African American Nationalist Literature of the 1960s
African American Nationalist Literature of the 1960s

Author: Sandra Hollin Flowers

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-09-25

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1317731352

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Bringing together political theory and literary works, this study recreates the political climate which made the 1960s an unforgettable era for young black Americans. A chapter on "The Many Shades of Black Nationalism," for instance, explains: why black nationalism is known by more than a dozen different names; how events in Africa influenced black nationalism in America; why Malcolm X's death had a greater impact on nationalism than did his life; and how the United States government unwittingly became nationalism's ally. Another chapter explores the bitter feud between the dominant factions of the 1960s-cultural and revolutionary nationalists. This feud erupted in both verbal and armed warfare and generated an abundance of political theory and literary works, much of which is out of circulation but is examined in the study. Nationalist poetry, theater, and fiction are each treated in separate chapters which exemplify the aesthetic and political concerns of this memorable period in American history and letters. Aside from its unique combination of artistic and political works, what makes this book important is the current revival of nationalist sentiment in African American life and arts. Though this revival is closely identified with the nationalism of the 1960s, it lacks the focus of that period. This study explains what gave the nationalism of the 1960s its focus, how that focus was expressed in art forms, and why 1960s nationalism continues to influence the African American identity and will probably do so well into the twenty-first century.

The Circumstances of Living and Working for African-American Writers in the 1960s
The Circumstances of Living and Working for African-American Writers in the 1960s

Author: Susanne Opel

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2005-08-05

Total Pages: 19

ISBN-13: 3638406067

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Rostock, language: English, abstract: The 1960s were a decade of changes for everyone in the USA. The Civil Rights Movement was at its height, while the assassinations of important personalities such as John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X, as well as Vietnam and the Cold War overshadowed the lives and thoughts of a whole generation. Hippie Culture, the anti-war movement, and the sexual revolution created a whole new generation with a new set of values. For the arts, for culture, and for the sciences the 1960s were a period of new developments that influenced the following decades immensely: the Beatles, worldwide TV shows, or the first man on the moon, just to name a few. Compared to their peers of periods, adolescents and unmarried young adults of the 1960s enjoyed greater social freedom and mobility and also were less tolerant of the socio-political subjugation of black people. The 1960s were also the decade in which African-American literature reached a new climax after the Harlem Renaissance in the twenties. There were a lot of new possibilities for African-Americans, but still also a lot to fight for. Being an African-American writer was a constant struggle, not only to earn money to survive , but also to gain the same acceptance as a white writer, or to help change something for the other African-Americans. Chester Himes wrote in his essay Dilemma of the Negro Novelist in U.S. (1966): From the start the American Negro writer is beset by conflicts. He is in conflict with himself, with his environment, with his public. The personal conflict will be the hardest. He must decide at the outset the extent of his honesty. He will find it no easy thing to reveal the truth of his experience or even to discover it. He will derive no please from the recounting of his hurts. He will encounter more agony by his explorations into his own personality than most non-Negroes realize. For him to delineate the degrading effects of oppression will be like inflicting a wound upon himself. He will have begun an intellectual crusade that will take him through the horrors of the damned. And this must be his reward for his integrity: he will be reviled by the Negroes and whites alike. Most of all, he will find no valid interpretation of his experiences in terms of human values until the truth be known. If he does not discover this truth, his life will be forever veiled in mystery, not only to whites, but to himself; and he will be heir to all the weird interpretations of his personality.

The Black Arts Movement
The Black Arts Movement

Author: James Smethurst

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2006-03-13

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 080787650X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, black nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement. In this comprehensive analysis, James Smethurst examines the formation of the Black Arts Movement and demonstrates how it deeply influenced the production and reception of literature and art in the United States through its negotiations of the ideological climate of the Cold War, decolonization, and the civil rights movement. Taking a regional approach, Smethurst examines local expressions of the nascent Black Arts Movement, a movement distinctive in its geographical reach and diversity, while always keeping the frame of the larger movement in view. The Black Arts Movement, he argues, fundamentally changed American attitudes about the relationship between popular culture and "high" art and dramatically transformed the landscape of public funding for the arts.

The Ideologies of African American Literature
The Ideologies of African American Literature

Author: Robert E. Washington

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780742509504

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book challenges the long-held assumption that African American literature aptly reflects black American social consciousness. Offering a novel sociological approach, Washington delineates the social and political forces that shaped the leading black literary works. Washington shows that deep divisions between political thinkers and writers prevailed throughout the 20th century. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Malcolm X: The Pragmatic Nationalist
Malcolm X: The Pragmatic Nationalist

Author: Lukmaan Hakim Khan Seekdaur

Publisher: Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag)

Published: 2014-02-01

Total Pages: 60

ISBN-13: 3954897059

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book tracks the evolution of Malcolm X from a racist, espousing the essentialist ideals of the Nation of Islam to a human rights activist, aware of the broader early 1960’s struggle against imperial forces. Central to this was his strategic use of race to unite African-American initially and then the oppressed people in the world. Race was used as a strategy with the aim to abolish racial oppression. In the first chapter of this study we look at the constraints, most notably the white power structure, present in the United States during the mid-1960s which, on one hand gave form to Malcolm’s thinking, and on the other, made it necessary for Malcolm to add an international dimension to his thinking. The second chapter explores Malcolm’s racial theorising in 1964-65 when he identified the two stages which were necessary for the attainment of a colour-blind society. While Africa, as both idea and place, served as a cultural base, it also acted as a springboard to an international coalition of oppressed people. By linking the domestic and the international politics of Malcolm X, this study highlights the sense of purpose with which Malcolm X articulated his arguments concerning the future of the African-American community and their involvement in the American society.

The Impact of Black Nationalist Ideology on American Jazz Music of the 1960s and 1970s
The Impact of Black Nationalist Ideology on American Jazz Music of the 1960s and 1970s

Author: John D. Baskerville

Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The purpose of this monograph is threefold: to explore the development of modern black nationalist thought of the 1960s and 1970s and locate it within the tradition of modern black nationalism and cultural revitalization that emerged during the early decades of the 20th century; to demonstrate how a group of musicians operating in the style of American jazz music referred to as the New Black Music embraced the various tenets of modern black nationalism and attempted to put these ideas into practice in the production of their music; and to demonstrate how the study of music can be utilized effectively to enhance our understanding of cultural, political and social phenomena in American society.

Beyond Black and White
Beyond Black and White

Author: Manning Marable

Publisher: Verso

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9781859840498

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A generation removed from the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power explosion of the 1960s, the pursuit of racial equality and social justice for African-Americans seems more elusive than ever. The realities of contemporary black America capture the nature of the crisis: life expectancy for black males is now below retirement age; median black income is less than 60 per cent that of whites; over 600,000 African-Americans are incarcerated in the US penal system; 23 per cent of all black males between the ages of eighteen and 29 are either in jail, on probation or parole, or awaiting trial. At the same time, affirmative action programs and civil rights reforms are being challenged by white conservatism. Confronted with a renascent right and the continuing burden of grotesque inequality, Manning Marable argues that the black struggle must move beyond previous strategies for social change. The politics of black nationalism, which advocates the building of separate black institutions, is an insufficient response. The politics of integration, characterized by traditional middle-class organizations like the NAACP and Urban League, seeks only representation without genuine power. Instead, a transformationist approach is required, one that can embrace the unique cultural identity of African-Americans while restructuring power and privilege in American society. Only a strategy of radical democracy can ultimately deconstruct race as a social force. Beyond Black and White brilliantly dissects the politics of race and class in the US of the 1990s. Topics include: the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy; the factors behind the rise and fall of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition: Benjamin Chavis and the conflicts within the NAAPC; and the national debate over affirmative action. Marable outlines the current debates in the black community between liberals, 'Afrocentrists', and the advocates of social transformation. He advances a political vision capable of drawing together minorities into a majority which can throw open the portals of power and govern in its own name.

Race, Politics, and Culture
Race, Politics, and Culture

Author: Adolph Reed Jr.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1986-10-16

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0313044643

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This lively and provocative collection of essays on the social upheavals of the 1960s is a major contribution to our understanding of that tumultuous decade. Written by a group of former sixties activists, most of whom are now academics, it combines a unique transracial dialogue on that activism with incisive analyses of the context within which radicalism developed.

We Are an African People
We Are an African People

Author: Russell Rickford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-01-14

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0190455624

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During the height of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, dozens of Pan African nationalist private schools, from preschools to post-secondary ventures, appeared in urban settings across the United States. The small, independent enterprises were often accused of teaching hate and were routinely harassed by authorities. Yet these institutions served as critical mechanisms for transmitting black consciousness. Founded by activist-intellectuals and other radicalized veterans of the civil rights movement, the schools strove not simply to bolster the academic skills and self-esteem of inner-city African-American youth but also to decolonize minds and foster a vigorous and regenerative sense of African identity. In We Are An African People, historian Russell Rickford traces the intellectual lives of these autonomous black institutions, established dedicated to pursuing the self-determination that the integrationist civil rights movement had failed to provide. Influenced by Third World theorists and anticolonial campaigns, organizers of the schools saw formal education as a means of creating a vanguard of young activists devoted to the struggle for black political sovereignty throughout the world. Most of the institutions were short-lived, and they offered only modest numbers of children a genuine alternative to substandard, inner-city public schools. Yet their stories reveal much about Pan Africanism as a social and intellectual movement and as a key part of an indigenous black nationalism. Rickford uses this largely forgotten movement to explore a particularly fertile period of political, cultural, and social revitalization that strove to revolutionize African American life and envision an alternate society. Reframing the post-civil rights era as a period of innovative organizing, he depicts the prelude to the modern Afrocentric movement and contributes to the ongoing conversation about urban educational reform, race, and identity.