Engines of the Black Power Movement: Essays on the Influence of Civil Rights Actions, Arts, and Islam

The decade of the 1960s was an era of protest in America, and strides toward racial equality were among the most profound effects of the challenges to America's status quo. But have civil rights for African Americans been furthered, or even maintained, in the four decades since the Civil Rights movement began? To a certain extent, the movement is popularly perceived as having regressed, with the real issues tabled or hidden. With a view to assessing losses and gains, this collection of 17 essays examines the evolution and perception of the African American civil rights movement from its inception through today.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Acknowledgments      Preface      I : CULTURAL ANALYSIS      1. The Spiral Group: Defining African American Art During the Civil Rights Movement      2. Jazz Musicians in Europe: 1919 to 1945      II : BLACK POWER ANALYSIS      3. Black Power, Chicago Politics, and Social Movements: What Have We Learned?      4. A Critical Assessment of the Educational Mission and Praxis of the Black Arts Movement      5. The Congressional Black Caucus: Black Power Realized?      III : BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT ANALYSIS 6. Us, Kawaida and the Black Liberation Movement in the 1960s: Culture, Knowledge and Struggle      7. The Black Arts Movement in Omaha, Nebraska      8. The Role of the Africana Writer in an Era of Struggle—The Case of Hoyt W. Fuller and the Black Arts Movement,1961–1981: A Kawaida-Location Analysis      IV : AFRICAN AMERICANS AND ISLAM 9. The Nation of Islam: An Historiography of Pan-Africanist Thought and Intellectualism      10. Understanding Elijah Muhammad      11. Noble Drew Ali: An Historical Perspective      12. Islam in the Civil Rights Movement      V : CIVIL RIGHTS AND REDEMPTION 13. Pathologies of Public Housing: An Antecedent to Crime and Delinquency      14. Constitutionalism Within the Political Ideologies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.      15. Revising the Best Western View: Civil Rights, Wilderness, and Racial Relocation      16. Guilt by Association: Women as Participants and Victims of Lynching      About the Contributors      Index     

About the Author :
The late James L. Conyers, Jr., winner of the Cheikh Anta Diop Ankh Award for Distinguished Research in the Discipline of African American Studies, was the director of the African American Studies Program and university professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston.