Studies the revolutionary theory of the Black Power Movement in the 1960s through ‘70s, placing it within the broader social theory of black revolution in the United States since the nineteenth century. The study of the impact of Black Power Movement (BPM) activists and organizations in the 1960s through ‘70s has largely been confined to their role as proponents of social change; but they were also theorists of the change they sought. In The Revolution Will Not Be Theorized Errol A. Henderson explains this theoretical contribution and places it within a broader social theory of black revolution in the United States dating back to nineteenth-century black intellectuals. These include black nationalists, feminists, and anti-imperialists; activists and artists of the Harlem Renaissance; and early Cold War-era black revolutionists. The book first elaborates W. E. B. Du Bois’s thesis of the “General Strike” during the Civil War, Alain Locke’s thesis relating black culture to political and economic change, Harold Cruse’s work on black cultural revolution, and Malcolm X’s advocacy of black cultural and political revolution in the United States. Henderson then critically examines BPM revolutionists’ theorizing regarding cultural and political revolution and the relationship between them in order to realize their revolutionary objectives. Focused more on importing theory from third world contexts that were dramatically different from the United States, BPM revolutionists largely ignored the theoretical template for black revolution most salient to their case, which undermined their ability to theorize a successful black revolution in the United States. “This book is not only one of the most intellectually ambitious works but also the most comprehensive examination of revolutionary theory in the Black Power Era. A monumental accomplishment. Bravo!” — Komozi Woodard, author of A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics

The study of the impact of Black Power Movement (BPM) activists and organizations in the 1960s through ʼ70s has largely been confined to their role as proponents of social change; but they were also theorists of the change they sought. In The Revolution Will Not Be Theorized Errol A. Henderson explains this theoretical contribution and places it within a broader social theory of black revolution in the United States dating back to nineteenth-century black intellectuals. These include black nationalists, feminists, and anti-imperialists; activists and artists of the Harlem Renaissance; and early Cold War–era black revolutionists. The book first elaborates W. E. B. Du Bois's thesis of the "General Strike" during the Civil War, Alain Locke's thesis relating black culture to political and economic change, Harold Cruse's work on black cultural revolution, and Malcolm X's advocacy of black cultural and political revolution in the United States. Henderson then critically examines BPM revolutionists' theorizing regarding cultural and political revolution and the relationship between them in order to realize their revolutionary objectives. Focused more on importing theory from third world contexts that were dramatically different from the United States, BPM revolutionists largely ignored the theoretical template for black revolution most salient to their case, which undermined their ability to theorize a successful black revolution in the United States. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of The Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org, and access the book online at http://muse.jhu.edu/book/67098. It is also available through the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/1704.

Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism looks at the American avant-garde during the Cold War period, focusing on the interrelated questions of performance practices, cultural resistance, and the politics of criticism and scholarship in the U.S. counterculture. This groundbreaking book examines the role of the scholar and critic in the cultural struggles of radical artists and reveals how avant-garde performance identifies the very limits of critical consideration. It also explores the popularization of the avant-garde: how formerly subversive art is eventually discovered by the mass media, is gobbled up by the marketplace, and finds its way onto the syllabi of college and university courses. This book is a timely and significant book that will appeal to those interested in avant-garde literary criticism, theater history, and performance studies.

Williams was a compassionate man. He was an intelligent American citizen and Korean war veteran, who claimed his right of American citizenship. Acutely aware of the broken promises of the US government, he remained fully invested in the rights, privileges, and responsibilities the Constitution guaranteed all of its citizens. As many of his contemporaries now confess, Williams’s strength and appeal, as explained by his second son, John Williams, was his uncompromising stance and determination to act on the American dream he imagined for social, economic, and political equality for African Americans. The skills he acquired as a journalist and propaganda specialist were key to his political development, evolution, and transnational collaborations with Cuba and China, which he used to challenge domestic policies in the United States, were way beyond the imagination of his supporters in the United States. Williams ultimately used these strengths, strategies, and collaborations to deliver liberting messages of freedom, resistance, and social and economic equality on behalf of the rights of African Americans. Williams significantly contributed to the Black freedom struggle and should not be forgotten. Robert Franklin Williams Speaks: A Documentary History includes a collection of interviews, speeches, and writings by and about Williams as an internationalist, pragmatist, and civil and human rights champion.

For the first time, poetry, short stories, critical and creative essays, chants, and excerpts of plays by Indigenous Micronesian authors have been brought together to form a resounding—and distinctly Micronesian—voice. With over two thousand islands spread across almost three million square miles of the Pacific Ocean, Micronesia and its peoples have too often been rendered invisible and insignificant both in and out of academia. This long-awaited anthology of contemporary indigenous literature will reshape Micronesia’s historical and literary landscape. Presenting over seventy authors and one hundred pieces, Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia features nine of the thirteen basic language groups, including Palauan, Chamorro, Chuukese, I-Kiribati, Kosraean, Marshallese, Nauruan, Pohnpeian, and Yapese. The volume editors, from Micronesia themselves, have selected representative works from throughout the region—from Palau in the west, to Kiribati in the east, to the global diaspora. They have reached back for historically groundbreaking work and scouted the present for some of the most cited and provocative of published pieces and for the most promising new authors. Richly diverse, the stories of Micronesia’s resilient peoples are as vast as the sea and as deep as the Mariana Trench. Challenging centuries-old reductive representations, writers passionately explore seven complex themes: “Origins” explores creation, foundational, and ancestral stories; “Resistance” responds to colonialism and militarism; “Remembering” captures diverse memories and experiences; “Identities” articulates the nuances of culture; “Voyages” maps migration and diaspora; “Family” delves into interpersonal and community relationships; and “New Micronesia” gathers experimental, liminal, and cutting-edge voices. This anthology reflects a worldview unique to the islands of Micronesia, yet it also connects to broader issues facing Pacific Islanders and indigenous peoples throughout the world. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Pacific, indigenous, diasporic, postcolonial, and environmental studies and literatures.

In The Second Battle for Africa, Erik S. McDuffie establishes the importance of the US Midwest to twentieth-century global Black history, internationalism, and radicalism. McDuffie shows how cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, as well as rural areas in the heartland, became central and enduring incubators of Marcus Garvey’s Black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and its offshoots. Throughout the region, Black thinkers, activists, and cultural workers, like the Grenada-born activist Louise Little, championed Black freedom. McDuffie explores Garveyism and its changing facets from the 1920s onward, including the role of Black midwesterners during the emergence of fascism in the 1930s, the postwar US Black Freedom Movement and African decolonization, the rise of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X in the 1950s and 1960s, and the continuing legacy of Garvey in today’s Black Midwest. Throughout, McDuffie evaluates the possibilities, limitations, and gendered contours of Black nationalism, radicalism, and internationalism in the UNIA and Garvey-inspired movements. In so doing, he unveils new histories of Black liberation and Global Africa.

This book explores how the religious nationalist ideology of American Religious Exceptionalism (ARE) contributes to the American public's self-promoting, exclusionary, and sometimes illiberal attitudes.

Black Power Music! Protest Songs, Message Music, and the Black Power Movement critically explores the soundtracks of the Black Power Movement as forms of "movement music." That is to say, much of classic Motown, soul, and funk music often mirrored and served as mouthpieces for the views and values, as well as the aspirations and frustrations, of the Black Power Movement. Black Power Music! is also about the intense interconnections between Black popular culture and Black political culture, both before and after the Black Power Movement, and the ways in which the Black Power Movement in many senses symbolizes the culmination of centuries of African American politics creatively combined with, and ingeniously conveyed through, African American music. Consequently, the term "Black Power music" can be seen as a code word for African American protest songs and message music between 1965 and 1975. "Black Power music" is a new concept that captures and conveys the fact that the majority of the messages in Black popular music between 1965 and 1975 seem to have been missed by most people who were not actively involved in, or in some significant way associated with, the Black Power Movement.

While the legacy of Black urban rebellions during the turbulent 1960s continues to permeate throughout US histories and discourses, scholars seldom explore within scholarship examining Black Cultural Production, artist-writers of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) that addressed civil unrest, specifically riots, in their artistic writings. Start a Riot! Civil Unrest in Black Arts Movement Drama, Fiction, and Poetry analyzes riot iconography and its usefulness as a political strategy of protestation. Through a mixed-methods approach of literary close-reading, historical, and sociological analysis, Casarae Lavada Abdul-Ghani considers how BAM artist-writers like Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Ben Caldwell, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, and Henry Dumas challenge misconceptions regarding Black protest through experimental explorations in their writings. Representations of riots became more pronounced in the 1960s as pivotal leaders shaping Black consciousness, such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., were assassinated. BAM artist-writers sought to override the public's interpretation in their literary exposés that a riot’s disjointed and disorderly methods led to more chaos than reparative justice. Start a Riot! uncovers how BAM artist-writers expose anti-Black racism and, by extension, the United States' inability to compromise with Black America on matters related to citizenship rights, housing (in)security, economic inequality, and education—tenets emphasized during the Black Power Movement. Abdul-Ghani argues that BAM artist-writers did not merely write literature that reflected a spirit of protest; in many cases, they understood their texts, themselves, as acts of protest.