ECON 317 The Economics of Canadian Health CareLecture 6 T.docx

ECON 317 The Economics of Canadian Health Care
Lecture 6: The physician as
the patient’s agent
January 17th , 2020
Version 1.1 (Jan 17) – Added slide 10.
Required Reading
• Weinstein, M. C. (2001). Should physicians be gatekeepers of
medical
resources? Journal of Medical Ethics, 27, 268-274. Retrieved
from
http://jme.bmj.com/content/27/4/268.full
• This paper examines the tragedy of the medical commons, and
the
nature of physician responsibility to society as a whole vs their
individual patients.
• You only need to read pages 271 to 273, plus the first
paragraph on p.
274. Start with ‘The role of physicians’ on p. 271.
• Note: A QALY is a ‘quality adjusted life year’, a standard unit
of
measure of health gains. 1 QALY = 1 year in perfect health.

2
http://jme.bmj.com/content/27/4/268.full
Optional Readings
• Mooney, G. & Ryan, M. (1993). Agency in health care: getting
beyond first principles. Journal of Health
Economics, 12, 125-133. Retrieved from
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016762969390
0238
• An excellent summary of standard agency theory, and its
limitations when applied to health care.
• Gafni, A., Charles, C. & Whelan, T. (1998). The Physician
Patient Encounter: The Physician as a Perfect Agent
for the Patient Versus the Informed Treatment Decision-Making
Model. Social Science & Medicine, 47(3),
347-354. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-
9536(98)00091-4
• Charles, C., Gafni, A. & Whelan, T. (1999). Decision-making
in the physician-patient encounter: revisiting the
shared treatment decision-making model. Social Science &
Medicine, 49(5), 651-661. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(99)00145-8
• These two papers investigate the nature of shared decision-
making and what it takes to be a perfect agent.
• Labelle, R., Stoddart, G. & Rice, T. (1994). A re-examination
of the meaning and importance of supplier-
induced demand. Journal of Health Economics, 13(3), 347-368.
Retrieved from

https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-6296(94)90036-1
• An excellent article on the meaning and consequences of
supplier-induced demand in health care. The basis
of much of the second half of this lecture.
3
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016762969390
0238
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(98)00091-4
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(99)00145-8
https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-6296(94)90036-1
Learning objectives
• Gain an introductory understanding of principal-agent
problems.
• Gain an introductory understanding of how incentive
constraints are
calculated.
• Gain an introductory understanding of the ways in which
agency in
health care deviates from standard agency theory.
4
The principal-agent problem
• A poorly-informed principal employs a well-informed agent…

• …to perform some duty in a way that will maximize the
principal’s utility.
• The agent has her own, independent utility function.
• Because the principal and agent have different goals, and
because the agent
is better-informed, there is an incentive for the agent to cheat.
• The principal’s task is to come up with a contract that will
ensure the agent
acts in the principal’s best interest.
• Often, the agent only observes the outcome of the task, so the
contract can
only be conditioned on that outcome.
5
Moral hazard and physician agency
• For our purposes, the patient is the principal and the physician
is the agent. The
physician has superior information on health care, and the
patient can (often)
only observe the outcome of treatment.
• The agent can put High effort, H, or Low effort, L, into
treatment. Effort is costly
to the physician. Only the physician knows whether effort was
H or L.
• Patients can be sick, S, very sick, V, or Terminal, T. S always
recover, T always die, V

recover only with effort H. Patient type is unknown to agent and
principal.
• Each patient type is equally likely (1 in 3 chance)
• The physician has an incentive to always work with effort L,
and in case of patient
death, claim the patient was T - a moral hazard.
• (This drastic teaching example shares features with more
realistic cases.)
6
Finding the right incentives
• In our simplistic example, the patient (or her estate!) can only
observe the outcome of treatment: recovery or death.
• The patient would like the agent to employ H effort.
• Since effort can’t be observed directly (the patient only has
the
physician’s word for it), this must be done by rewarding the
agent for
patient survival.
• The contract, then, must take the form of an up-front payment
P, plus
a bonus payment B if the patient recovers after treatment.
7

The situation graphed
Agent Income,Y
Agent Utility
U(L,Y)
U(H,Y)
Reservation Utility, U
Cost of
effort, C
PL PH
• Given effort L, the agent is willing to take payment PL.
• To make effort H, the agent needs payment PH.
• If offered PH, the agent could earn an extra utility of C
by only putting in L effort.
8
Calculating optimal payments
• The physician will be paid P(rice) at the start of treatment,
and B(onus) if the patient recovers.
• Suppose the chance of recovery is θH for high effort, and θL
for low effort.
• Moreover, θH > θL.

• We must have expected utility from low effort be less than or
equal to expected utility from
high effort (the bonus payment allows this):
• 1 − θL U L,P + θLU(L,P + B) ≤ 1 − θH U H,P + θHU(H,P + B)
• To minimize costs, this should bind with equality.
• We also need expected utility to be at least equal to U. This
constraint should also bind with
equality for cost minimization.
• The end results will be that P < PL, but (P + B) > PH.
• Your turn: what’s the intuition for each of those?
• The second is a function of risk aversion in the way we drew
the utility functions. Physicians
need to be compensated for the risk: expected utility is less than
the utility of the expected
income.
• (Expected utility will be on the line connecting the two
outcomes on the graph.)
9
The contract graphed
Agent Income,Y
Agent Utility
U(L,Y)

U(H,Y)
Reservation Utility, U
PL PH
10
P P+B
1 − θH U H,P + θHU H,P + B = U
U(H,P + B)
U H,P
1 − θL U L,P + θLU(L,P + B) = U
U(L,P + B)
U L,P
What if the physician is risk neutral?
• If the agent is risk neutral, the situation is much easier.
• The principal can pass on all the risk to the agent, and the
contract becomes:
• ‘Pay the agent the value of the outcome, minus a share
reserved for the
principal.’

• This is tricky to picture in health care, but not uncommon in
agriculture:
• A landlord charges a fixed rent to the farmer, and the farmer is
free to keep
any extra income she makes from harvesting (risky, uncertain)
crops.
11
Concepts of Agency in Health Care
• Patient: has private preferences
• Physician: has private knowledge
• View 1: a perfect agency would be one in which the physician
transfers to the patient all necessary information, and the
patient
then makes the decision.
• Problem: what information? Health outcomes? More?
• View 2: a perfect agency would be one in which the patient
communicates to the physician the entirety of her preferences,
and
the physician uses her knowledge to make a decision consistent
with
them.
12

Types of Information Exchange
• Recent models of patient/physician relationships have looked
at
shared decision making. Information flows in two directions:
• Medical knowledge, from the physician to the patient.
• Preferences, from the patient to the physician.
and the
consequences understood.
makes sure the options are evaluated
according
to the patient’s unique (cultural, social, personal) context rather
than
assuming ‘one size fits all’.
13
What does it take to be a perfect agent?
• This is trickier than it looks. To act as a perfect agent for her
patients, a
physician must know the entirety of each patient’s utility
function.
• (And utility functions can change with health status.)
• Simple questions aren’t enough to do this, especially with
uncertainty
involved. (e.g. Would a patient prefer pre-emptive chemo now

or to live with
a higher risk of cancer down the road?)
• One approach is to use decision trees. The physician fills
them out with her
knowledge of treatments and probabilities….
• …and the patient then attaches a valuation to each possible
outcome.
• The tree is then ‘rolled back’ to find the most appropriate
treatment option.
• We’ll learn how to do this later in the course.
14
A few more issues
• Not all patients have preferences compatible with expected
utility theory.
• Not all patients understand or can be led to accept expected
utility theory.
• Understanding the implications of the decision-tree approach
to decision-
making is non-trivial… we’re spending a few university lectures
on it!
• Information flow in the other direction (medical information
from the
physician to the patient) is more manageable.

• In the past few decades, there have been great advances in
decision boards
and other visual aids.
15
Why don’t we see these schemes?
• In practice, we don’t often see complicated outcome-based
payment
schemes for medical professionals.
• Mostly fee-for-service, capitation, salary and so on.
• (But see pay-for-performance, which we’ll cover later in the
course.)
• Elaborate incentives are needed in agency theory because we
assume that
the utility functions of the principal and agent are separate.
• If this is NOT the case, and patients and physician utility
functions are
interconnected, then these incentives may not be needed.
• More importantly… in many settings there is a SECOND
‘principal’
(government or insurance company) with the power to
determine or strongly
influence the methods of payment.
• This second principal may also impose other, non-monetary
constraints…
16

The tragedy of the second principal
• The Tragedy of the Commons: Common pasture is over-grazed
due to each
farmer only looking to her own cattle.
• There exists a ‘medical commons’ of limited resources.
Physicians, especially
in a single-payer health care system, have a responsibility not
just to their
patients but to society as a whole.
• This implies that physicians can and should ration care to their
patients. This
goes against the expectation of perfect agency…
• …but is accepted and understood in settings such as
emergency room triage
and (regrettably scarce) organ donation.
• Society or the single-payer health care system can be thought
of as a second
principal in the agency problem. Just how the two principals’
conflicting
objectives should be reconciled is an open, difficult and
fascinating question.
17
Imperfect Agency

• In order to act as a perfect agent for her patients (and society):
• Maximize the patient’s health
• Maximize the patient’s utility
• Maximize health status or utility of society as a whole
• BUT physicians have their own utility functions:
• They may change their actions in response to financial (or
other)
incentives, even when this does not benefit the patient or
society at
large.
• To the extent physicians prioritize their own utility over their
principals’,
they are imperfect agents.
18
PURPOSEFUL READING (3-2-1) REPORT Version 2.0
Lightly Adapted from a template by Geraldine Van Gyn.
Question 1: In your own words, what are the 3 most important
concepts, ideas or issues in the
reading? Briefly explain why you chose them.
Concept 1 (In your own words) (2 marks)

Question 2: What are 2 concepts, ideas or issues in the article
that you had difficulty
understanding, or that are missing but should have been
included? In your own words, briefly

explain what you did to correct the situation (e.g. looked up an
unfamiliar word or a missing
fact), and the result. Cite any sites or sources used in APA
format.
Issue 1 (In your own words) (1 mark)
Citation 1 (in APA format) (1 mark)
Issue 2 (In your own words) (1 mark)
Citation 2 (in APA format) (1 mark)

Question 3: What is the main economic story of the reading?
(Economics studies the allocation
of scarce resources.)
Story (In your own words) (2 marks)
1
ECON 317 SPRING 2020 – INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 2
TO BE SUBMITTED VIA COURSESPACES BY 11:59 PM ON
JANUARY 28th, 2020
Name (First, Family)

Last 3 digits of SID
TO SPEED UP MARKING, PLEASE ANSWER THE
QUESTIONS IN THE FORMS AND SPACES
PROVIDED. THE T.A. RESERVES THE RIGHT TO NOT
MARK ANY QUESTIONS THAT ARE NOT
ANSWERED IN THE EXPECTED LOCATIONS.
By submitting this assignment you agree to the following honor
code, and understand that any
violation of the honor code may lead to penalties including but
not limited to a non-negotiable
mark of zero on the assignment:
Honor Code: I guarantee that all the answers in this assignment
are my own work. I have cited
any outside sources that I used to create these answers in
correct APA style.
Marking scheme – Make sure you answer all the questions
before handing this in!
Question Marks
1 a 12
2 a 6
3
a 3
b 3

Total 24
2
1. [Reading] Read the following article:
Patel, A., Dean, J., Edge, S., Wilson, K. & Ghassemi, E. (2019).
Double Burden of Rural Migration
in Canada? Considering the Social Determinants of Health
Related to Immigrant Settlement
Outside the Cosmopolis. International Journal of Environmental
Research and Public Health,
16(5), 678. Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/1660-
4601/16/5/678
This article summarizes the results of other articles, and also
explains how the authors searched
for and selected the articles that were summarized. Being
familiar with this will be useful to you
in Group Assignment 2, where you will be asked to do much the
same thing on a smaller scale.
a. (12 marks) Write a 3-2-1 report using the form provided on
Coursespaces.
2. [Analysis] Becker’s rational addiction model predicts that
changes in the price of addictive
substances will have a strong effect on use of those substances.
This was seen in Canada in 1994,
when tobacco tax cuts led to increased smoking: “The effect of
tobacco tax cuts on cigarette

smoking in Canada.” Price is not the only thing that affects
addictive behaviour, however. View
the following 40-minute documentary on the fentanyl crisis in
Vancouver:
VICE. (2018, February 15). Overdose Crisis on the US-Canada
Border: Steel Town Down [Video
File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/d2kqgX2KjTY
a. (6 marks) Connect the information in the documentary about
the nature of addiction, how it
affects communities, and/or how communities respond to it, to
at least two of Canada’s
Determinants of Health (see link for a list of determinants). If
you need help with this question,
ask! You may contact the instructor for help in person or via e-
mail at [email protected]
Determinant I:
_____________________________________________________
________
Connection to the video:
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/5/678
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/156/2/187.short
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/156/2/187.short

https://youtu.be/d2kqgX2KjTY
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-
promotion/population-health/what-determines-health.html
mailto:[email protected]
3
Determinant II:
_____________________________________________________
________
Connection to the video:
3. [Analysis] This question is based on and inspired by
Desveaux, L., Saragosa, M., Kithulegoda, N. & Ivers, N. M.
(2019). Family Physician Perceptions
of Their Role in Managing the Opioid Crisis. Annals of Family
Medicine, 17(4), 345-351.
Retrieved from
http://www.annfammed.org/content/17/4/345.short
Consider the following fictional scenario: A family physician in
Ontario sees a new patient who
has just moved to the province from Vancouver and suffers from
chronic pain. According to both

the patient and available medical records, the pain has existed
for many years, and is expected
to last for the rest of the patient’s life. According to the patient,
the pain is severe enough that
without painkillers, the patient needs to spend most of the day
in bed, and is unable to
concentrate or work at their job as a software engineer. The
patient says that over-the-counter
painkillers don’t work, and only fentanyl and other opioids can
take care of the pain. The
physician confirms from the records that the patient has, in fact,
been taking fentanyl by
prescription for the last two years. Apart from the pain reported
by the patient, there are no
other symptoms. Various medical tests across the years have
failed to come up with a specific
reason for the chronic pain, but this is not unusual in chronic
pain patients – the causes of chronic
pain are often difficult to pin down and in some cases are
poorly understood.
Many years ago in medical school, the physician was taught that
chronic pain was under-treated,
and that best practice was to prescribe painkillers for the patient
based on the patient’s self -
reporting of their pain. However, the physician is also aware
that Vancouver is in the middle of a
fentanyl addiction epidemic, and wants to “do the right thing”
for both their patient and society.
http://www.annfammed.org/content/17/4/345.short
4

Note: Fentanyl, an opioid, is a powerful prescription painkiller
that has legitimate uses in treating
severe chronic pain. It is also an addictive drug that can easily
be abused, and overdosing can
lead to death. For more details, see
Fentanyl [Web Page]. (2020). Retrieved from
https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-
illness-and-addiction-index/street-fentanyl
a. (3 marks) Suppose the physician continues the treatment that
the patient was on in
Vancouver, and prescribes a three-month supply of exactly the
same dosage of fentanyl as the
patient was receiving in Vancouver. After three months, the
patient has to come back for another
appointment, and to renew the prescription, as appropriate. In
this case, would the physician
be acting as a perfect (or close to perfect) agent for the patient?
Why or why not? Use material
from Lecture 6 in your answer.
Perfect or nearly-perfect agency with regard to the patient?
Yes/No
Why or Why not?

https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-illness-and-
addiction-index/street-fentanyl
https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-illness-and-
addiction-index/street-fentanyl
5
b. (3 marks) Arguably, physicians in Canada do not only have a
duty to their individual patients,
but also to the health care system and Canadian society as a
whole. Suppose that, as in part a.,
the physician decides to continue the fentanyl treatment the
patient was on in Vancou ver. In
this case, is the physician acting as a perfect (or close to
perfect) agent for the health care
system and society as a whole? Why or why not? Use material
from Lecture 6 in your answer.
Perfect or nearly-perfect agency with regard to the health care
system/society? Yes/No
Why or Why not?

Paradigm Publishers is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
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Black Liberation Without Apology: Reconceptualizing the
Black Power Movement
Author(s): Peniel E. Joseph
Source: The Black Scholar, Vol. 31, No. 3/4, BLACK POWER
STUDIES: A NEW SCHOLARSHIP
(FALL/WINTER 2001), pp. 2-19
Published by: Paradigm Publishers
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41069810
Accessed: 26-03-2015 22:18 UTC
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Black Liberation Without Apology:
Reconceptualizing the
Black Power Movement
by Peniel E. Joseph
recent emergence of historical schol-
arship related to Black Power radicalism
represents a new phase of civil rights history
that might best be described as "Black Power
Studies." In contrast to the thick historical
scholarship on the Civil Rights, the systemic
study of the Black Power era has, until
recently, remained elusive for at least four
reasons.1 First, the last quarter-century has
witnessed a full-scale retreat from the protest
politics that were a hallmark of the Civil
Rights and Black Power movements. Second,
historians and professional scholars have

been, for the most part, unwilling to
research the movement on it own terms, pre-
ferring instead to characterize Black Power
as the "evil twin" that wrecked civil rights.
Third, the seeming lack of archival material
on this era has served as a drawback to in-
depth research. Only recently have impor-
tant papers of key activists been archived and
made accessible. Many more will need to be
unearthed before historians can craft a fuller
view of this period. Finally, the Black Power
era has not been taken seriously by main-
stream scholars. While we have a good num-
ber of autobiographies from movement par-
ticipants, scholars have only begun to scratch
the surface of the rich history, insights, and
lessons that this era can offer. The negative
association of violence with political radical-
ism only partially explains this scholarly eva-
sion. Black Power remains a "hot potato"
that many are fearful of touching, lest they
be burned by the forces of reaction that con-
tinue to demonize this era.2 However,
renewed interest in black political radicalism
by both professional scholars and political
activists reflects the continued resonance of
postwar black political radicalism.
The new Black Power scholarship fits with-
in a conceptual framework that situates the
civil rights and Black Power eras (1954-1975)
as part of a broader black liberation move-
ment.4 Significant aspects of the first half
have been elegantly rendered by major his-
torical studies, while the second half has lan-

guished. This is unfortunate since black radi-
cals existed, and very often struggled
alongside of, more reform-minded political
activists and organizations. The intellectual
and cultural commentary, critiques, and
books produced during the Black Power
movement provide the raw materials for the
field of Black Power Studies. However, this is
not to suggest that Black Power was primarily
an academic exercise. On the contrary, Black
Power was a political movement whose rever-
berations touched major aspects of Ameri-
can and global intellectual culture - which
paved the way for thousands of works, both
political and polemical, analyzing and advo-
cating multiple political agendas and per-
spectives. The focus on Black power intellec-
tual production is not an attempt to reduce
the era's concerns to ideological, cultural,
and political debates. While these were
undoubtedly important, the Black Power
movement advocated the radical transforma-
tion of American society. Nor am I suggest-
ing that Black Power Studies existed simulta-
neously with the Black Power movement.
Rather, I argue that the Black Power move-
ment opened up new and innovative fields of
intellectual inquiry. At times this was done
very consciously by specific activists and ort-
Page 2 THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 31, NO. 34
2015 22:18:55 UTC

ganizations. At other times it was the indirect
outcome of fierce political struggles for sur-
vival.
The intellectual production during the
Black Power era displayed at least three dis-
tinct tendencies. Black Power political
activists produced numerous pamphlets,
books, speeches, and essays for the sake of
social, political, and cultural transformation
of American and world society. While much
of this material was intellectually sophisticat-
ed and is useful for contemporary scholars,
the purpose was less an academic exercise
than a training, critical thinking, and
methodological creativity to fashion a theo-
retical basis for the Black Power movement.
This black intelligentsia merged activism and
intellectual production, arguing that the
movement for social and poltical transforma-
tion required a critical and politically
engaged community of black scholar-
activists. The final group consisted of disen-
gaged academics who analyzed the politics of
the era, while not participating in either
poolitical or intellectual activism. Black
Power radicalism was a direct outgrowth of
the creative, ideological, and political ten-
sions during the first phase of civil rights,
which was marked by direct action and a
strategic adherence to non-violence.
essay examines the latest phase of

Black Power Studies through an exami-
nation of the strengths and weaknesses of
recent historical, literary, and political works.
It defines and examines four phases in Black
Power Studies and suggests that the latest
stage provides the foundation for a historical
framework for the study of black radicalism
in the post war era. The first stage occurred
during the immediate Cold War years and
predates the formal declaration of Black
Power in 1966. The second stage was both a
documentation and by-product of ongoing
Black Power activism. The third stage pro-
ceeded in the aftermath of the Black Power
era. The fourth and most recent stage has
witnessed the most systematic analysis of the
movement to date.
The literature reviewed, with few excep-
tions, was written by the black women and
men who were active participants, observers,
activists, and intellectuals during and after
this era. This is not to ignore the works of
the white historians and journalists who have
analyzed the movement. Rather, my analysis,
similar to the Black Power movement itself,
places black folk and their activities at the
center of a radical social and political move-
ment that attempted to transform American
and world society. The Black Power move-
ment provides an important prism for the
examination of a host of issues including but
not limited to urban studies, black electoral
politics, the Black Arts movement, feminism,

labor movements, black studies, prison
movements, and international decoloniza-
tion efforts.
The First Stage:
"A New Perspective Opens Up"
FIRST STAGE OF BLACK POWER STUDIES
originated in the Cold War political
repression of the 1950s.6 The works pro-
duced during this period were the products
of contentious political struggle that com-
prise a towering legacy for the discipline of
Black Power Studies. This era ushered in a
winter for radical politics in general, and was
catastrophic for black luminaries including
Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, Alphaeus Hut-
ton and W.E.B. Du Bois. Although severely
hampered by Cold War liberalism, black rad-
icalism continued to percolate beneath the
surface of civil rights orthodoxy and, at
times, held center stage in dramatic fashion.7
During this era African-Americans joined
arms with people of color globally to stave
off political oblivion. Looking outward for a
way forward at home, black radicals were
inspired and invigorated by global events
including anti-colonial uprisings in Ghana,
Cuba, and the African Congo. Domesticated
African-American perspectives on the Black
Power era ignore connections to internation-
al global politics.8 Richard Wright's insightful
works {Black Power, The Color Curtain, and
White Man Listen!) of the 1950s ushered in a
scintillating wave of political and cultural

criticism that anticipated the major themes
of radical internationalism, Third World soli-
darity, and anti-colonialism that would char-
acterize the Black Power era.9 Published in
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 31, NO. 3 A Page 3
2015 22:18:55 UTC
1954, Wright's presciently titled Black Power
placed political developments in the soon to
be independent republic of Ghana (the for-
mer Gold Coast) within a larger historical con-
text. Two years later, Wright's The Color Curtain
further developed this global perspective, by
arguing that the 1955 Bandung Conference in
Indonesia represented a repudiation of West-
ern imperialism by the Third World.10 The
final part of Wright's anti-colonial trilogy,
White Man Listen! (1957), analyzed the ways in
which non-whites perceived white supremacy.
Similar to Wright, Paul Robeson's defiant
autobiography Here I Stand challenged white
supremacy even in the face of "thunderbolts
of... displeasure and rage."
Richard Wright and Paul Robeson
represent cogent examples of black rad-
icals being deeply influenced by internation-
al events. The legacy of the black anti-colo-

nial Left was also reflected by individuals
such as Vicki Gar vin, William Worthy, and
Robert F. Williams. Garvin's political activi-
ties led to her expatriation to Ghana, while
Worthy became the black radical foreign cor-
respondent of the era traveling to Indonesia,
Cuba, and Africa at great personal and pro-
fessional cost. Williams' s Negroes with Guns
(1962) documented the ex-NAACP leader's
heroic efforts to counter anti-black terror in
Monroe, North Carolina; a stance that ulti-
mately led to Williams' exile in Cuba, China,
and Africa for almost a decade. One year
later, veteran labor radical James Boggs, who
mentored several generations of black radi-
cals, including future Black Power militants,
published The American Revolution: Pages From
a Negro Worker's Notebook (1963), in which he
examined the intersection of race and class
politics on the urban terrain.
Black Power internationalism not only
permeated these works, but also the black
radical press. Periodicals such as Shirley Gra-
ham Du Bois's Freedomways (a continuation
of Paul Robeson's short-lived Freedom newspa-
per), Robert Williams's self-published Cru-
sader, the Nation of Islam's Muhammad
Speaks, the Revolutionary Action Movement's
Soulbook and Black America, Dan Watts's Liber-
ator, and Presence Africaine highlighted the
international dimensions of domestic civil
rights struggles. This first set of historical writ-
ings, analyses, and editorials anticipated, and
at times explicitly articulated, themes of anti-

colonialism, self-defense, class struggle, and
radical humanism15 that characterized the sec-
ond stage of Black Power Studies. For exam-
ple the New York City based newspaper On
Guard argued that "Cuban events have a
direct bearing on our century long struggle
against segregation and lynch justice, our
legal battles and mass demonstrations for
equality of opportunity and rights against the
government's continuing Jim Crow policy and
practices. A new perspective opens up." This
last line reflected a growing radicalism that
existed alongside Cold War excess and perme-
ated aspects of the Civil Rights movement.
The Second Stage:
From Autobiography to Political Analysis
A UTOBIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS have histori-
jljl cally dominated works documenting
the Black Power era.17 Therefore, it should
come as no surprise that the publication of
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) repre-
sents the first salvo in the most self-referen-
tial stage of Black Power Studies. Written
with the journalist Alex Haley, the posthu-
mously published Autobiography was an imme-
diate bestseller that revealed both the impor-
tant themes that would characterize Black
Power literature during this period and the
growing acceptance of radical writings in the
mainstream publishing industry. At first
blush, the autobiography's riveting narrative
of Malcolm's ascent from prison to respected
international leader seems to represent what
John Edgar Wideman has described as a

"neoslave narrative." According to Wideman,
such narratives erase the possibilities of radi-
cal systemic change by focusing on the
exploits of heroic individuals:
Although the existing social arrangements may
allow the horrors of plantations, ghettos, and pris-
ons to exist, the narratives tell us, these arrange-
ments also allow rooms for some escape. Thus the
arrangements are not absolutely evil. No one is
absolutely guilty, nor are the oppressed (slave,
prisoner, ghetto inhabitant) absolutel^^uiltless. If
some overcome, why don't the others?
The Autobiography of Malcolm X remains sig-
nally important in that it transcends the
Page 4 THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 31, NO. 3 A
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clichés of both the antebellum and the con-
temporary slave narrative. Malcolm's person-
al transformation provides the context for
his prolonged radical political engagement.
More then just a narrative history describing
individual transformation, the Autobiography
details the processes that surround attempts
at systemic political transformation against

extraordinary odds. Malcolm X's death
heightened the contradictions within Ameri-
can democracy - triggering Shockwaves that
emboldened African-American radicals.
PUBLISHED
ON THE HEELS of this explosion
Stokely Carmichael's and Charles Hamil-
ton's Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in
America (1967) provided the richest, and in
many ways, the most important theoretical
and political definition of a movement that
would remain ill-defined during, and long
after, its heyday. The increasingly strident
Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and polit-
ical scientist Charles Hamilton intended
Black Power to pragmatically shape the bur-
geoning and somewhat inchoate Black
Power movement. Simultaneously, the work
was a theoretical piece of committed scholar-
ship that represents an enduring classic in
the field of Black Power Studies. Indeed,
written amid the urban upheavals when it
seemed as if America would burn in atone-
ment for its racial sins, the book provided a
glimmer of hope against what most
observers saw as an uncertain future:
This book presents a political framework and ide-
ology which represents the last reasonable oppor-
tunity for this society to work out its racial prob-
lem short of prolonged destructive guerrilla
warfare. That such violent warfare may be
unavoidable is not herein denied. But if there is
the slightest chance to avoid it, the politics of

Black Power as described in this book is seen as
the only viable hope.
Although presented as laying the groundwork
for the political framework of the movement,
Carmichael and Hamilton took pains to make
no claims of a monolithic concept of Black
Power. Accordingly, the authors argued that
the movement's dynamism lay in its creativity
and experimentation:
[B]lack people must organize themselves without
regard to what is traditionally acceptable, precise-
ly because the traditional approaches have failed.
It means that black people must make demands
without regard to their initial "respectability,"
precisely because "respectable" demands have
not been sufficient.... We must begin to think of
the black community as a base of organization to
control institutions in that community.
!
This experimentation would ultimately lead
to a redefinition of black citizenship:
Black people must redefine themselves, and only
they can do that. Throughout this country, vast
segments of the black communities are begin-
ning to recognize the need to reclaim their histo-
ry, their culture; to create their own sense of
community and togetherness. There is a growing
resentment of the word "Negro," for example,
because this term is the invention of our oppres-
sor; it is his image of us that he describes. Many

blacks are now calling themselves African-Ameri-
cans, Afro-Americans or black people because
that is our image of ourselves.22
At once a political and polemical historical
work, Black Power's stress on experimentation
and redefinition connected political trans-
formation to an ideological framework based
on creativity, innovation, and flexibility. In
other words, a program that could meet the
explosive changes that were daily occur-
rences during this era.
Carmichael and Hamilton looked
toward the future, Harold Cruse's Cri-
sis of the Negro Intellectual (1967) attempted to
analyze the era by examining the past with a
vengeance. Even before the publication of
his magnum opus, Cruse was one of the most
widely read and controversial social critics of
the era. Considered a hero and sage by
young radicals during the Black Power era,
Cruse became the movement's chief critic
during the 1960s and early 1970s. The Crisis of
the Negro Intellectual became a best-seller and
the unofficial bible of revolutionary nation-
alists. Praised as much for its strident cri-
tique of the white Marxist Left24 as it was for
its repudiation of assorted black leaders, the
book revealed major schisms within black
politics. Yet to read Cruse's major work as
simply an ideological attack on Marxism
would be a mistake. The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual was the culmination of Cruse's
long attempt to construct a philosophy of rev-

olutionary black nationalism that stood out-
side the parameters of conventional interpre-
tations of black radicalism. Moreover, Cruse,
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 31, NO. 34 Page 5
2015 22:18:55 UTC
who fought to craft an indigenous theory of
black American resistance, analyzed the cul-
tural politics of race in American society and
the role of black intellectuals in the Ameri-
can cultural and political arena.25
/Criticized now and at the time of its pub-
'^>l lication as being personally motivated
and containing historical and conceptual
inaccuracies, Cruse's writings and political
activism remain crucial to understanding the
trajectory of African-American political
thought during the Black Power era. The
enduring strength of Cruse's work has less to
do with its historical accuracy than the tone
and timing of its publication. For a genera-
tion of young black radicals, Cruse's work
was their first introduction to the complex
history of black radicalism. Perhaps the most
controversial aspect of The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual, Cruse's concluding chapter,
"Postscript on Black Power - The Dialogue
Between Shadow and Substance," leveled a

cogent critique against the conservative poli-
tics inscribed within Black Power discourse.
Recognizing the conservative black econom-
ic nationalism that undergirded strains of
Black Power rhetoric, Cruse asserted that the
"slogan actually represents a swing back to
the conservative nationalism that Malcolm X
had just departed."27
While many dismissed The Crisis of the
Negro Intellectual as a personally motivated
attack on the black Left by a disgruntled
opportunist, radical political theorist Robert
L. Allen focused on the theoretical implica-
tions of Cruse's treatise. Published in 1969,
Allen's important book Black Awakening in
Capitalist America, while acknowledging the
significance of Cruse's work and its impact
on black nationalist thinking, found Cruse's
construction of cultural hegemony within
American political economy flawed. Accord-
ing to Allen, one of the book's central errors
was its "failure to establish, by argument or
evidence, his central thesis concerning the
salience of the cultural apparatus and the
projected cultural revolution."28 Moreover,
Allen argued that Cruse over-emphasized the
power of black intellectuals. Therefore,
Cruse, while ostensibly calling for a dynamic
and creative black intellectual elite, failed to
critique the elitism that was intrinsic to the
conception of the "talented tenth." Finally,
Allen charged Cruse's solution of black con-
trol of America's cultural apparatus as being
piecemeal, rather than radical. Black Awak-

ening in Capitalist America's chief strength is
in its unapologetic intellectual analysis and
interrogation of the Black Power movement.
the decade of the 1960s drew to a
tumultuous close, Allen was by no
means alone in attempting to make sense of
it all. The movement's intellectual shock-
troops consisted of rank-and-file activists,
workers, student journalists, and intellectu-
als. At the grassroots level, James and Grace
Lee Boggs best represented this intelli-
gentsia. A black radical auto-worker, Boggs
and his Chinese-American wife Grace Lee,
were permanent fixtures among Detroit's
vibrant black radical community. A one-time
ally of the Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James,
Boggs provided vivid theoretical and practi-
cal insights that went beyond "Black Marx-
ism" to craft a framework for Black Power in
urban centers in pursuit of a radical humani-
tarian philosophy. In addition to numerous
pamphlets, Boggs's Racism and the Class
Struggle: Further Pages from a Workers Notebook
(1970) and Revolution and Evolution in the
20th Century (1974), written with Grace Lee
Boggs), provide the best examples of the
attempts by activists to undergird Black
Power rhetoric with both a practical and
intellectual base.30 By the late 1960s and early
1970s black radical books and other publica-
tions cropped up on virtually every college
campus and major city in the U.S. Leading
periodicals, in addition to Muhammad Speaks,
Liberator and Freedomways, included Negro

Digest/Black World, The Black Scholar, Soulbook,
and The Black Panther Intercommunal News Ser-
vice. In addition to thse sources, a radical
intelligenstia that incldued Vincent Harding,
William Strickland, Stephen Henderson, and
Howard Dodson attempte dto provide a
practical and theoretical framework for
Black Power through the ambitious Institute
of the Black World (IBW).31 This intellectual
movement sought to contextualize the rapid-
ly growing Black Power phenomenon, reach-
ing its peak during the first half of the
Page 6 THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 31, NO. 34
2015 22:18:55 UTC
1970s.32 Of course black activists and intellectu-
als were not the only ones analyzing the era. At
times white analysis of the period crossed the
line of professional inquiry into overt fetishism
and venality. In other cases heartfelt attempts
such as August Meier and Elliot Rudwick's
Black Protest in the Sixties (1970) fell short of
fully comprehending the period's complex
redefinition of black nationalism and identity.34
many instances attempts to articulate a
theory behind Black Power were over-
whelmed by the immediacy of developing

political events. Instead, political memoirs and
autobiographies dominated both the second
and third stages of Black Power Studies. This
phenomenon was based in part of the success
of trade publishers in marketing the move-
ment through iconic personalities and organi-
zations - most notably the Black Panthers. The
Black Panthers, the most widely publicized
and arguably the most influential, as well as
the most misunderstood Black Power advo-
cates, published both political memoirs and
autobiographies during this period. Eldridge
Cleaver's Soul On Ice (1968), although written
before he joined the Black Panther Party,
solidified his growing reputation as a hero of
the radical Bay Area New Left.35 Black Power
advocate H. Rap Brown's Die Nigger Die (1968)
was a simultaneous serving of autobiography
and polemic that remains a sharp example of
the apocalyptical sentiments that permeated
the era. Panther chairman and co-founder
Bobby Seale's Seize the Time: The Story of the
Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (1970)
was both a political history of the party's for-
mation and a polemical repudiation of the
incarceration of Minister of Defense Huey P.
Newton.3 Huey Newton followed with the
autobiographical Revolutionary Suicide (1972)
that, similar to the experience of Malcolm X,
Eldridge Cleaver and George Jackson,
revealed the author's spiritual and psychologi-
cal transformation while incarcerated.38 New-
ton would write two more books and a doctor-
al dissertation that detailed his political
philosophy and experiences with the party.39

WORKS OF BLACK PRISON activists
received popular attention during this
era. George Jackson's writings raised the pos-
sibility that Black Power held the keys to
transcendence for the thousands of blacks
who remained in prison.40 Angela Davis, a
philosopher, activist, and committed Marxist,
was instrumental in publicizing the condi-
tion of black prisoners, a stance that led to
her incarceration during the early 1970s.
Written at the height of black political radi-
calism and state-repression, Angela Davis: An
Autobiography (1974) stands out as a narrative
history of Davis's political journey and one of
the rare works that gave full voice to the role
of black women during the Black Power era.41
More expansively, Toni Cade Bambara's semi-
nal anthology The Black Woman (1970) pre-
sented a tour de force analysis of the intersec-
tion of race, class, and gender that would
shake the foundation of the black, women's,
and leftist movements in America. Written
amidst the Shockwaves of late 1960s political
unrest, James Baldwin's No Name in the Street
(1972) reflects both the author's and the era's
increasing radicalization amid the Black
Power movement. Critiquing American lib-
eralism as a sham, Baldwin attacked American
foreign and domestic policy:
Now in the interest of the public peace, it is the
Black Panthers who are being murdered in their
beds, by the dutiful and zealous police. But, for a
policeman, all black men, especially young black

men, are probably Black Panthers and all black
women and children are probably allied with
them: just as, in a Vietnamese village, the entire
population, men, women, children, are consid-
ered as probable Vietcong. In the village, as in the
ghetto, those who were not dangerous before the
search-and-destroy operation assuredly become so
afterward, for the inhabitants of the village, like
the inhabitants of the ghetto, realize that they are
identified, judged, menaced, murdered, solely
because of the color of their skin. This is as curi-
ous a way of waging war for a people's freedom as
it is of maintaining the domestic peace.44
Baldwin was not the only radical to highlight
the contradictions of American public policy.
James Forman's The Making of Black Revolution-
aries (1972) elevated the craft of autobiography
to new political and theoretical heights while
highlighting the ideological vibrancy and para-
doxes of the era. Black Power's radical human-
ism transformed progressive elements within
the black church. Albert Cleage's Black Messi-
ah (1968) and Black Christian Nationalism
(1972) articulated the philosophy of black lib-
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2015 22:18:55 UTC
eration theology that attempted to remake the

black church into a vehicle for black radical-
ism.46 The Black Arts movement was personi-
fied by LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal's edited
anthology Black Fire and the works of Black Arts
pioneers Sonia Sanchez, Haki Madubuti, Askia
Muhammad Toure (Roland Snellings) , and
Nikki Giovanni.4 The diversity of black radical
political thought was well represented in Floyd
Barbour's edited anthology, The Black Seventies
that included essays by James Boggs, Larry
Neal and Margaret Walker.48 The second stage
of Black Power Studies displayed a remarkably
critical analysis amid rapidly transforming
political and historical developments. By the
mid 1970s as the fires of urban rebellion and
political dissent moved once more to the
fringes of the American political arena, Black
Power Studies entered a period marked by
autobiographies and political analysis that
characterized the period as more tragedy then
triumph.
The Third Stage: A Hopeless History?
third set of works related to Black
Power were written after the movement's
highpoint. The years following the decline of
black political radicalism witnessed the pub-
lication of two first-rate studies that chroni-
cled Black Power labor radicalism. Dan
Georgakas's Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study
in Urban Revolution (1975) is a case study of
the efforts of black labor radicalism in Detroit
during the Black Power movement. Detroit's
radical labor movement was also the focus of

James Geschwinder's compelling study Class,
Race and Worker Insurgency: The League of Revo-
lutionary Black Workers (1977).50 During this
era, from the mid-1970s through the mid-
1990s, autobiographies by ex-Panthers contin-
ued to gain notice. Bobby Seale's A Lonely
Rage (1978), Assata Shakur's Assata: An Autobi-
ography (1987), Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power
(1992) and David Hilliard's This Side of Glory
(1993) all complicated one-dimensional nar-
ratives of the Black Panther Party.51 The works
by the exiled ex-Panther and Black Liberation
Army member Shakur and former Panther
chairwoman Brown, in particular, shed light
on the "masculine decade" of the 1970s in
ways that more provocative works such as
Michelle Wallace's Black Macho and the Myth of
the Superwoman (1978) failed to do.5 Although
during the 1980s historians stressed the legacy
of the movement in such works as Manning
Marable's Blackwater: Historical Studies in Race,
Class Consciousness and Revolution (1981), Black
American Politics: From the March on Washington
to fesse Jackson (1985), and African and
Caribbean Politics: From Kwame Nkrumah to
Maurice Bishop (1987), it was not until the
1990s that there was a full scale attempt to
analyze the movement as a whole. William
Van DeBurg's New Day in Babylon: The Black
Power Movement and American Culture. 1965-
1975 (1992) examined the Black Power era's
impact on American popular culture. While
groundbreaking in many ways, New Day in
Babylon failed to deal with the postwar radical-

ism that precipitated the Black Power era dur-
ing the height of Cold War liberalism substan-
tively. Moreover, similar to many narratives
during this stage, the movement is viewed as
ephemeral, effectively disappearing as quickly
as it came into being. The notion that the
Black Power movement destroyed the more
pragmatic Civil Rights movement cast a pall
over narratives of Black Power during this era.
Even relatively sympathetic works cast the era
as a hapless and hopeless history of black
American radicalism.5
The Fourth Stage: No Apologies
most recent stage of Black Power
Studies has provided the most rigorous,
sustained, and in-depth historical analysis of
the period. Historian Komozi Woodard's A
Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi
Jones) & Black Power Politics (1999) is the best
book written to date about the era.
Woodard's narrative successfully documents
the national and international implications
of Black Power politics through an examina-
tion of Newark, New Jersey. A Nation Within a
Nation, a case study of Black Power politics in
a major northeastern city, is a political biog-
raphy of Amiri Baraka, and a political analy-
sis of the interaction between black and
African and Afro-Caribbean anti-colonial
radicals during the early 1970s. Finally, A
Nation Within a Nation documents the victo-
ries and failures of Black Power nationalism

THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 31, NO. 3 A
2015 22:18:55 UTC
on urban machine politics during the heyday
of black nationalism.5 Woodard's narrative
presents the Black Power era as a complex
mosaic that combined cultural politics, grass-
roots organization, electoral power, and for-
eign affairs, to dramatically reshape Ameri-
can society and redefine the role of black
Americans in domestic and world affairs.
Tyson's Radio Free Dixie: Robert E
Williams and the Roots of Black Power
(1999) breaks new ground by substantively
examining Robert F. William's racial mili-
tance during the age of civil rights. During
the late 1950s and early 1960s, mass move-
ments in Southern cities such as Birming-
ham, Alabama, became the center for non-
violent civil rights protests. Tyson rightfully
underscores traditions of self-defense within
the black community and the way in which
Williams's exploits garnered international
attention to the devastating effects of white
supremacy in the American South through
what is primarily a case study of Monroe,
North Carolina. Still, historians know too lit-
tle of the impact and influence of black radi-

cals in Northern, Midwestern, and Western
cities during this period.58 Pre-dating Stokely
Carmichael's and Willie Ricks' defiant decla-
ration of Black Power during the 1966
Meredith March Against Fear, the political
writings and activism of black radicals during
the civil rights era provide the immediate
theoretical and practical framework that
much of Black Power radicalism would uti-
lize (both consciously and unconsciously) in
a series of experimental efforts to redefine
black politics.
The Black Panther Party, already the focus
of an impressive number of political mem-
oirs, continues to receive the most sustained
scholarly analysis. Charles Jones's edited
anthology The Black Panther Party Reconsidered
(1998) is the most comprehensive, historical,
and balanced work on the Black Panthers.59
Examining the party's relationship with the
New Left, its internal contradictions, sexism,
and struggles with state-sanction subversion,
The Black Panther Party Reconsidered places the
Panthers enduring legacy within a historical
framework. Liberation, Imagination, and the
Black Panther Party, edited by Kathleen
Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (2001) places
the organization's legacy within both a
domestic and global context. Historian
Yohuru Williams's Black Politics /White Power:
Civil Rights, Black Power and the Black Panthers
in New Haven (2000) broadens discussion of
the Black Panthers by examining the politi-
cal milieu that predated and precipitated

their emergence in New Haven, Connecticut
in 1969.
61
Williams's analysis of the New
Haven Black Panther chapter reveals the
importance of the Panthers' free breakfast
and other social programs in gaining the
group local support. Interest in the Panthers
remains high and continues to be the subject
of recent journalistic accounts such as Jack
Olsen's biography of Gerónimo Ji Jaga
(Elmer Pratt).62
Rod Bush's We Are Not What We Seem: Black
Nationalism and the American Century (1999)
places the black radical tradition in a sweep-
ing historical and analytical context.63 Bush
argues that the Black Power movement rep-
resented a serious and sustained threat to
American hegemony. We Are Not What We
Seem is notable for highlighting the interna-
tional dimension of black liberation strug-
gles, specifically Malcolm X's growing ties
with African revolutionaries. This theme is
even more pronounced in Mike Marqusee's
Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit
of the Sixties (1999).
5
By examining Muham-
mad Ali's political journey during the 1960s
and early 1970s (and his close relationship
with Malcolm X) , Redemption Song casts the

black liberation struggle as an international
phenomenon that attempted to systematical-
ly transform democratic institutions in and
outside of America's domestic borders.66
As has been discussed above the current
stage of Black Power Studies both builds on
and stands out in contrast to previous stages.
Most notably, the new works "reperiodize"
black liberation struggles by examining the
ways in which black radicals influenced black
politics during the "heroic period" of the
Civil Rights movement. In studying the Black
Power movement as a two-decades long
2015 22:18:55 UTC
struggle for black liberation (1954-1975),
these recent studies are contributing to the
reconceptualization of conventional civil
rights narratives. Finally, by highlighting the
period's understudied themes (black
women, internationalism) and figures (for
example Robert Williams and Vicki Garvin),
this fourth stage has irrevocably altered
clichéd narratives of the Black Power era.
The X Files: Toward a Historical Framework
of the Black Power Movement

study of Black Power must be placed
in the context of the historical develop-
ment of postwar black radicalism. Black radi-
calism during the war years reached a high-
point with anti-colonial efforts reverberating
the world over.6 Cold War liberalism eviscer-
ated much, although not all, of this radical
energy. Black radicals continued to refuse
and resist American bromides regarding
democracy throughout the 1950s. Some,
such as Richard Wright, did so while in exile
in Europe. Others continued to fight the
good fight at the local level throughout the
U.S. International events, especially the Ban-
dung Conference, African liberation in
Ghana, the Cuban Revolution, and the
Congo Crisis provided the groundwork for
the coming Black Power movement. Histori-
ans need to know the full impact that these
events had on black radicals in the U.S. For
example, the political exploits of activists,
journalists, and intellectuals who lived over-
seas, such as the groups of exiled black radi-
cals in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana is only now
beginning to receive sustained scholarly
attention. The fruits of this research will
doubtlessly enhance our understanding of
this era. Ruth Reitan's The Rise and Decline of
the Alliance: Cuba and African American Leaders
in the 1960s is a useful, though by no means
exhaustive, examination of the close rela-
tionship between blacks and Cuban radicals
during the civil rights era.70 An in-depth
analysis of African-American support for the

Cuban Revolution will shed much needed
light on the effects that international events
had on domestic racial dissent during the
early years of the Civil Rights movement.
OF BLACK POLITICAL RADICALISM
usually skip the early years of the Cold
War preferring to view black liberation strug-
gles as either quiescent or submerged under
the stranglehold of anti-Communism. Timo-
thy Tyson's biography of Robert Williams
reveals a far more complicated and contested
Southern civil rights landscape. More case
studies are needed that focus on strategies of
self-defense that reveal currents of black radi-
calism that existed within and outside of both
the Southern and the broader Civil Rights
movement. 2 A deeper understanding of the
Black Power era must also investigate the
activities of radical black youth who were
73 influenced by Malcolm X, anti-colonial
struggles, and through participation in radi-
cal cultural and political organizations such as
the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM)
and the Afro-American Association. For
example, organizations as diverse as the US
organization and the Black Panthers were
rooted in RAM and the Afro-American Associ-
ation. During this era the Nation of Islam
had a direct impact on many militant stu-
dents, especially through the anti-colonialism
of its newspaper, Muhammad Speaks. Black stu-
dents formed study groups and cultural orga-
nizations in an effort to carve out a space and

place for black political radicalism. These stu-
dents would play important roles in radical
politics in Detroit, the South, the Bay Area,
and the Northeast by forging relationships
with an older generation of radicals that
included James and Grace Lee Boggs, Queen
Mother Moore, Rev. Albert Cleage, Jr., and
Malcolm X. One of the best narratives of
black student radicalism during the early
1960s is found in Grace Lee Boggs's autobiog-
raphy, Living For Change. This riveting work
examines the way in which black radicals con-
structed an international network of contacts,
study groups, and political organizations that
stretched from Detroit to London to Ghana.
In addition to much needed biographical
studies of activists such as James and Grace
Lee Boggs, special attention needs to be
placed on the black radicalism in Detroit that
flowered through the automobile industry,
the Shrine of the Black Madonna and Rev.
Albert Cleage, Jr., as well as the activities of
local black college students.
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2015 22:18:55 UTC
Black Student Unions (BSU's)
and organizations such as the Student

Organization for Black Unity (SOBU), which
proliferated during the late 1960s and early
1970s, African-American student activists
played a pivotal role in the Black Studies
movement before the formal arrival of Black
Power ideology in cities such as Detroit,
Philadelphia, Cleveland, New York and Oak-
land. While San Francisco State officially
gave birth to the Black Studies movement in
1967, similar movements occurred at Cornell
University and elsewhere. A fuller study of
this movement (which took place in high
schools as well) and its relationship to local
and national Black Power organizations and
leaders is needed. Black Power advocates
produced literally thousands of books, pam-
phlets, position papers, journals and other
publications. A careful examination of this
intellectual production will go a long way
toward delineating the theoretical diversity
and practical underpinnings of the move-
ment. Furthermore, the pivotal role of
independent black think tanks such as the
Institute for the Black World (IBW) will bet-
ter illuminate the connection between black
radicals, intellectuals, and public policy dur-
ing the Black Power era. The IBW served as
host to a group of international scholar-
activists including C.L.R. James and Walter
Rodney. Both of these scholars influenced
mayor portions of the movement in the U.S.,
Africa, and the Caribbean. These intellectu-
als significantly altered the thinking of many
activists on issues related to nationalism,
class struggle and imperialism and provide a
fruitful focus for exploration.

The African Liberation Support Commit-
tee (ALSC) brought together several dynam-
ic strands of Black Power radicalism through
a focus on class, culture, and colonialism.
Eventually this spectacularly successful orga-
nization deteriorated into at least three
camps that variously advocated class struggle,
culture, or some combination of these
approaches. Yet the ALSC's dazzling, albeit
brief, history deserves careful historical
attention for successfully exporting anti-
imperialist awareness to the masses of
African-Americans through African Libera-
tion Day (ALD) and the close political and
intellectual relationships forged between
African and Caribbean radical activists and
intellectuals. We need a better understand-
ing of the implications of this rich cultural
and political exchange that flourished under
the auspices of the ALSC. Just as crucial will
be an investigation into the turn towards
class struggle that made an impact on black
radicals during the early 1970s. The shift to
the Left by political activists including Amiri
Baraka sent Shockwaves throughout the radi-
cal movement and requires special attention.
While this shift was in part based on the
rejection of petit-bourgeois nationalism that
made black political control in cities such as
Newark a pyrrhic victory, it was based as
much on emerging political events in Africa
and the Caribbean that crystallized debates
over systemic change versus radical reform.

Rethinking the Black Power Movement:
New Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Van DeBurg's New Day in Baby-
lon remains one of the few full-length
studies of the Black Power era. Van
DeBurg's ambitious, and highly flawed,
account of Black Power truncates the move-
ment's substantive challenge to American
racism, Cold War liberalism, and anti-colo-
nialism in favor of an overly glib narrative
that focuses on style over substance.83
Nonetheless, New Day in Babylon 's focus on
the impact of culture warrants further histor-
ical attention. The Black Arts movement
shaped, and was shaped by, domestic and
international events that encapsulated black
protest during the 1960s and 1970s.
While recent scholarship has shed light
on the political role played by Black Arts pio-
neers such as Amiri Baraka, important fig-
ures including Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal,
Askia Toure, and Nikki Giovanni have not
received enough attention.84 Monique Guil-
lory and Robert C. Green's anthology Soul:
Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure provides a
useful retrospective of the cultural politics of
the era. 5 Julius Thompson's Dudley Randall,
Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in
Detroit, 1960-1995 (1999) is an important and
much needed analysis of Detroit's Black Arts
86 movement. However, Thompson's instruc-

2015 22:18:55 UTC
tive study focuses particularly on the impor-
tance of Broadside Press as a vehicle for the
Black Arts, rather than the significance of
the Black Arts themselves.
Suzanne
E. Smith's Dancing in the Streets:
Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit
(1999) examines the interaction between
black cultural production and political
activism in Detroit during the black libera-
tion era. Skillfully resisting false dichotomies
between culture and politics,88 Dandng in the
Streets illustrates the way in which black cul-
tural production shaped and was shaped by
black radicalism that swept through the
Motor City during the 1960s. Smith imagina-
tively chronicles the historical context that
accompanied Motown's ascendancy in a
rapidly transforming black community wit-
nessing increased labor radicalism, student
activism, and independent political and cul-
tural organizing. Dandng in the Streets stands
out as a major work that provides a potential
framework for future studies related to the
Black Arts movement.

The Black Arts revolutionized the rela-
tionship between black politics and culture
on a level that equaled, and arguably sur-
passed, the Harlem Renaissance's influence
on the New Negro radicalism of the 1920s.
The movement produced important, though
often short-lived journals, including Cricket,
Umbra, The Journal of Black Poetry, Black Dia-
logue and Black Theater. Additionally, radical
cultural workers published in political jour-
nals such as the Liberator, Soulbook, and Black
America, that were read by poets, artists, and
other cultural producers. A comprehensive
study of the Black Arts and its effects on local,
national, and international liberation move-
ments will broaden historical comprehension
of the connections between black cultural
90
production and politics during this era.
Black Arts movement, however, rep-
resented far more then the push for
black access to predominantly white institu-
tions. Rather, it was part of a full-scale
attempt to transform American democracy.
On this score, Black Power's quest for elec-
toral access through grassroots led political
coalitions represents a centerpiece for Black
Power Studies. Both the spectacular success
and the rapid decline of these coalitions
illustrate the opportunities found and lost
during this remarkable period in American

history. As Komozi Woodard's case study of
Newark's Black Power movement exempli-
fies, local radicals held important sway in the
political fortunes of the emerging black
political elite during the Black Power era.
Yet, as Adolph Reed Jr. asserts in Stirrings in
the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era
(1998), black radicals were often short-
changed by their alliances with emerging
black urban political machines.9 More
research is required to know why, and to
what extent, was this the case. Promising
work on Black Power's impact on local poli-
tics in New Haven and Oakland illustrates
the benefits of using paradigms related to
political theory and urban space re-
spectively.93 Moreover, Black Power activists
formed national organizations such as the
African Liberation Support Committee
whose breadth stretched beyond American
borders into Africa and the larger Third
World.94 While A Nation Within the Nation
focuses on a specific Black Power organiza-
tion in a unique city, future case studies
would do well to follow its focus on the local
implications of the movement, while keeping
sight of its broader impact.
Power's tortured relationship with
black women has obscured the force
and power of black women activists during this
era. Tracye Matthews and Angela D. LeBlanc-
Ernest have complicated Black Panther Stud-
ies by examining the contested roles occupied
by female Panthers.95 Despite the high number

of biographies of the Black Panther Party
there is no full length historical study of Black
Panther women. New scholarship on the BPP
must focus on local chapters and the group's
relationship to Panther-derived organizations
such as the Young Lords. Case studies will pro-
vide a clearer picture that may explain the
fierce loyalty that many female members held
for the organization despite the organization's
controversial gender politics.
In this regard, Margo V. Perkins's Autobiog-
raphy as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties
(2000) examines Black Power's gender politics
Page 12 THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 31, NO. 3-4
2015 22:18:55 UTC
through the autobiography of movement
icons Angela Davis, Elaine Browne, and Assata
Shakur.96 Perkins's innovative analysis utilizes
the tools of literary criticism to examine the
role of autobiography in representing the gen-
der politics of the era. Such studies point to
interdisciplinary analyses that, with thick his-
torical scholarship as a foundation, may pro-
vide creative contributions to Black Power
Studies. Recently other scholars have focused
on the influential role of black feminist orga-
nizations that carved out important political

space during the Black Power era.
More provocatively, Joy James' Shadowbox-
ing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics
(1999) challenges the "revolutionary icons"
of the era, specifically that of female Black
Power advocates.98 Taken together, such stud-
ies combat narratives that view black women
as solely victims of sexism during this era or
erase their very existence as important and
political agents of change. Black Power
scholarship must also examine the move-
ment's growing incorporation of gay and les-
bian activism through activists such as Bar-
bara Smith and organizations such as the
Combahee River Collective.
Recent
journalistic Accounts regarding
the unjust imprisonment of Black
Power radicals provides historians with fer-
tile ground for future investigation." Black
Power politics galvanized black prison
inmates during the late 1960s and early
1970s. This prison radicalism sparked a radi-
cal prison movement whose chief spokesper-
son, George Jackson, was a legend among
prison leaders throughout the U.S. Indeed,
Jackson's death in 1971 added fuel to the
already incendiary prison conditions that
erupted in the Attica prison uprising later
that year. An icon during the heady and des-
perate days of the early 1970s, Jackson has
been the subject of journalistic examinations
but no full length historical biography. His-

torical studies of the Black Prison movement
can provide a better understanding of the
relationship between black radicals and
prison intellectuals. Moreover, such studies
may illuminate the impact that issues related
to prisoner rights (death penalty, jury repre-
sentation, adequate legal aid, illegal prosecu-
tion based on individuals' political beliefs)
had on a variety of Black Power organiza-
tions. Kenneth O'Reilly's Radal Matters: The
FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972
(1989) has documented illegal subversion of
Black Power advocates, especially the Black
Panther Party. The allegation that dozens
of black radicals remain political prisoners to
this day has been virtually ignored by profes-
sional historians. A more comprehensive
study of Black Power will critically examine
the role of underground organizations such
as the Black Liberation Army (BLA) that
were comprised of black revolutionaries
attempting to respond to state-violence
through the use of arms.
The Black Power movement's influence
on labor, poor people's, urban uprisings,
and community control movements also
requires further study.104 Detroit's revolution-
ary labor movement, while the subject of two
case studies, deserves further detailed atten-
tion. The impact of media coverage, distor-
tion, and silencing of Black Power activists
and organizations requires further explo-
ration. The movement's tense relationship
with the New Left, while the focus of much

speculation and idiosyncratic memoirs, has
received little substantive attention.106 Black
Power transformed local and national social
movements that concentrated on the black
poor and community control of the ghetto.
More investigation is needed to better under-
stand the extent of Black Power politics on
Great Society anti-poverty efforts, Communi-
ty Action Programs, educational reform,
housing and welfare rights activists.107
Finally,
the study of Black Power ideology,
its decline in the public sphere, and its
continued resonance remains woefully inad-
equate. Rod Bush's We Are Not What We Seem
provides a cogent analysis of radical political
thought during the 20th century. The study's
major strength is in complicating static char-
acterizations of black nationalism. Bush
bypasses race versus class clichés by arguing
that black nationalism has contained a simul-
taneous race and class analysis. Somewhat
more pessimistic then Bush, but still utilizing
Black Power political radicalism as a point of
departure is Robert C. Smith's We Have No
2015 22:18:55 UTC

Leaders: African-Americans in the Post Civil
109
Rights Era (1996). Black Power advocates
articulated philosophical positions that con-
tained aspects of nationalism, historical
materialism, feminism, and democratic liber-
alism, sometimes simultaneously. While
Black Power declined in the public political
sphere amid torrents of racial, political, eco-
nomic, and cultural oppression, black radi-
calism continued into the 1980s with organi-
zations such as the National Black United
Front (NBUF), the National Black Indepen-
dent Political Party (NBIPP), and the Pro-
gressive Black Student Alliance (PBSA).
Finally, oral histories will go a long way
toward teasing out the complexity of key
Black Power activists and critics.
NEED HISTORICAL STUDIES of black
political thought and practice during
the Black Power era. Such studies can, of
course, utilize iconic symbols as vehicles for
analysis.111 Perhaps more useful however, will
be those that focus on previously unexplored
activists, cultural workers, and intellectuals.
Historians need to know how black political
radicalism differed and converged, depen-
dent on geographical location, political orga-
nizations, and historical circumstances dur-
ing this era. The influence of African and
Afro-Caribbean intellectuals and activism
must also be explored. Black political

thought during the age of Black Power can
be usefully situated within the context of
Africana thought and the global black libera-
tion struggles that swept across the Third
World during this period.11 A more holistic
approach to the study of black politics since
the postwar era will explore the implications
and aftermath of Black Power on urban poli-
tics, black nationalism, black feminism, and
African-American leadership and intellectu-
als.113 Such narratives of love and war should
detail the personal and political motivations
that inspired black radicals. Too often, his-
torical accounts, while ostensibly about peo-
ple, are crafted as "cold histories" that like
the Dragnet television series, ask for "just the
facts." Feelings of love and humanity
emboldened youthful activists during this
era and should be a part of historical recon-
structions of this period. Furthermore, such
narratives need to include discussion of the
psychological, emotional, and physical
effects of Black Power activism. In many
instances activists experienced severe trauma
that had a lasting impact on their lives.
Conclusion
A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK
jljl for the Black Power movement must
focus on the dynamic relationship between
local, national, and international political
organizations, leaders, intellectuals, and cul-
tural workers. Black Power was, in many
ways, a series of creative political and intel-

lectual experiments that varied depending
on political geography, social class, gender,
and political ideology. Black Power was both
a radically humanistic anti-racist social move-
ment and an outgrowth of growing disaffec-
tion and disappointment with the Civil
Rights movement. Civil Rights historiogra-
phy too often castigates the Black Power era
as a betrayal of the supposedly halcyon days
of the non-violent Southern movement.
However, black militancy existed side by side
with civil rights protesters, and sometimes
within single organizations. Moreover, the
civil rights era contains some of the bloodiest
anti-black confrontations in American histo-
ry, reflecting the dissonance between the
non-violent practice and state-sanctioned vio-
lence faced by the grassroots.
Placing Black Power in a historical frame-
work requires recovering the individuals and
organizations that influenced masses of stu-
dents, cultural workers, and leaders during
the "heroic" age of civil rights. This will not
be as difficult as it may seem. Black radicals
actively constructed an infrastructure whose
legacy, through Black Studies, revolutionary
journals, and study groups, is still in exis-
tence. Expanding narratives of civil rights to
include black radicals resists foreshortened
time-frames that identify Black Power as a
post-1965 phenomenon. The decade of
explicit Black Power radicalism also chal-
lenges narratives of 1960s radicalism that cast
1968 and the destruction of the Student for a
Democratic Society (SDS) as the end of the

New Left. Black radicalism, despite whole-scale
political subversion and state-sanctioned ter-
2015 22:18:55 UTC
ror, increased exponentially after 1968. Para-
doxically, under the aegis of a reactionary
Nixon presidential administration and a fray-
ing liberal coalition, black radicalism reached
its highpoint during these years.
Power Studies must also redefine
contemporary analyses of the post-Black
Power era. Usually referred to as the "post
Civil Rights" era, the last quarter-century of
the black movement should be analyzed with-
in the context of the demise of the radical
black liberation era that preceded it. This
era has been marked by both increased black
representation and social, economic, and
political demonization. Most contemporary
analyses of black urban politics, electoral
strategies, and continued anti-racist political
activism gloss over or ignore the legacy of the
Black Power movement. In many ways, attacks
on Affirmative Action, welfare reform,
increased incarceration, and police brutality
can be viewed as responses against the Black

Power movement's attempt to radically trans-
form American and global civil society. Con-
versely, radical organizations centered around
issues including poverty, racism, sexism, and
incarceration, such as the Black Radical Con-
gress and thousands of local and national
grassroots political groups serve as a testament
to the era; they continue to organize and
protest amid the overwhelming forces of glob-
alization and reaction.116 Finally, Black Power
Studies can provide important historical analy-
ses for a wide range of disciplines that incorpo-
rate studies of race, class, gender, the Third
World, criminal justice and culture. Placing
the Black Power movement in a historical con-
text will start the long overdue process of
chronicling a story whose implications, in
many ways, are continuing to unfold.
Endnotes
1. The thick historical scholarship on the Civil Rights
movement has failed to seriously explore black radicals
who existed during this era. Even accounting for the
Southern focus of this literature does not explain the
failure for most scholars to explore the black militancy
that existed side by side (sometimes within single orga-
nizations) with the mainstream movement Two excep-
tions are Timothy Tyson's case study of Monroe, North
Carolina and Yohuru Williams's study of New Haven,
Connecticut. See Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie:
Robert F Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); and
Yohuru Williams, Biadi Politics/White Power: Civil Rights,
Black Power, and the Black Panthers in New Haven (New

York: Brandywine Press, 2000).
2. See for example David Horowitz, "Black Murder Inc."
Heterodoxy, March 1993; Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of
the Panther: Huey P. Newton and the Price of Black Power in
America (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994); Peter
Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Sec-
ond Thoughts about the Sixties (New York: Summit Books,
1989) ; Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Deconstructing
the Left: From Vietnam to the Persian Gulf (Lanham, MD:
Second Thoughts Books, 1991).
3. The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in works
published by, and about, 1960s based black political rad-
icals. Examples will be discussed throughout this essay.
4. Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka
(LeRm Jones) & Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1998); Charles Jones, ed.,
The Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Baltimore: Black
Classic Press, 1998); Peniel E.Joseph, "Waiting Till the
Midnight Hour: Reconceptualizing the Heroic Period
of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965," Souls, Vol 2,
no. 2 (Spring 2000): 6-17; Rod Bush, We Are Not What
We Seem: Black Nationalism and the American Century
(New York: New York University Press, 1999); Williams,
Black Politics/White Power, Mike Marqusee, Redemption
Song: Muhammad AU and the Spirit of the Sixties (London:
Verso, 1999); Tyson, Radio Free Dixie. In addition to
these works, a number of recent dissertations, from a
variety of intellectual disciplines, have analyzed the
Black Power era. For example see Scot Brown, "The US
Organization: African American Cultural Nationalism
in the Era of Black Power, 1965 to the 1970s," Ph.D.
Diss., Cornell University, 1999; Dean Errol Robinson,
"To Forge a Nation, To Forge an Identity," Black

Nationalism in the United States, 1957-1974," Ph.D.
Diss., Yale University 1995; Kimberly Springer, "'Our
Politics was Black Women': Black Feminist Organiza-
tions, 1968-1980," Ph.D. Diss., Emory University, 1999;
Matthew J. Countryman, "Civil Rights and Black Power
in Philadelphia, 1940-1971," Ph.D. Diss., Duke Universi-
ty, 1999; and Peniel E. Joseph, "Waiting Till the Mid-
night Hour: Black Political and Intellectual Radicalism,
1960-1975," Ph.D. Diss., Temple University, 2000.
5. See for example Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC
and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1981); Aldon Morris, The Origins
of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing
for Change (New York: The Free Press, 1984); Belinda
Robnett, How Long? How Long?: African-American Women
in the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1997) Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Free-
dom: The Organizing Tradition and The Mississippi Freedom
Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the
Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1973) David Garrow, Bearing the Cross:
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leader-
ship Conference (New York: William Morrow and Compa-
ny, 1986).
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 31, NO. 3-4 Page 15
2015 22:18:55 UTC

6. For the impact of the Cold War on black radicals see
Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Anti-Colo-
nialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1997); and Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black
Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
7. Timothy Tyson's biography of Robert F. Williams under-
scores this point. See Tyson, Radio Free Dixie.
8. Robin D.G. Kelley, "But a Local Phase of a World Prob-
lem: Black History's Global Vision, 1883-1950," Journal
of American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999): 1045-
1077.
9. See Richard Wright, Black Power: A Record Of Reaction in
a Land of Pathos (New York: Harper and Brothers,
1954) ; The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Confer-
ence (New York: The World Publishing Company,
1956); and White Man Listen! (New York: Doubleday &
Company, 1957).
10. Wright, The Color Curtain, pp. 11-12.
11. Wright, White Man Listen!, pp. 1-24.
12. Paul Robeson, Here I Stand (1958; Boston: Beacon
Press, 1988), p. 28.
13. Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns (New York:
Marzani and Munzell, 1962). This book had a major
influence on, among many others, future Black Pan-
ther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton.
14. James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pages From a
Negro
Worker's Notebook (New York: Monthly Review Press,

1963).
15. By radical humanism I mean the growing conceptual-
ization during this period that African-American were
engaging in a struggle for human rights that redefined
civil rights struggles as an international struggle against
exploitative and racist practices that compromised
human dignity on a global scale.
16. Calvin Hicks, On Guard, Vol. 2, no. 2, May 1961.
17. See for example Bobby Seale, A Lonely Rage: The Autobi-
ography of Bobby Seale (New York: Time Books, 1978);
Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Westport, CT:
Lawrence Hill and Company, 1987); Elaine Brown, A
Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story (New York: Pan-
theon Books, 1992); David Hilliard and Lewis Cole,
This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1993).
18. Stephen Steinberg characterizes radical publications
during this era as compromising a "scholarship of con-
frontation.'' See Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The
Liberal Retreat from Racial Justice (Boston: Beacon Press,
1995), pp. 55-85.
19. John Edgar Wideman, "Introduction," Mumia Abu-
Jamal, Live From Death Row (New York: Addison-Wesley,
1995),p.xxxii.
20. Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black
Power. The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vin-
tage Books, 1967) , p. vi.

21. Ibid., p. 166.
22. Ibid., p. 37.
23. Author's interview with Mohammad Ahmed (Max
Stanford), December 18, 1999.
24. New York Times, November 21, 1967.
25. According to Cruse's political and historical analysis,
African-Americans have alternated between adhering
to Western (white) ideology or foreign (Carribean)
black ones, rather than constructing a political practice
based on the unique experiences of black Americans.
See Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New
York: William Morrow and Co.,1967), pp. 115-146.
26. For criticism of Cruse's depiction of West Indian radi-
cals see Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of
Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentiäh-Century
America (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 262-291. See for
example Julian Mayfield, "Crisis or Crusade: A Chal-
lenge to A Bestseller" pp. 5-6, Julian Mayfield Papers,
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New
York Public Library.
27. Cruse, Crisis of the Negro Inteüedual, p. 564.
28. Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America
(1969; New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990), p. 177.
29. Ibid., p. 182.
30. James Boggs, Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages
from a Workers Notebook (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1970); and James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolu-
tion and Evolution in the 20th Century (New York: Month-
ly Review Press, 1974) .

31. See Joseph, "Waiting till the Midnight Hour," pp. 200-
250.
32. See for example Ernest Kaiser, "Recent Literature on
Black Liberation Struggles and the Ghetto Crisis," Sd-
ence and Society (Spring 1969) .
33. See for example Gail Sheehy, Panthermania!: The Clash
of Black Against Black in One American City (New York:
Harper Row Publishers, 1971).
34. August Meier, John Bracey, and Elliot Rudwick, eds.,
Black Protest in the Sixties (1970: New York: Markus
Wiener Publishing, Inc., 1991); A more successful
attempt that highlighted key black radical documents
of the era was John H. Bracey, Jr. 's, Black Nationalism in
America (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company,
Inc., 1970), pp. 403-554.
35. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul On Ice (New York: Dell Books,
1968).
36. Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), Die Nigger Die! (New
York: Dial Press, 1969).
37. Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black
Panther
Party (1968; New York: Vintage Books, 1970).
38. Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Har-
court Brace Jovanovich, 1972).
39. See Huey P. Newton, To Die for the People (New York:

Random House, 1972); (with Erik H. Erikson), In
Search of Common Ground (New York: W.W. Norton &
Co., 1973); and War Against the Panthers: A Study of
Repression in America (New York: Harlem River Press,
1996).
40. George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of
George Jackson (1970; Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books,
1994); Blood in My Eye (1971; Baltimore: Black Classic
Press, 1990).
41. Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974;
New York: International Publishers, 1988).
42. Toni Cade Bambara, ed., The Black Woman: An Antholo-
gy (New York: The New American Library, 1970).
43. James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (New York: Dell
Publishing, 1972).
44. Ibid., p. 131.
2015 22:18:55 UTC
45. James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries
(1972: Washington, D.C.: Open hand Publishing,
1985).
46. Albert Cleage, Jr., Black Messiah (New York: Sheed and

Ward, 1968); Biadi Christian Nationalism: New Directions
for the Black Church (New York: William Morrow & Co.,
Inc., 1972).
47. LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal, Black Fire: An Anthology of
Afro-American Writings (New York: Morrow, 1968).
48. Floyd B. Barbour, The Black Seventies (Boston: Porter
Sargent Publishing, 1970).
49. Dan Georgakas, Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in
Urban Revolution (New York: St Martin's Press, 1975).
50. James Geschwinder, Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency:
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977) .
51. Seale, A Lonely Rage; Shakur, Assola, Brown, A Taste of
Power, and Hilliard, This Side of dory.
52. Michelle Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Super-
woman (New York: Dial Press, 1978).
53. Manning Marable, Bkukwater: Historical Studies in Race,
Class Consciousness and Revolution (Dayton, Ohio: Black
Praxis Press, 1981); Black American Politics: From the
March on Washington to Jesse Jackson (London: Verso,
1985); and African and Caribbean Politics: From Kwame
Nkrumah to Maurice Bishop (London: Verso, 1987).
Adolph Reed provided a very critical look at the legacy
of the movement within the larger context of the poli-
tics of the 1960s. See Adolph Reed Jr., Race, Politics,
and Culture: Critical Essays on the Radicalism of the 1960s
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986).
54. William L. Van DeBurg, New Day in Babylon: The Black

Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chica-
go: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
55. Van DeBurg, New Day in Babylon, pp. 292-308.
56. Woodard, A Nation within a Nation, pp. 159-218.
57. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, pp. 81-89.
58. An exception is Williams, Black Politics/White Power.
59. Charles Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party Reconsidered
(Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998).
60. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas, Liberation,
Imagination and the Black Panther Party (New 'brk: Rout-
ledge, 2001).
61. Williams, Black Power/White Politics.
62. Jack Olsen, Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph
of Gerónimo Pratt (New York: Doubledav. 2000).
63. Rod Bush, We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism
and the American Century (New York: New York Universi-
ty Press, 1999).
64. Ibid., pp. 175-192.
65. Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Aü and the
Spirit of the Sixties (London: Verso, 1999) .
66. Ibid., pp. 162-252.
67. Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans
and Anti-Colonialism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1997); and Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black
Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

68. See for example the special issue of Social Text, "Dossier
on Black Radicalism," especially Kevin Gaines, "Revisit-
ing Richard Wright in Ghana: Black Radicalism and the
Dialectics of Diaspora," Social Text 67 (Summer 2001),
pp. 75-101.
69. Kevin K. Gaines, "African-American Expatriates in
Ghana and the Black Radical Tradition," Souls Vol. 1,
no. 4 (Fall 1999) , pp. 64-72 and From Black Power to Civil
Rights: African American Expatriates in Nkrumah's Ghana
(forthcoming); For an autobiographical account see
Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
(New York: Random House, 1986).
70. Ruth Reitan, The Rise and Decline of an Alliance: Black
Leaders and the Cuban Revolution (East Lansing: Michi-
gan State University Press, 1999).
71. Peniel E.Joseph, "Where Blackness is Bright?: Cuba,
Africa, and Black Liberation During the Age of Civil
Rights," New Formations, (forthcoming) . For a fascinat-
ing look at the aftermath of the revolution see Carlos
Moore, Castro, the Blacks, and Africa (Los Angeles:
UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies, 1988) .
72. Charles Eagles calls for a more balanced and objective
study of the Civil Rights movement. In a literature
review of the historiography of the southern move-
ment, Eagles cites professional historians' vicarious sup-
port for and, at times, actual participation in, civil
rights struggles as an impediment to a more complex
history of the era. See Charles W. Eagles, Toward New
Histories of the Civil Rights Era," The Journal of Southern
History, Volume LXVI, No. 4, (November 2000): 815-
848.

73. Malcolm's political internationalism, usually character-
ized as a belated development, was crystalized in the
hearts and minds of Black Harlemites with his famous
meeting with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. With few
exceptions, historians have failed to note the impor-
tance of this meeting or connect it to the hotbed of
black political radicalism that existed during the age of
civil rights. Rosemari Mealy has collected the remem-
brances of key activists and leaders who were a part of
this historic meeting. See Rosemari Mealy, Malcolm X
and Fidel Castro: Memories of a Meeting (Melbourne:
Ocean Press, 1993).
74. Kelley and Esch, "Black like Mao," and Joseph, "Wait-
ing Till the Midnight Hour." A first hand account of
the Afro-American Association can be found in the
autobiography of the group's founder Donald Warden.
See Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour (Donald War-
den) , Black Americans at the Crossroads: Where Do we Go
From Here! (New York: The First African Arabian Press,
1990), pp. 70-75.
75. See Scot Brown, "The US Organization, Black Power
Vanguard Politics, and the United Front Ideal: Los
Angeles and Beyond," in this issue.
76. See Grace Lee Boggs, Living For Change: An Autobiogra-
phy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998),
pp. 117-189.
77. Donald Alexander Downs' recent study of Cornell's
Black Studies movement views the struggle for Black
Studies as an issue of free speech that ultimately
destroyed the liberal American university in favor of a
new political orthodoxy - political correctness -
backed by guns and militant rhetoric. This short-sight-

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