Politics/African American Studies

“Revolutionaries to Race Leaders is critical for understanding the roots and complex ideological dynamics that continue to shape contemporary black politics.” -Adolph Reed Jr., University of Pennsylvania

The Black Power movement represented a key turning point in American politics. Disenchanted by the hollow progress of federal desegregation during the 1960s, many black citizens and leaders across the United States demanded meaningful self-determination. Exploring the major political and intellectual currents from the Black Power era to the present, Cedric Johnson reveals how black political life gradually conformed to liberal democratic capitalism and how the movement’s most radical aims were gradually eclipsed by more moderate aspirations. Although Black Power activists transformed the face of American government, Johnson contends that the evolution of the movement as a form of ethnic politics restricted the struggle for social justice to the world of formal politics.

Johnson offers a compelling and theoretically sophisticated critique of the rhetoric and strategies that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive archival research, he reinterprets the place of key intellectual figures, such as Harold Cruse and Amiri Baraka, and influential organizations, including the African Liberation Support Committee, the National Black Political Assembly, and the National Black Independent Political Party, in postsegregation black politics, while at the same time identifying the contradictions of Black Power radicalism. Documenting the historical retreat from radical, democratic struggle, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders ultimately calls for the renewal of popular struggle and class-conscious politics.

Cedric Johnson is associate professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

University of Minnesota Press
Printed in U.S.A.
Cover design by Percolator
Cover photograph by AP Images