Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980
- ISBN-10
- 0820333239
- ISBN-13
- 9780820333236
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 364
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009
- Publisher
- University of Georgia Press
- Author
- Devin Fergus
Description
In this pioneering exploration of the interplay between liberalism and black nationalism, Devin Fergus returns to the tumultuous era of Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Helms and challenges us to see familiar political developments through a new lens. What if the liberal coalition, instead of being torn apart by the demands of Black Power, actually engaged in a productive relationship with radical upstarts, absorbing black separatists into the political mainstream and keeping them from a more violent path? What if the New Right arose not only in response to Great Society Democrats but, as significantly, in reaction to Republican moderates who sought compromise with black nationalists through conduits like the Blacks for Nixon movement? Focusing especially on North Carolina, a progressive southern state and a national center of Black Power activism, Fergus reveals how liberal engagement helped to bring a radical civic ideology back from the brink of political violence and social nihilism. He covers Malcolm X Liberation University and Soul City, two largely forgotten, federally funded black nationalist experiments; the political scene in Winston-Salem, where Black Panthers were elected to office in surprising numbers; and the liberal-nationalist coalition that formed in 1974 to defend Joan Little, a black prisoner who killed a guard she accused of raping her. Throughout, Fergus charts new territory in the study of America's recent past, taking up largely unexplored topics such as the expanding political role of institutions like the ACLU and the Ford Foundation and the emergence of sexual violence as a political issue. He also urges American historians to think globally by drawing comparisons between black nationalism in the United States and other separatist movements around the world. By 1980, Fergus writes, black radicals and their offspring were "more likely to petition Congress than blow it up." That liberals engaged black radicalism at all, however, was enough for New Right insurgents to paint liberalism as an effete, anti-American ideology--a sentiment that has had lasting appeal to significant numbers of voters.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics
By Cedric JohnsonCedric Johnson is assistant professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
-
Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies
By Michael C. DawsonMarcus Garvey provides a better model for understanding twentieth- century black nationalism, for he is the pivotal figure in its growth. As with Malcolm X, there are many competing images and interpretations of Gar- vey's political ...
-
Race and the Making of American Liberalism
By Carol A. HortonRace and the Making of American Liberalism traces the roots of the contemporary crisis of progressive liberalism deep into the nation's racial past.
-
Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia
By Matthew CountrymanW. E. B. Du Bois , “ Close Ranks , ” Crisis XVI ( July 1918 ) , reprinted in David Levering Lewis , ed . , W. E. B. Du Bois : A Reader ( New York : Henry Holt , 1995 ) , 697 ; Herbert Shapiro , White Violence and Black Response : From ...
-
Black Power: Politics of Liberation in America
By Kwame Ture, Charles V. HamiltonA revolutionary work since its publication, Black Power exposed the depths of systemic racism in this country and provided a radical political framework for reform: true and lasting social change would only be accomplished through unity ...
-
Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism
By Karen Ferguson201 community-control demonstration district and its recently hired administrator, Charles E. Wilson, sent the Ford Foundation's Mario Fantini their proposal for the schools in East Harlem, along with a request for the Ford Foundation ...
-
Liberalism Is Not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Political Thought
By Robin Marie AverbeckAs Liberalism Is Not Enough reveals, liberalism's historical relationship with capitalism shaped both the initial content of liberal scholarship on poverty and its ultimate usefulness to a resurgent conservative movement.
-
Blacks In and Out of the Left
By Michael C. DawsonMichael Dawson examines the causes and consequences, and argues that the conventional left has failed to take race seriously as a force in reshaping American institutions and civil society.
-
The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s
By Allen J. MatusowMatusow’s preface to the new edition explains the sometimes critical tone of his study.
-
The Liberal Tradition in American Politics: Reassessing the Legacy of American Liberalism
By David F. Ericson, Louisa Bertch GreenFirst Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.