This book offers a response to the inadequate examination of the Midwest in Civil Rights Movement scholarship - scholarship that continues to ignore the city of St. Louis and the Black liberation struggle that took place there. Jolly examines this local movement and organizations such as the Black Liberators, Mid-City Congress, Jeff Vander Lou Community Action Group, DuBois Club, CORE, Zulu 1200s, and the Nation of Islam to illuminate the larger Black liberation struggle in the Midwest in the mid- and late 1960s. Furthermore, this work details the larger atmosphere and conditions in St. Louis, Missouri and the Midwest from which this local movement developed and operated. This work raises important questions about periodizing and locating Black liberation and Black Nationalism. As racial oppression in the United States was equated with neo-colonialism and internal-colonialism, this discussion reveals the global nature of white supremacy, race and class oppression and exploitation, as well as the material and ideological relationship between local and transnational liberation movements.

'Marable contests what he considers to be an ineffectual emphasis on electoral politics and argues that the future of black liberation will have to be fought out on activist terrain. This work offers invaluable theoretical and practical guidance to scholars and activists alike.' Angela Y. DavisA bold collection of essays by one of America's most prominent scholar/activists, Black Liberation in Conservative America defines the crises and challenges confronting black America on the eve of the twenty-first century. '

This book offers a response to the inadequate examination of the Midwest in Civil Rights Movement scholarship - scholarship that continues to ignore the city of St. Louis and the Black liberation struggle that took place there. Jolly examines this local movement and organizations such as the Black Liberators, Mid-City Congress, Jeff Vander Lou Community Action Group, DuBois Club, CORE, Zulu 1200s, and the Nation of Islam to illuminate the larger Black liberation struggle in the Midwest in the mid- and late 1960s. Furthermore, this work details the larger atmosphere and conditions in St. Louis, Missouri and the Midwest from which this local movement developed and operated. This work raises important questions about periodizing and locating Black liberation and Black Nationalism. As racial oppression in the United States was equated with neo-colonialism and internal-colonialism, this discussion reveals the global nature of white supremacy, race and class oppression and exploitation, as well as the material and ideological relationship between local and transnational liberation movements.

An ambitious, honest portrait of the Black experience in flyover country. One of The St. Louis Post Dispatch's Best Books of 2020. Black Americans have been among the hardest hit by the rapid deindustrialization and

With vivid images and words, The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago tells the story of the mural on Chicago's South Side whose creation and evolution was at the heart of the Black Arts Movement in the United States.

Ultimately, Black Power reveals a black freedom movement in which the ideals of desegregation through nonviolence and black nationalism marched side by side.

In the history of black America, the image of the mortal, wounded, and dead black body has long been looked at by others from a safe distance. Courtney Baker questions the relationship between the spectator and victim and urges viewers to move beyond the safety of the "gaze" to cultivate a capacity for humane insight toward representations of human suffering. Utilizing the visual studies concept termed the "look," Baker interrogates how the notion of humanity was articulated and recognized in oft-referenced moments within the African American experience: the graphic brutality of the 1834 Lalaurie affair; the photographic exhibition of lynching, Without Sanctuary ; Emmett Till's murder and funeral; and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Contemplating these and other episodes, Baker traces how proponents of black freedom and dignity used the visual display of violence against the black body to galvanize action against racial injustice. An innovative cultural study that connects visual theory to African American history, Humane Insight asserts the importance of ethics in our analysis of race and visual culture, and reveals how representations of pain can become the currency of black liberation from injustice.

Arguing that the accomplishments of Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey and his followers have been marginalized in narratives of the black freedom struggle, this volume builds on decades of overlooked research to reveal the profound impact of Garvey’s post–World War I black nationalist philosophy around the globe and across the twentieth century. These essays point to the breadth of Garveyism’s spread and its reception in communities across the African diaspora, examining the influence of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Africa, Australia, North America, and the Caribbean. They highlight the underrecognized work of many Garveyite women and show how the UNIA played a key role in shaping labor unions, political organizations, churches, and schools. In addition, contributors describe the importance of grassroots efforts for expanding the global movement—the UNIA trained leaders to organize local centers of power, whose political activism outside the movement helped Garvey’s message escape its organizational bounds during the 1920s. They trace the imprint of the movement on long-term developments such as decolonization in Africa and the Caribbean, the pan-Aboriginal fight for land rights in Australia, the civil rights and Black Power movements in the United States, and the radical pan-African movement. Rejecting the idea that Garveyism was a brief and misguided phenomenon, this volume exposes its scope, significance, and endurance. Together, contributors assert that Garvey initiated the most important mass movement in the history of the African diaspora, and they urge readers to rethink the emergence of modern black politics with Garveyism at the center.

A searing portrait of the racial dynamics that lie inescapably at the heart of our nation, told through the turbulent history of the city of St. Louis. From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal. But it was once also America's most radical city, home to anti-capitalist immigrants, the Civil War's first general emancipation, and the nation's first general strike—a legacy of resistance that endures. A blistering history of a city's rise and decline, The Broken Heart of America will forever change how we think about the United States.