Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour

Author: Joseph, Peniel E.

Brand: Joseph, Peniel E.

Edition: First

Binding: Paperback

Number Of Pages: 430

Release Date: 10-07-2007

Details: Product Description "Once in a while a book comes along that projects the spirit of an era; this is one of them . . . Vibrant and expressive . . . A well-researched and well-written work." ―The Philadelphia Inquirer With the rallying cry of "Black Power!" in 1966, a group of black activists, including Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton, turned their backs on Martin Luther King's pacifism and, building on Malcolm X's legacy, pioneered a radical new approach to the fight for equality. Drawing on original archival research and more than sixty original oral histories, Peniel E. Joseph vividly invokes the way in which Black Power redefined black identity and culture and in the process redrew the landscape of American race relations. In a series of character-driven chapters, we witness the rise of Black Power groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers, and with them, on both coasts of the country, a fundamental change in the way Americans understood the unfinished business of racial equality and integration. Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour traces the history of the Black Power movement, that storied group of men and women who would become American icons of the struggle for racial equality. Review “Peniel Joseph represents the best of a new generation of scholars whose work will substantially revise our understanding of the Black Freedom Movement. Provocative and masterfully written, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour not only reveals the radical roots of Black Power but places the key activists and struggles within a global framework. It is one of those critically important books that will be read and debated for many years to come.” ―Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination About the Author Peniel E. Joseph is an assistant professor of Africana studies at SUNY-Stony Brook. The recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Ford Foundation, his work has appeared in Souls, New Formations, and The Black Scholar, and he is editor of a forthcoming anthology on the Black Power movement. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. IntroductionTo Shape a New WorldMalcolm X arrived in Harlem in the early 1950s on the heels of the contentious departure of another of its adopted, if little-known, sons. As Malcolm was bounding into Harlem’s local political arena, Harold Cruse was settling downtown, still clinging to wistful dreams that he had, temporarily at least, put on hold. As a young boy, Harold Cruse dreamed of becoming a writer. For a southern-born black boy coming of age in the Great Depression, this was an ambitious goal, with long odds. Born in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1916, Cruse moved as a young boy to New York City as part of the exodus to northern cities that would shortly transform African American life. The then-largest internal migration in American history sowed the seeds for Harlem’s emergence as a cultural mecca that would become the headquarters for black political resistance, intellectual achievement, and cultural innovation. A second great migration, which started during the early 1940s, of southern-born blacks (which eventually eclipsed its earlier counterpart in both density and geographical breadth), extended to cities and regions recently buoyed by the movement for civil rights. Coalitions of civil rights activists, trade unionists, Communists, and Pan-Africanists led strategic campaigns for racial justice and radical democracy that stretched from gritty Harlem neighborhoods through Detroit’s industrial shop floors to Dixie’s cradle, Birmingham, Alabama, and out west to Oakland’s postwar boomtown.1Cruse’s favorite time was spent reading books at the local library. It was no ordinary public library. Harlem was home to the New York Public Library’s Negro History Division, a repository of black history and culture founded by the Afro-Puerto Rica

Package Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches

Languages: English