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The Black Intellectual Tradition

The Black Intellectual Tradition

African American Thought in the Twentieth Century

Edited by Derrick P. Alridge, Cornelius L. Bynum and James B Stewart

Contributions by Derrick P. Alridge, Keisha N. Blain, Cornelius L. Bynum, Jeffrey Lamar Coleman, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, Stephanie Y. Evans, Aaron David Gresson, Claudrena N. Harold, Leonard Harris, Maurice J. Hobson, La TaSha B. Levy, Layli Maparyan, Zebulon V. Miletsky, R. Baxter Miller, Edward Onaci, Venetria K. Patton, James B Stewart and Nikki M. Taylor

Published by: University of Illinois Press

Imprint: University of Illinois Press

Digital download
9780252052750
Published: August 2021

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Considering the development and ongoing influence of Black thought

From 1900 to the present, people of African descent living in the United States have drawn on homegrown and diasporic minds to create a Black intellectual tradition engaged with ideas on race, racial oppression, and the world. This volume presents essays on the diverse thought behind the fight for racial justice as developed by African American artists and intellectuals; performers and protest activists; institutions and organizations; and educators and religious leaders. By including both women’s and men’s perspectives from the U.S. and the Diaspora, the essays explore the full landscape of the Black intellectual tradition. Throughout, contributors engage with important ideas ranging from the consideration of gender within the tradition, to intellectual products generated outside the intelligentsia, to the ongoing relationship between thought and concrete effort in the quest for liberation.

Expansive in scope and interdisciplinary in practice, The Black Intellectual Tradition delves into the ideas that animated a people’s striving for full participation in American life.

Contributors: Derrick P. Alridge, Keisha N. Blain, Cornelius L. Bynum, Jeffrey Lamar Coleman, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, Stephanie Y. Evans, Aaron David Gresson III, Claudrena N. Harold, Leonard Harris, Maurice J. Hobson, La TaSha B. Levy, Layli Maparyan, Zebulon V. Miletsky, R. Baxter Miller, Edward Onaci, Venetria K. Patton, James B. Stewart, and Nikki M. Taylor

Cover

Title Page

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Scholarship and Education

1. African American Intellectual History: The Past as a Porthole into the Present and Future of the Field

2. Afrocentricity and Autobiography: Historiographical Interventions into Black Intellectual Traditions

Part II: Arts and Letters

3. Singing Is Swinging: The Soul Force of Twentieth-Century Black Protest Music

4. The Post–Civil Rights Era and the Rise of Contemporary Novels of Slavery

5. Letters to Our Daughters: Black Women’s Memoirs as Epistles of Human Rights, Healing, and Inner Peace

Part III: Social Activism and Institutions

6. Into the Kpanguima: Questing for the Roots of Womanism in West African Women’s Social and Spiritual Formations

7. New Negro Messengers in Dixie: James Ivy, Thomas Dabney, and Black Cultural Criticism in the Postwar US South, 1919-1930

8. Tackling the Talented Tenth: Black Greek-Lettered Organizations and the Black New South

Part IV: Identity and Ideology

9. A New Afrikan Nation in the Western Hemisphere: Black Power, the Republic of New Afrika, and the Pursuit of Independence

10. “A Certain Bond between the Colored Peoples”: Internationalism and the Black Intellectual Tradition

11. Black Conservative Dissent

12. Postracialism and Its Discontents: Barack Obama and The New "American Dilemma"

Contributors

Index

Back cover

Derrick P. Alridge is a professor of education in the School for Education and affiliate faculty in the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Educational Thought of W. E. B. DuBois: An Intellectual History. Cornelius Bynum is an associate professor of history at Purdue University and the author of A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil Rights. James B. Stewart is a professor emeritus of professor of labor studies and employment relations and African American Studies at Penn State University. His books include Flight in Search of Vision.

"Argues for a more expansive field of Black intellectual history that includes, not just other genres of writing, but also art and cultural practices of specific communities. . . and race-conscious social organizations and institutions, such as the early Black masonic lodges and later HBCUs and the 'Divine Nine' fraternities and sororities that sent forth generations of Black activists, scholars, and artists." --<i>Society for U.S. Intellectual History</i> <br>

"Thoughtful, thought-provoking, and well-documented. . . The Black Intellectual Tradition provides information and insights of great value to educators and scholars of all disciplines, genders, and racial/ethnic identities." --Journal of American History