Futures of Black Power
Futures of Black Power
Reimagining the Black Past
Illustrating new frameworks for recognizing and studying Black Power and Black radicalism
Rewriting narratives that present Black Power as related but marginal to the Civil Rights Movement, this book uncovers and centers unexpected sites of Black Power activism within the Black freedom struggle. In this collection, leading scholars look at how we study the past and suggest new ways historians can recognize Black Power and Black radicalism in the future.
In Futures of Black Power, Ashley Farmer offers a framework for developing Black Power archives, Jasmin Young makes the case for oral history collections dedicated to the study of the movement, and D’Weston Haywood discusses Afrofuturist underpinnings in the Nation of Islam. Interspersed with their essays are oral history interviews with activists Kathleen Cleaver, Mae Mallory, Mabel Williams, and Nikki Giovanni.
These essays and primary sources show how today’s scholars of Black Power are incorporating memory studies, gender studies, and intellectual histories, and they point the way forward to new avenues for research and public engagement.They collectively illustrate the need to preserve and remember the variety of voices, actions, and imaginings that constitute Black Power, elements of Black history that are often ignored or forgotten.
A volume in the series Frontiers of the American South, edited by William A. Link
Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Showcases cutting-edge scholarship on Black Power and archives that will be critical as the historiography of Black Power only expands in the years to come.”—Robert Greene II, coeditor of Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina
“A provocative, futuristic view of the study of Black Power and its key players. The authors charge academicians and archivists alike with being intentional about the study of Black Power and how we collect, examine, teach, and preserve these very important narratives that should transcend space and time.”—Tiffany Packer, Florida A&M University
Anthony M. Donaldson Jr. is assistant professor of history and African American studies at Sewanee: The University of the South.
Madison W. Cates is assistant professor of history at Coastal Carolina University and codirector of the Baruch Institute for South Carolina Studies.
