Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980

Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980

by Devin Fergus
ISBN-10:
0820333247
ISBN-13:
9780820333243
Pub. Date:
04/15/2009
Publisher:
University of Georgia Press
ISBN-10:
0820333247
ISBN-13:
9780820333243
Pub. Date:
04/15/2009
Publisher:
University of Georgia Press
Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980

Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980

by Devin Fergus
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Overview

In this pioneering exploration of the interplay between liberalism and black nationalism, Devin Fergus returns to the tumultuous era of Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Helms and challenges us to see familiar political developments through a new lens. What if the liberal coalition, instead of being torn apart by the demands of Black Power, actually engaged in a productive relationship with radical upstarts, absorbing black separatists into the political mainstream and keeping them from a more violent path? What if the New Right arose not only in response to Great Society Democrats but, as significantly, in reaction to Republican moderates who sought compromise with black nationalists through conduits like the Blacks for Nixon movement?

Focusing especially on North Carolina, a progressive southern state and a national center of Black Power activism, Fergus reveals how liberal engagement helped to bring a radical civic ideology back from the brink of political violence and social nihilism. He covers Malcolm X Liberation University and Soul City, two largely forgotten, federally funded black nationalist experiments; the political scene in Winston-Salem, where Black Panthers were elected to office in surprising numbers; and the liberal-nationalist coalition that formed in 1974 to defend Joan Little, a black prisoner who killed a guard she accused of raping her. Throughout, Fergus charts new territory in the study of America's recent past, taking up largely unexplored topics such as the expanding political role of institutions like the ACLU and the Ford Foundation and the emergence of sexual violence as a political issue. He also urges American historians to think globally by drawing comparisons between black nationalism in the United States and other separatist movements around the world.

By 1980, Fergus writes, black radicals and their offspring were "more likely to petition Congress than blow it up." That liberals engaged black radicalism at all, however, was enough for New Right insurgents to paint liberalism as an effete, anti-American ideology—a sentiment that has had lasting appeal to significant numbers of voters.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780820333243
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Publication date: 04/15/2009
Series: Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South Series , #6
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 376
Sales rank: 818,873
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

DEVIN FERGUS is an assistant professor of modern United States and African American history at Vanderbilt University.

DEVIN FERGUS is an assistant professor of modern United States and African American history at Vanderbilt University.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Hidden Histories of Remittance: Liberalism and the Making of Black Nationalism in North Carolina, 1965-1970 13

2 "We Had a Beautiful Thing": Malcolm X Liberation University, the Black Middle Class, and the Black Liberation Movement, 1968-1973 54

3 From Rebellion to Reform: Constitutional Liberalism and the Black Panther Party, 1968-1974 91

4 In Defense of Sister Joan: The Joan Little Case and American Justice in the Cosmopolitan South, 1974-1975 132

5 Speaking Truth to Black Power: Cosmopolitan Black Nationalism and Its Gendered Discontents 166

6 Federally Subsidized Black Nationalism: Soul City, Statist Liberalism, and the Rise of the New Right, 1968-1980 196

Conclusion 232

Notes 265

Index 345

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