformed progressive elements within the black church. Albert Cleage's Black Messi- ah (1968) and Black Christian Nationalism (1972) articulated the philosophy of black lib-

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eration theology that attempted to remake the black church into a vehicle for black radical- ism.46 The Black Arts movement was personi- fied by LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal's edited anthology Black Fire and the works of Black Arts pioneers Sonia Sanchez, Haki Madubuti, Askia Muhammad Toure (Roland Snellings) , and Nikki Giovanni.4 The diversity of black radical political thought was well represented in Floyd Barbour's edited anthology, The Black Seventies that included essays by James Boggs, Larry Neal and Margaret Walker.48 The second stage of Black Power Studies displayed a remarkably critical analysis amid rapidly transforming political and historical developments. By the mid 1970s as the fires of urban rebellion and political dissent moved once more to the fringes of the American political arena, Black Power Studies entered a period marked by autobiographies and political analysis that characterized the period as more tragedy then triumph.

The Third Stage: A Hopeless History?

third set of works related to Black Power were written after the movement's

highpoint. The years following the decline of black political radicalism witnessed the pub- lication of two first-rate studies that chroni- cled Black Power labor radicalism. Dan Georgakas's Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution (1975) is a case study of the efforts of black labor radicalism in Detroit during the Black Power movement. Detroit's radical labor movement was also the focus of James Geschwinder's compelling study Class, Race and Worker Insurgency: The League of Revo-

lutionary Black Workers (1977).50 During this era, from the mid-1970s through the mid- 1990s, autobiographies by ex-Panthers contin- ued to gain notice. Bobby Seale's A Lonely Rage (1978), Assata Shakur's Assata: An Autobi- ography (1987), Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power (1992) and David Hilliard's This Side of Glory (1993) all complicated one-dimensional nar- ratives of the Black Panther Party.51 The works by the exiled ex-Panther and Black Liberation Army member Shakur and former Panther chairwoman Brown, in particular, shed light on the "masculine decade" of the 1970s in ways that more provocative works such as

Michelle Wallace's Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1978) failed to do.5 Although during the 1980s historians stressed the legacy of the movement in such works as Manning Marable's Blackwater: Historical Studies in Race, Class Consciousness and Revolution (1981), Black American Politics: From the March on Washington to fesse Jackson (1985), and African and Caribbean Politics: From Kwame Nkrumah to Maurice Bishop (1987), it was not until the 1990s that there was a full scale attempt to analyze the movement as a whole. William Van DeBurg's New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture. 1965- 1975 (1992) examined the Black Power era's impact on American popular culture. While groundbreaking in many ways, New Day in Babylon failed to deal with the postwar radical- ism that precipitated the Black Power era dur- ing the height of Cold War liberalism substan- tively. Moreover, similar to many narratives during this stage, the movement is viewed as ephemeral, effectively disappearing as quickly as it came into being. The notion that the Black Power movement destroyed the more pragmatic Civil Rights movement cast a pall over narratives of Black Power during this era. Even relatively sympathetic works cast the era as a hapless and hopeless history of black American radicalism.5

The Fourth Stage: No Apologies

most recent stage of Black Power Studies has provided the most rigorous,

sustained, and in-depth historical analysis of the period. Historian Komozi Woodard's A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) & Black Power Politics (1999) is the best book written to date about the era. Woodard's narrative successfully documents the national and international implications of Black Power politics through an examina- tion of Newark, New Jersey. A Nation Within a Nation, a case study of Black Power politics in a major northeastern city, is a political biog- raphy of Amiri Baraka, and a political analy- sis of the interaction between black and African and Afro-Caribbean anti-colonial radicals during the early 1970s. Finally, A Nation Within a Nation documents the victo- ries and failures of Black Power nationalism

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on urban machine politics during the heyday of black nationalism.5 Woodard's narrative presents the Black Power era as a complex mosaic that combined cultural politics, grass- roots organization, electoral power, and for- eign affairs, to dramatically reshape Ameri- can society and redefine the role of black Americans in domestic and world affairs.

Tyson's Radio Free Dixie: Robert E Williams and the Roots of Black Power

(1999) breaks new ground by substantively examining Robert F. William's racial mili- tance during the age of civil rights. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, mass move- ments in Southern cities such as Birming- ham, Alabama, became the center for non- violent civil rights protests. Tyson rightfully underscores traditions of self-defense within the black community and the way in which Williams's exploits garnered international attention to the devastating effects of white supremacy in the American South through what is primarily a case study of Monroe, North Carolina. Still, historians know too lit- tle of the impact and influence of black radi- cals in Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities during this period.58 Pre-dating Stokely Carmichael's and Willie Ricks' defiant decla- ration of Black Power during the 1966 Meredith March Against Fear, the political writings and activism of black radicals during the civil rights era provide the immediate theoretical and practical framework that much of Black Power radicalism would uti- lize (both consciously and unconsciously) in a series of experimental efforts to redefine black politics.

The Black Panther Party, already the focus of an impressive number of political mem- oirs, continues to receive the most sustained scholarly analysis. Charles Jones's edited anthology The Black Panther Party Reconsidered (1998) is the most comprehensive, historical, and balanced work on the Black Panthers.59 Examining the party's relationship with the New Left, its internal contradictions, sexism, and struggles with state-sanction subversion, The Black Panther Party Reconsidered places the Panthers enduring legacy within a historical

framework. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, edited by Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (2001) places the organization's legacy within both a domestic and global context. Historian Yohuru Williams's Black Politics /White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Black Panthers in New Haven (2000) broadens discussion of the Black Panthers by examining the politi- cal milieu that predated and precipitated their emergence in New Haven, Connecticut in 1969. 61 Williams's analysis of the New Haven Black Panther chapter reveals the importance of the Panthers' free breakfast and other social programs in gaining the group local support. Interest in the Panthers remains high and continues to be the subject of recent journalistic accounts such as Jack Olsen's biography of Gerónimo Ji Jaga (Elmer Pratt).62

Rod Bush's We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and the American Century (1999) places the black radical tradition in a sweep- ing historical and analytical context.63 Bush argues that the Black Power movement rep- resented a serious and sustained threat to American hegemony. We Are Not What We Seem is notable for highlighting the interna- tional dimension of black liberation strug- gles, specifically Malcolm X's growing ties with African revolutionaries. This theme is even more pronounced in Mike Marqusee's Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (1999).

5 By examining Muham-

mad Ali's political journey during the 1960s and early 1970s (and his close relationship with Malcolm X) , Redemption Song casts the black liberation struggle as an international phenomenon that attempted to systematical- ly transform democratic institutions in and outside of America's domestic borders.66

As has been discussed above the current stage of Black Power Studies both builds on and stands out in contrast to previous stages. Most notably, the new works "reperiodize" black liberation struggles by examining the ways in which black radicals influenced black politics during the "heroic period" of the Civil Rights movement. In studying the Black Power movement as a two-decades long

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struggle for black liberation (1954-1975), these recent studies are contributing to the reconceptualization of conventional civil rights narratives. Finally, by highlighting the period's understudied themes (black women, internationalism) and figures (for example Robert Williams and Vicki Garvin), this fourth stage has irrevocably altered clichéd narratives of the Black Power era.

The X Files: Toward a Historical Framework of the Black Power Movement

study of Black Power must be placed in the context of the historical develop-

ment of postwar black radicalism. Black radi- calism during the war years reached a high- point with anti-colonial efforts reverberating the world over.6 Cold War liberalism eviscer- ated much, although not all, of this radical energy. Black radicals continued to refuse and resist American bromides regarding democracy throughout the 1950s. Some, such as Richard Wright, did so while in exile in Europe. Others continued to fight the good fight at the local level throughout the U.S. International events, especially the Ban- dung Conference, African liberation in Ghana, the Cuban Revolution, and the Congo Crisis provided the groundwork for the coming Black Power movement. Histori- ans need to know the full impact that these events had on black radicals in the U.S. For example, the political exploits of activists, journalists, and intellectuals who lived over- seas, such as the groups of exiled black radi- cals in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana is only now beginning to receive sustained scholarly attention. The fruits of this research will doubtlessly enhance our understanding of this era. Ruth Reitan's The Rise and Decline of the Alliance: Cuba and African American Leaders in the 1960s is a useful, though by no means exhaustive, examination of the close rela- tionship between blacks and Cuban radicals during the civil rights era.70 An in-depth analysis of African-American support for the Cuban Revolution will shed much needed light on the effects that international events had on domestic racial dissent during the early years of the Civil Rights movement.

OF BLACK POLITICAL RADICALISM

usually skip the early years of the Cold War preferring to view black liberation strug- gles as either quiescent or submerged under the stranglehold of anti-Communism. Timo- thy Tyson's biography of Robert Williams reveals a far more complicated and contested Southern civil rights landscape. More case studies are needed that focus on strategies of self-defense that reveal currents of black radi- calism that existed within and outside of both the Southern and the broader Civil Rights movement. 2 A deeper understanding of the Black Power era must also investigate the activities of radical black youth who were

73 influenced by Malcolm X, anti-colonial struggles, and through participation in radi- cal cultural and political organizations such as the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and the Afro-American Association. For example, organizations as diverse as the US organization and the Black Panthers were rooted in RAM and the Afro-American Associ- ation. During this era the Nation of Islam had a direct impact on many militant stu- dents, especially through the anti-colonialism of its newspaper, Muhammad Speaks. Black stu- dents formed study groups and cultural orga- nizations in an effort to carve out a space and place for black political radicalism. These stu- dents would play important roles in radical politics in Detroit, the South, the Bay Area, and the Northeast by forging relationships with an older generation of radicals that included James and Grace Lee Boggs, Queen Mother Moore, Rev. Albert Cleage, Jr., and Malcolm X. One of the best narratives of black student radicalism during the early 1960s is found in Grace Lee Boggs's autobiog- raphy, Living For Change. This riveting work examines the way in which black radicals con- structed an international network of contacts, study groups, and political organizations that stretched from Detroit to London to Ghana. In addition to much needed biographical studies of activists such as James and Grace Lee Boggs, special attention needs to be placed on the black radicalism in Detroit that flowered through the automobile industry, the Shrine of the Black Madonna and Rev. Albert Cleage, Jr., as well as the activities of local black college students.

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Black Student Unions (BSU's) and organizations such as the Student

Organization for Black Unity (SOBU), which proliferated during the late 1960s and early 1970s, African-American student activists played a pivotal role in the Black Studies movement before the formal arrival of Black Power ideology in cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, New York and Oak- land. While San Francisco State officially gave birth to the Black Studies movement in 1967, similar movements occurred at Cornell University and elsewhere. A fuller study of this movement (which took place in high schools as well) and its relationship to local and national Black Power organizations and leaders is needed. Black Power advocates produced literally thousands of books, pam- phlets, position papers, journals and other publications. A careful examination of this intellectual production will go a long way toward delineating the theoretical diversity and practical underpinnings of the move- ment. Furthermore, the pivotal role of independent black think tanks such as the Institute for the Black World (IBW) will bet- ter illuminate the connection between black radicals, intellectuals, and public policy dur- ing the Black Power era. The IBW served as host to a group of international scholar- activists including C.L.R. James and Walter Rodney. Both of these scholars influenced mayor portions of the movement in the U.S., Africa, and the Caribbean. These intellectu- als significantly altered the thinking of many activists on issues related to nationalism, class struggle and imperialism and provide a fruitful focus for exploration.

The African Liberation Support Commit- tee (ALSC) brought together several dynam- ic strands of Black Power radicalism through a focus on class, culture, and colonialism. Eventually this spectacularly successful orga- nization deteriorated into at least three camps that variously advocated class struggle, culture, or some combination of these approaches. Yet the ALSC's dazzling, albeit brief, history deserves careful historical attention for successfully exporting anti- imperialist awareness to the masses of African-Americans through African Libera- tion Day (ALD) and the close political and

intellectual relationships forged between African and Caribbean radical activists and intellectuals. We need a better understand- ing of the implications of this rich cultural and political exchange that flourished under the auspices of the ALSC. Just as crucial will be an investigation into the turn towards class struggle that made an impact on black radicals during the early 1970s. The shift to the Left by political activists including Amiri Baraka sent Shockwaves throughout the radi- cal movement and requires special attention. While this shift was in part based on the rejection of petit-bourgeois nationalism that made black political control in cities such as Newark a pyrrhic victory, it was based as much on emerging political events in Africa and the Caribbean that crystallized debates over systemic change versus radical reform.

Rethinking the Black Power Movement: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Van DeBurg's New Day in Baby- lon remains one of the few full-length

studies of the Black Power era. Van DeBurg's ambitious, and highly flawed, account of Black Power truncates the move- ment's substantive challenge to American racism, Cold War liberalism, and anti-colo- nialism in favor of an overly glib narrative that focuses on style over substance.83 Nonetheless, New Day in Babylon 's focus on the impact of culture warrants further histor- ical attention. The Black Arts movement shaped, and was shaped by, domestic and international events that encapsulated black protest during the 1960s and 1970s.

While recent scholarship has shed light on the political role played by Black Arts pio- neers such as Amiri Baraka, important fig- ures including Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal, Askia Toure, and Nikki Giovanni have not received enough attention.84 Monique Guil- lory and Robert C. Green's anthology Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure provides a useful retrospective of the cultural politics of the era. 5 Julius Thompson's Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995 (1999) is an important and much needed analysis of Detroit's Black Arts

86 movement. However, Thompson's instruc-

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tive study focuses particularly on the impor- tance of Broadside Press as a vehicle for the Black Arts, rather than the significance of the Black Arts themselves.

Suzanne E. Smith's Dancing in the Streets:

Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (1999) examines the interaction between black cultural production and political activism in Detroit during the black libera- tion era. Skillfully resisting false dichotomies between culture and politics,88 Dandng in the Streets illustrates the way in which black cul- tural production shaped and was shaped by black radicalism that swept through the Motor City during the 1960s. Smith imagina- tively chronicles the historical context that accompanied Motown's ascendancy in a rapidly transforming black community wit- nessing increased labor radicalism, student activism, and independent political and cul- tural organizing. Dandng in the Streets stands out as a major work that provides a potential framework for future studies related to the Black Arts movement.

The Black Arts revolutionized the rela- tionship between black politics and culture on a level that equaled, and arguably sur- passed, the Harlem Renaissance's influence on the New Negro radicalism of the 1920s. The movement produced important, though often short-lived journals, including Cricket, Umbra, The Journal of Black Poetry, Black Dia- logue and Black Theater. Additionally, radical cultural workers published in political jour- nals such as the Liberator, Soulbook, and Black America, that were read by poets, artists, and other cultural producers. A comprehensive study of the Black Arts and its effects on local, national, and international liberation move- ments will broaden historical comprehension of the connections between black cultural

90 production and politics during this era.

Black Arts movement, however, rep- resented far more then the push for

black access to predominantly white institu- tions. Rather, it was part of a full-scale attempt to transform American democracy. On this score, Black Power's quest for elec- toral access through grassroots led political coalitions represents a centerpiece for Black

Power Studies. Both the spectacular success and the rapid decline of these coalitions illustrate the opportunities found and lost during this remarkable period in American history. As Komozi Woodard's case study of Newark's Black Power movement exempli- fies, local radicals held important sway in the political fortunes of the emerging black political elite during the Black Power era. Yet, as Adolph Reed Jr. asserts in Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era (1998), black radicals were often short- changed by their alliances with emerging black urban political machines.9 More research is required to know why, and to what extent, was this the case. Promising work on Black Power's impact on local poli- tics in New Haven and Oakland illustrates the benefits of using paradigms related to political theory and urban space re- spectively.93 Moreover, Black Power activists formed national organizations such as the African Liberation Support Committee whose breadth stretched beyond American borders into Africa and the larger Third World.94 While A Nation Within the Nation focuses on a specific Black Power organiza- tion in a unique city, future case studies would do well to follow its focus on the local implications of the movement, while keeping sight of its broader impact.

Power's tortured relationship with black women has obscured the force

and power of black women activists during this era. Tracye Matthews and Angela D. LeBlanc- Ernest have complicated Black Panther Stud- ies by examining the contested roles occupied by female Panthers.95 Despite the high number of biographies of the Black Panther Party there is no full length historical study of Black Panther women. New scholarship on the BPP must focus on local chapters and the group's relationship to Panther-derived organizations such as the Young Lords. Case studies will pro- vide a clearer picture that may explain the fierce loyalty that many female members held for the organization despite the organization's controversial gender politics.

In this regard, Margo V. Perkins's Autobiog- raphy as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties (2000) examines Black Power's gender politics

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through the autobiography of movement icons Angela Davis, Elaine Browne, and Assata Shakur.96 Perkins's innovative analysis utilizes the tools of literary criticism to examine the role of autobiography in representing the gen- der politics of the era. Such studies point to interdisciplinary analyses that, with thick his- torical scholarship as a foundation, may pro- vide creative contributions to Black Power Studies. Recently other scholars have focused on the influential role of black feminist orga- nizations that carved out important political space during the Black Power era.

More provocatively, Joy James' Shadowbox- ing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics (1999) challenges the "revolutionary icons" of the era, specifically that of female Black Power advocates.98 Taken together, such stud- ies combat narratives that view black women as solely victims of sexism during this era or erase their very existence as important and political agents of change. Black Power scholarship must also examine the move- ment's growing incorporation of gay and les- bian activism through activists such as Bar- bara Smith and organizations such as the Combahee River Collective.

Recent journalistic Accounts regarding

the unjust imprisonment of Black Power radicals provides historians with fer- tile ground for future investigation." Black Power politics galvanized black prison inmates during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This prison radicalism sparked a radi- cal prison movement whose chief spokesper- son, George Jackson, was a legend among prison leaders throughout the U.S. Indeed, Jackson's death in 1971 added fuel to the already incendiary prison conditions that erupted in the Attica prison uprising later that year. An icon during the heady and des- perate days of the early 1970s, Jackson has been the subject of journalistic examinations but no full length historical biography. His- torical studies of the Black Prison movement can provide a better understanding of the relationship between black radicals and prison intellectuals. Moreover, such studies may illuminate the impact that issues related to prisoner rights (death penalty, jury repre- sentation, adequate legal aid, illegal prosecu-

tion based on individuals' political beliefs) had on a variety of Black Power organiza- tions. Kenneth O'Reilly's Radal Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972 (1989) has documented illegal subversion of Black Power advocates, especially the Black Panther Party. The allegation that dozens of black radicals remain political prisoners to this day has been virtually ignored by profes- sional historians. A more comprehensive study of Black Power will critically examine the role of underground organizations such as the Black Liberation Army (BLA) that were comprised of black revolutionaries attempting to respond to state-violence through the use of arms.

The Black Power movement's influence on labor, poor people's, urban uprisings, and community control movements also requires further study.104 Detroit's revolution- ary labor movement, while the subject of two case studies, deserves further detailed atten- tion. The impact of media coverage, distor- tion, and silencing of Black Power activists and organizations requires further explo- ration. The movement's tense relationship with the New Left, while the focus of much speculation and idiosyncratic memoirs, has received little substantive attention.106 Black Power transformed local and national social movements that concentrated on the black poor and community control of the ghetto. More investigation is needed to better under- stand the extent of Black Power politics on Great Society anti-poverty efforts, Communi- ty Action Programs, educational reform, housing and welfare rights activists.107

Finally, the study of Black Power ideology,

its decline in the public sphere, and its continued resonance remains woefully inad- equate. Rod Bush's We Are Not What We Seem provides a cogent analysis of radical political thought during the 20th century. The study's major strength is in complicating static char- acterizations of black nationalism. Bush bypasses race versus class clichés by arguing that black nationalism has contained a simul- taneous race and class analysis. Somewhat more pessimistic then Bush, but still utilizing Black Power political radicalism as a point of departure is Robert C. Smith's We Have No

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Leaders: African-Americans in the Post Civil 109

Rights Era (1996). Black Power advocates articulated philosophical positions that con- tained aspects of nationalism, historical materialism, feminism, and democratic liber- alism, sometimes simultaneously. While Black Power declined in the public political sphere amid torrents of racial, political, eco- nomic, and cultural oppression, black radi- calism continued into the 1980s with organi- zations such as the National Black United Front (NBUF), the National Black Indepen- dent Political Party (NBIPP), and the Pro- gressive Black Student Alliance (PBSA). Finally, oral histories will go a long way toward teasing out the complexity of key Black Power activists and critics.

NEED HISTORICAL STUDIES of black

political thought and practice during the Black Power era. Such studies can, of course, utilize iconic symbols as vehicles for analysis.111 Perhaps more useful however, will be those that focus on previously unexplored activists, cultural workers, and intellectuals. Historians need to know how black political radicalism differed and converged, depen- dent on geographical location, political orga- nizations, and historical circumstances dur- ing this era. The influence of African and Afro-Caribbean intellectuals and activism must also be explored. Black political thought during the age of Black Power can be usefully situated within the context of Africana thought and the global black libera- tion struggles that swept across the Third World during this period.11 A more holistic approach to the study of black politics since the postwar era will explore the implications and aftermath of Black Power on urban poli- tics, black nationalism, black feminism, and African-American leadership and intellectu- als.113 Such narratives of love and war should detail the personal and political motivations that inspired black radicals. Too often, his- torical accounts, while ostensibly about peo- ple, are crafted as "cold histories" that like the Dragnet television series, ask for "just the facts." Feelings of love and humanity emboldened youthful activists during this era and should be a part of historical recon- structions of this period. Furthermore, such

narratives need to include discussion of the psychological, emotional, and physical effects of Black Power activism. In many instances activists experienced severe trauma that had a lasting impact on their lives.

Conclusion

A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK jljl for the Black Power movement must focus on the dynamic relationship between local, national, and international political organizations, leaders, intellectuals, and cul- tural workers. Black Power was, in many ways, a series of creative political and intel- lectual experiments that varied depending on political geography, social class, gender, and political ideology. Black Power was both a radically humanistic anti-racist social move- ment and an outgrowth of growing disaffec- tion and disappointment with the Civil Rights movement. Civil Rights historiogra- phy too often castigates the Black Power era as a betrayal of the supposedly halcyon days of the non-violent Southern movement. However, black militancy existed side by side with civil rights protesters, and sometimes within single organizations. Moreover, the civil rights era contains some of the bloodiest anti-black confrontations in American histo- ry, reflecting the dissonance between the non-violent practice and state-sanctioned vio- lence faced by the grassroots.

Placing Black Power in a historical frame- work requires recovering the individuals and organizations that influenced masses of stu- dents, cultural workers, and leaders during the "heroic" age of civil rights. This will not be as difficult as it may seem. Black radicals actively constructed an infrastructure whose legacy, through Black Studies, revolutionary journals, and study groups, is still in exis- tence. Expanding narratives of civil rights to include black radicals resists foreshortened time-frames that identify Black Power as a post-1965 phenomenon. The decade of explicit Black Power radicalism also chal- lenges narratives of 1960s radicalism that cast 1968 and the destruction of the Student for a Democratic Society (SDS) as the end of the New Left. Black radicalism, despite whole-scale political subversion and state-sanctioned ter-

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ror, increased exponentially after 1968. Para- doxically, under the aegis of a reactionary Nixon presidential administration and a fray- ing liberal coalition, black radicalism reached its highpoint during these years.

Power Studies must also redefine contemporary analyses of the post-Black

Power era. Usually referred to as the "post Civil Rights" era, the last quarter-century of the black movement should be analyzed with- in the context of the demise of the radical black liberation era that preceded it. This era has been marked by both increased black representation and social, economic, and political demonization. Most contemporary analyses of black urban politics, electoral strategies, and continued anti-racist political activism gloss over or ignore the legacy of the Black Power movement. In many ways, attacks on Affirmative Action, welfare reform, increased incarceration, and police brutality can be viewed as responses against the Black Power movement's attempt to radically trans- form American and global civil society. Con- versely, radical organizations centered around issues including poverty, racism, sexism, and incarceration, such as the Black Radical Con- gress and thousands of local and national grassroots political groups serve as a testament to the era; they continue to organize and protest amid the overwhelming forces of glob- alization and reaction.116 Finally, Black Power Studies can provide important historical analy- ses for a wide range of disciplines that incorpo- rate studies of race, class, gender, the Third World, criminal justice and culture. Placing the Black Power movement in a historical con- text will start the long overdue process of chronicling a story whose implications, in many ways, are continuing to unfold.

Endnotes

1. The thick historical scholarship on the Civil Rights movement has failed to seriously explore black radicals who existed during this era. Even accounting for the Southern focus of this literature does not explain the failure for most scholars to explore the black militancy that existed side by side (sometimes within single orga- nizations) with the mainstream movement Two excep- tions are Timothy Tyson's case study of Monroe, North Carolina and Yohuru Williams's study of New Haven, Connecticut. See Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie:

Robert F Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); and Yohuru Williams, Biadi Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Black Panthers in New Haven (New York: Brandywine Press, 2000).

2. See for example David Horowitz, "Black Murder Inc." Heterodoxy, March 1993; Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey P. Newton and the Price of Black Power in America (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994); Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Sec- ond Thoughts about the Sixties (New York: Summit Books, 1989) ; Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Deconstructing the Left: From Vietnam to the Persian Gulf (Lanham, MD: Second Thoughts Books, 1991).

3. The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in works published by, and about, 1960s based black political rad- icals. Examples will be discussed throughout this essay.

4. Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRm Jones) & Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: Univer- sity of North Carolina Press, 1998); Charles Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998); Peniel E.Joseph, "Waiting Till the Midnight Hour: Reconceptualizing the Heroic Period of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965," Souls, Vol 2, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 6-17; Rod Bush, We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and the American Century (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Williams, Black Politics/White Power, Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad AU and the Spirit of the Sixties (London: Verso, 1999); Tyson, Radio Free Dixie. In addition to these works, a number of recent dissertations, from a variety of intellectual disciplines, have analyzed the Black Power era. For example see Scot Brown, "The US Organization: African American Cultural Nationalism in the Era of Black Power, 1965 to the 1970s," Ph.D. Diss., Cornell University, 1999; Dean Errol Robinson, "To Forge a Nation, To Forge an Identity," Black Nationalism in the United States, 1957-1974," Ph.D. Diss., Yale University 1995; Kimberly Springer, "'Our Politics was Black Women': Black Feminist Organiza- tions, 1968-1980," Ph.D. Diss., Emory University, 1999; Matthew J. Countryman, "Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia, 1940-1971," Ph.D. Diss., Duke Universi- ty, 1999; and Peniel E. Joseph, "Waiting Till the Mid- night Hour: Black Political and Intellectual Radicalism, 1960-1975," Ph.D. Diss., Temple University, 2000.

5. See for example Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, 1981); Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: The Free Press, 1984); Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long?: African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1997) Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Free- dom: The Organizing Tradition and The Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leader- ship Conference (New York: William Morrow and Compa- ny, 1986).

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6. For the impact of the Cold War on black radicals see Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Anti-Colo- nialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); and Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

7. Timothy Tyson's biography of Robert F. Williams under- scores this point. See Tyson, Radio Free Dixie.

8. Robin D.G. Kelley, "But a Local Phase of a World Prob- lem: Black History's Global Vision, 1883-1950," Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999): 1045- 1077.

9. See Richard Wright, Black Power: A Record Of Reaction in a Land of Pathos (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954) ; The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Confer- ence (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1956); and White Man Listen! (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1957).

10. Wright, The Color Curtain, pp. 11-12. 11. Wright, White Man Listen!, pp. 1-24. 12. Paul Robeson, Here I Stand (1958; Boston: Beacon

Press, 1988), p. 28. 13. Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns (New York:

Marzani and Munzell, 1962). This book had a major influence on, among many others, future Black Pan- ther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton.

14. James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker's Notebook (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1963).

15. By radical humanism I mean the growing conceptual- ization during this period that African-American were

engaging in a struggle for human rights that redefined civil rights struggles as an international struggle against exploitative and racist practices that compromised human dignity on a global scale.

16. Calvin Hicks, On Guard, Vol. 2, no. 2, May 1961. 17. See for example Bobby Seale, A Lonely Rage: The Autobi-

ography of Bobby Seale (New York: Time Books, 1978); Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1987); Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story (New York: Pan- theon Books, 1992); David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1993).

18. Stephen Steinberg characterizes radical publications during this era as compromising a "scholarship of con- frontation.'' See Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Liberal Retreat from Racial Justice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), pp. 55-85.

19. John Edgar Wideman, "Introduction," Mumia Abu-

Jamal, Live From Death Row (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995),p.xxxii.

20. Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power. The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vin-

tage Books, 1967) , p. vi. 21. Ibid., p. 166. 22. Ibid., p. 37. 23. Author's interview with Mohammad Ahmed (Max

Stanford), December 18, 1999. 24. New York Times, November 21, 1967. 25. According to Cruse's political and historical analysis,

African-Americans have alternated between adhering

to Western (white) ideology or foreign (Carribean) black ones, rather than constructing a political practice based on the unique experiences of black Americans. See Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: William Morrow and Co.,1967), pp. 115-146.

26. For criticism of Cruse's depiction of West Indian radi- cals see Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentiäh-Century America (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 262-291. See for example Julian Mayfield, "Crisis or Crusade: A Chal- lenge to A Bestseller" pp. 5-6, Julian Mayfield Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

27. Cruse, Crisis of the Negro Inteüedual, p. 564. 28. Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America

(1969; New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990), p. 177. 29. Ibid., p. 182. 30. James Boggs, Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages

from a Workers Notebook (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970); and James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolu- tion and Evolution in the 20th Century (New York: Month- ly Review Press, 1974) .

31. See Joseph, "Waiting till the Midnight Hour," pp. 200- 250.

32. See for example Ernest Kaiser, "Recent Literature on Black Liberation Struggles and the Ghetto Crisis," Sd- ence and Society (Spring 1969) .

33. See for example Gail Sheehy, Panthermania!: The Clash of Black Against Black in One American City (New York:

Harper Row Publishers, 1971). 34. August Meier, John Bracey, and Elliot Rudwick, eds.,

Black Protest in the Sixties (1970: New York: Markus Wiener Publishing, Inc., 1991); A more successful attempt that highlighted key black radical documents of the era was John H. Bracey, Jr. 's, Black Nationalism in America (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1970), pp. 403-554.

35. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul On Ice (New York: Dell Books, 1968).

36. Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), Die Nigger Die! (New York: Dial Press, 1969).

37. Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther

Party (1968; New York: Vintage Books, 1970). 38. Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Har-

court Brace Jovanovich, 1972). 39. See Huey P. Newton, To Die for the People (New York:

Random House, 1972); (with Erik H. Erikson), In Search of Common Ground (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1973); and War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America (New York: Harlem River Press, 1996).

40. George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (1970; Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1994); Blood in My Eye (1971; Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1990).

41. Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974; New York: International Publishers, 1988).

42. Toni Cade Bambara, ed., The Black Woman: An Antholo-

gy (New York: The New American Library, 1970). 43. James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (New York: Dell

Publishing, 1972). 44. Ibid., p. 131.

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45. James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (1972: Washington, D.C.: Open hand Publishing, 1985).

46. Albert Cleage, Jr., Black Messiah (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968); Biadi Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1972).

47. LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal, Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writings (New York: Morrow, 1968).

48. Floyd B. Barbour, The Black Seventies (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishing, 1970).

49. Dan Georgakas, Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution (New York: St Martin's Press, 1975).

50. James Geschwinder, Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) .

51. Seale, A Lonely Rage; Shakur, Assola, Brown, A Taste of Power, and Hilliard, This Side of dory.

52. Michelle Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Super- woman (New York: Dial Press, 1978).

53. Manning Marable, Bkukwater: Historical Studies in Race, Class Consciousness and Revolution (Dayton, Ohio: Black Praxis Press, 1981); Black American Politics: From the March on Washington to Jesse Jackson (London: Verso, 1985); and African and Caribbean Politics: From Kwame Nkrumah to Maurice Bishop (London: Verso, 1987). Adolph Reed provided a very critical look at the legacy of the movement within the larger context of the poli- tics of the 1960s. See Adolph Reed Jr., Race, Politics, and Culture: Critical Essays on the Radicalism of the 1960s (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986).

54. William L. Van DeBurg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chica- go: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

55. Van DeBurg, New Day in Babylon, pp. 292-308. 56. Woodard, A Nation within a Nation, pp. 159-218. 57. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, pp. 81-89. 58. An exception is Williams, Black Politics/White Power. 59. Charles Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party Reconsidered

(Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998). 60. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas, Liberation,

Imagination and the Black Panther Party (New 'brk: Rout- ledge, 2001).

61. Williams, Black Power/White Politics. 62. Jack Olsen, Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph

of Gerónimo Pratt (New York: Doubledav. 2000). 63. Rod Bush, We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism

and the American Century (New York: New York Universi- ty Press, 1999).

64. Ibid., pp. 175-192. 65. Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Aü and the

Spirit of the Sixties (London: Verso, 1999) . 66. Ibid., pp. 162-252. 67. Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans

and Anti-Colonialism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); and Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

68. See for example the special issue of Social Text, "Dossier on Black Radicalism," especially Kevin Gaines, "Revisit- ing Richard Wright in Ghana: Black Radicalism and the Dialectics of Diaspora," Social Text 67 (Summer 2001), pp. 75-101.

69. Kevin K. Gaines, "African-American Expatriates in Ghana and the Black Radical Tradition," Souls Vol. 1, no. 4 (Fall 1999) , pp. 64-72 and From Black Power to Civil Rights: African American Expatriates in Nkrumah's Ghana (forthcoming); For an autobiographical account see Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (New York: Random House, 1986).

70. Ruth Reitan, The Rise and Decline of an Alliance: Black Leaders and the Cuban Revolution (East Lansing: Michi- gan State University Press, 1999).

71. Peniel E.Joseph, "Where Blackness is Bright?: Cuba, Africa, and Black Liberation During the Age of Civil Rights," New Formations, (forthcoming) . For a fascinat- ing look at the aftermath of the revolution see Carlos Moore, Castro, the Blacks, and Africa (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies, 1988) .

72. Charles Eagles calls for a more balanced and objective study of the Civil Rights movement. In a literature review of the historiography of the southern move- ment, Eagles cites professional historians' vicarious sup- port for and, at times, actual participation in, civil rights struggles as an impediment to a more complex history of the era. See Charles W. Eagles, Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era," The Journal of Southern History, Volume LXVI, No. 4, (November 2000): 815- 848.

73. Malcolm's political internationalism, usually character- ized as a belated development, was crystalized in the hearts and minds of Black Harlemites with his famous meeting with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. With few exceptions, historians have failed to note the impor- tance of this meeting or connect it to the hotbed of black political radicalism that existed during the age of civil rights. Rosemari Mealy has collected the remem- brances of key activists and leaders who were a part of this historic meeting. See Rosemari Mealy, Malcolm X and Fidel Castro: Memories of a Meeting (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1993).

74. Kelley and Esch, "Black like Mao," and Joseph, "Wait- ing Till the Midnight Hour." A first hand account of the Afro-American Association can be found in the autobiography of the group's founder Donald Warden. See Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour (Donald War- den) , Black Americans at the Crossroads: Where Do we Go From Here! (New York: The First African Arabian Press, 1990), pp. 70-75.

75. See Scot Brown, "The US Organization, Black Power Vanguard Politics, and the United Front Ideal: Los Angeles and Beyond," in this issue.

76. See Grace Lee Boggs, Living For Change: An Autobiogra- phy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 117-189.

77. Donald Alexander Downs' recent study of Cornell's Black Studies movement views the struggle for Black Studies as an issue of free speech that ultimately destroyed the liberal American university in favor of a new political orthodoxy - political correctness - backed by guns and militant rhetoric. This short-sight- ed view exemplifies the need for rigorous analyses of Black Power politics and its influence in the creation of contemporary Black Studies. See Donald Alexander

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Downs, Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the Ameri- can University (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

78. Over twenty years ago Darwin Turner criticized white literary critics for failing to read the works of black poets, writers, and cultural critics. Turner's admonish- ment can certainly be extended to professional histori- ans who have ignored the works of black radical writ- ers, poets, intellectuals, and activists of the Black Power era. See Darwin T. Turner, "Introductory Remarks about the Black Literary Tradition in the United States of America," Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 12, no. 4 (Winter 1978): 140-147.

79. The term "Black Power literature" should be expansive- ly defined to incorporate periodicals that at first blush may fit outside this definition. This would include papers such as Correspondence, the Guardian, and the Illustrated News.

80. See Stephen Ward, "Scholarship in the Context of Struggle: Activist Intellectuals, the Institute of the Black World (IBW), and the Contours of Black Power Radi- calism, 1967-1970," in this issue.

81. This is especially significant in light of the underlying anti-Communism that permeated aspects of black nationalist thinking popularized by Harold Cruse. If, as is often asserted, Cruse's polemics turned young mili- tants "off" from class struggle, what accounts for the increasing Marxist-Maoist-Leninist thinking of groups of black radicals (in addition to the League of Revolu- tionary Black Workers) that caused splits in groups such as the ALSC? We need case studies of these splits and their impact on Black Power politics.

82. Van DeBurg, New Day in Babylon. 83. Ibid., p. 156. 84. See the posthumously published Larry Neal, Visions of a

Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1989).

85. Monique Guillory and Robert C. Green, Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure (New York: New York Univer- sity, 1998).

86. Julius E. Thompson, Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 1999) .

87. Suzanne E. Smith, Dandng in the Streets: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge: Harvard Universi-

ty Press, 1999) . 88. The false dichotomy between politics and culture dur-

ing this era needs to be obliterated. For many cultural workers their was no distinction. For example the radi- cal poet Askia Muhammad Toure (then Roland Snellings) met Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) at a 1961 United Nations protest concerning the assassination of

Congo leader Patrice Lumumba. Author's interview with Askia Muhammad Toure, February 8, 2001.

89. Smith's excellent account places culture squarely in the realm of politics and in so doing delineates the rich

political, cultural, and intellectual gumbo that trans- formed Detroit's black community during the era of black liberation. Smith, Dandngin the Streets, pp. 1-180.

90. Lorenzo Thomas, Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and Twentieth Century American Poetry (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2000), pp. 118-144.

91. Woodard, A Nation Within a Nation, pp. 91-113. 92. Adolph Reed, Sürrings in the fug: Black Politics in the Post-

Segregation Era (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 117-159. Reed's otherwise insightful critique of the movement is hampered by an analysis that see Black Power radicalism as an a priori failure and utilizes historical excavation to justify this perspec- tive.

93. Williams, Black Politics/White Power, and Robert Self, "To Plan Our liberation:' Black Politics and the Poli- tics of Place in Oakland, California, 1965-1977,"/0ur7ia/ of Urban History, Vol. 26, no. 6 (September 2000): 759- 792.

94. Williams, Black Poütics/White Power, pp. 173-180. 95. Tracye Matthews, "vNo One Ever Asks, What a Man's

Place in the Revolution Is':Gender and the Politics of the Black Panther Party 1966-1971;" and Angela D. Le Blanc-Ernest, "'The Most Qualified Person to Handle the Job:' Black Panther Party Women, 1966-1982," in Jones, ed., The Black Panthers Reconsidered

96. Margo V. Perkins, Autobiography as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties (Jackson: University Press of Missis- sippi, 2000).

97. Kristin Anderson-Bricker, "Triple Jeopardy,': Black Women and the Growth of Feminist Consciousness in SNCC, 1964-1975," Kimberly Springer, ed., Still Ufing, Still Climbing (New York: New York University Press, 1999), p. 60.

98. James specifically analyzes the symbolism and iconogra- phy attached to Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver, Assata Shakur and Elaine Brown. See Joy James, Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), pp. 93-122.

99. The story of Black Panther leader Genonimo Pratt's twenty-seven years of incarceration has been the subject of a riveting account. Olsen, Last Man Standing, Lori Andrews, Black Power, White Blood: The Life and Times of fohnny Spain (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996).

100. Two such accounts are Jo Durden-Smith, Who Killed

George fackson? (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976); and Paul Liberatore, The Road to Hell: The True Story of George fackson, Stephen Bingham, and the San Quentin Massacre (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996). See also Eric Cummins, The Rise and Fou, of Californias Radical Prison Movement (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).

101. Kenneth O'Reilly, Racial Matters: TheFBVs Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972 (New York: The Free Press, 1989). See also Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1988).

102. Two exceptions are Winston A. Grady-Willis, "The Black Panther Party: State Repression and Political Pris- oners," and Akinyele Omawale Umoja, "Set Our War- riors Free: The Legacy of The Black Panther Party and Political Prisoners," in Jones, ed., The Black Panther

Party Reconsidered. The case of death row inmate and ex- Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal has been the most

publicized case of the incarceration of dozens of Black Power radicals. See Mumia Abujamal, Live From Death Row (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995); and Noëlle

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Hanrahan ed., All Things Censored (New York: Seven Stories, 2000).

103. During the late 1960s and early 1970s dozens of black radicals were incarcerated and charged with a laundry- list of crimes. Trials with names such as the "Wilming- ton 10" and the "Panther 21" were infamous during this era. We need detailed case studies surrounding these and dozens of other cases during this period.

104. Gerald Home's study of the Watts uprising provides a good framework for the study of black urban rebellions during this era. See Gerald Home, Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995).

105.Georgakas, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying and Geschwinder, Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency. See also Ernest Allen, Jr., "Dying From the Inside: The Decline of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers," in Dick Cluster, ed., They Should Have Served That Cup of Coffee: Seven Radicals Remember the Sixties (Boston: South End Press, 1979).

106. A noteworthy exception is Nikhil Singh, "The Black Panthers and the 'Underdeveloped Country' of the Left," in Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, pp. 57-105.

107. For an example of Black Power radicalism's impact on local urban activism see Rhonda Y Williams, "'We're tired of being treated like dogs': Poor Women and Power Politics in Black Baltimore," in this issue. See also Jane Anna Gordon, Why They Couldn't Wait: A Cri- tique of the Black-Jewish Conflict over Community Control in Ocean Hill-Brownsville (1967-1971) (New York: Rout- ledge-Farmer, 2001); and Wendell Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews and the Changing Nature of the Ghetto (forthcoming).

108. Bush, We are Not What we Seem, pp. 83-120. 109. Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African-Americans

in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: SUNY Press, 1996).

110. See for example "Van Gosse interview with Harold Cruse," Radical History Review, Vol. 71, (spring 1998), pp. 96-120.

111. The two that immediately come to mind are Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. William Sales' exem- plary account of Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity places the era in a wider historical context. See William W. Sales, Jr., From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro- American Unity (Boston: South End, 1994); and Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There With You: The True Mar- tin Luther King, Jr. (New York: The Free Press, 2000). Jerry Gafio Watts's recent study on Amiri Baraka fol- lows his intellectual and political journey from the 1950s through the 1980s and spends considerable time exploring Baraka's impact on the Black Power move- ment See Jerry Gafio Watts, Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual (New York: New York Uni- versity Press, 2001 ).

112. On this score scholars would do well to examine the impact of Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabrai, and Walter Rodney on Black Power activists. Historical- ly, Africana thought examines the political writings and

activities of diasporic blacks (African, Afro-Caribbean, African-American) as a prism for critical engagement. See for example Jan Carew, Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England, and the Caribbean (Chica- go: Lawrence Hill Books, 1994); Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972); Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (New York: Rout- ledge, 1995) and Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (New York: Routledge, 2000); Paget Henry, Caliban's Reason: Introdudng Afro- Caribbean Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2000); Joy James, Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals (New York: Routledge, 1997); Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994); Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr., On Race and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1996); Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and BiUie Holiday (New York: Random House, 1998); Clarence Lusane, Race in the Global Era: African Americans at the Millennium (Boston: South End Press, 1998). The inter- national dimensions of Black Power Studies are enor- mous. At times Black Power will be a leitmotif for an exploration of the relationship between state power and international independence movements. See for example Gerald Home, From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

113. For a discussion of the impact of the post Black Power era on contemporary African-American intellectuals see Peniel E.Joseph, "'It's Dark and Hell is Hot': Cor- nel West, the Crisis of African-American Intellectuals, and the Cultural Politics of Race," George Yancy, ed., Cornel West: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2001).

114. Nowhere is this more evident then in the treatment of radical black prisoners including Gerónimo Pratt and Mumia Abujamal. In both celebrated cases, the prose- cution utilized their past involvement in radical politics as justification for their contemporary incarceration. See Olsen, Last Man Standing, and Abujamal, Live From Death Raw.

1 15. Smith, We Have No Leaders; A riveting fictional account of the connections between the Black Power move- ment and the contemporary period is found in Michael Simanga, In the Shadow of the Son (Chicago: Third World Press, 2000) .

116. Sundiata Chajuá and Clarence Lang, "Strategies for Black Liberation in the Era of Globalization: Retronou- veau Civil Rights, Militant Black Conservatism, and Radicalism," The Black ScholarVol 29, no. 4 (Fall 1999): 2S47.

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