Black Nationalism In America

Revisits the arguments supporting separate black statehood from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

In Modern Black Nationalism, William L. Van Deburg has collected the most influential speeches, pamphlets, and articles that trace the development of black nationalism in the twentieth century. This documentary anthology seeks to chart a course between hazardous pedagogical alternatives - neither ignoring nor overstating the case for any one of the various manifestations of black nationalism. Modern Black Nationalism begins with Marcus Garvey, the acknowledged father of the twentieth-century movement, and showcases the work of more than forty prominent thinkers including Louis Farrakhan, Elijah Muhammad, Maulana Karenga, the founder of Kwanzaa, Amiri Baraka, and Molefi Asante. Rare pamphlets distributed by organizations such as the Black Panther Party, articles from underground magazines, and memos from governmental officials offer a fresh look at the roots and the manifestations of this movement. Van Deburg contextualizes each of the essays, providing the reader with in-depth historical background.

One of the first studies of the organization, life and meaning of the Nation of Islam and, by extension, all Black Nationalist movements, this classic work dispels the still common conception that the movement functioned primarily for political purposes. By observing the daily life of its members, Essien-Udom demonstrates that the Nation of Islam served primarily as a means for poor urban blacks to attain a national identity, a sense of ethnic consciousness, and empowerment in a society that denied them these privileges. Black Nationalism continues to hold profound implications for our understanding of the appeal of Black Nationalism as an ideology and a political force. "An excellent standard treatment of black nationalist belief and practice in the 50's."—Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times Book Review "This is an absorbing exercise in first class reporting. . . . In the light of his scrupulous fairness, the book is another illustration of how the press prejudges a story. And most provocatively, Essien-Udom has emphasized that even after the current campaigns for wide-scale integration are won, there will be an even wider chasm between the 'liberated' Negro middle class and the rootless Negro poor."—Nat Hentoff,Commonweal

Classical Black Nationalism traces the evolution of black nationalist thought through several phases, from its "proto-nationalistic" phase in the late 1700s through a hiatus in the 1830s, through its flourishing in the 1850s, its eventual eclipse in the 1870s, and its resurgence in the Garvey movement of the 1920s. Moses incorporates a wide range of black nationalist perspectives, including African American capitalists Paul Cuffe and James Forten, Robert Alexander Young from his "Ethiopian Manifesto", and more well-known voices such as those of Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and others.

From the first slaves who rose up against their master in the early period of American history to the prominent modern figures such as Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammed, Eldridge Cleaver, Red, Black, and Green traces the origins, the struggles and the accomplishments of black nationalism. Its broad discussion of the ideology of black nationalism and of the conditions that gave rise to this ideology provides the foundation for a thorough account of the black nationalist movement in the peak years of its momentum, roughly the decade 1963 to 1973. The author deals both with specific milestones, such as Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association in the early twentieth century, and with the far-reaching implications of the movement for the black community and for the United States as a whole. He looks at the many facets of black nationalism - revolutionary nationalism, cultural nationalism, religious nationalism, and educational nationalism - analyses the relationship between this movement and liberation movements in general.

Black nationalism. Is it an outdated political strategy? Or, as James Taylor argues in his rich, sweeping analysis, a logical response to the failure of post¿civil rights politics? Taylor offers a provocative assessment of the contemporary relevance and interpretation of black nationalism as both a school of thought and a mode of mobilization. Fundamental to his analysis is the assertion that black nationalism should be understood not simply as a separatist movement¿the traditional conception¿but instead as a common-sense psychological orientation with long roots in US political history. Providing entirely new lines of insight and analysis, his work ranges from the religious foundations of black political ideologies to the nationalist sentiments of today¿s hip-hop generation.