Engines of the Black Power Movement

The decade of the 1960s was an era of protest in America, and strides toward racial equality were among the most profound effects of the challenges to America’s status quo. But have civil rights for African Americans been furthered, or even maintained, in the four decades since the Civil Rights movement began? To a certain extent, the movement is popularly perceived as having regressed, with the real issues tabled or hidden.
With a view to assessing losses and gains, this collection of 17 essays examines the evolution and perception of the African American civil rights movement from its inception through today.

James L. Conyers, Jr., is a winner of the Cheikh Anta Diop Ankh Award for Distinguished Research in the Discipline of African American Studies. He is the director of the African American Studies Program and university professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston.

Edited by James L. Conyers, Jr.
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 296
Bibliographic Info: tables, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2007
pISBN: 978-0-7864-2540-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0733-7
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vi

Preface      1

I : CULTURAL ANALYSIS      3

1. The Spiral Group: Defining African American Art During the Civil Rights Movement      5

2. Jazz Musicians in Europe: 1919 to 1945      21

II : BLACK POWER ANALYSIS      41

3. Black Power, Chicago Politics, and Social Movements: What Have We Learned?      43

4. A Critical Assessment of the Educational Mission and Praxis of the Black Arts Movement      58

5. The Congressional Black Caucus: Black Power Realized?      72

III : BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT ANALYSIS 93

6. Us, Kawaida and the Black Liberation Movement in the 1960s: Culture, Knowledge and Struggle      95

7. The Black Arts Movement in Omaha, Nebraska      134

8. The Role of the Africana Writer in an Era of Struggle—The Case of Hoyt W. Fuller and the Black Arts Movement,1961–1981: A Kawaida-Location Analysis      143

IV : AFRICAN AMERICANS AND ISLAM 157

9. The Nation of Islam: An Historiography of Pan-Africanist Thought and Intellectualism      159

10. Understanding Elijah Muhammad      184

11. Noble Drew Ali: An Historical Perspective      195

12. Islam in the Civil Rights Movement      201

V : CIVIL RIGHTS AND REDEMPTION 207

13. Pathologies of Public Housing: An Antecedent to Crime and Delinquency      209

14. Constitutionalism Within the Political Ideologies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.      225

15. Revising the Best Western View: Civil Rights, Wilderness, and Racial Relocation      240

16. Guilt by Association: Women as Participants and Victims of Lynching      272

About the Contributors      285

Index      287