Futures of Black Power

Illustrating newframeworks for recognizing and studying Black Power and Black radicalism

Rewritingnarratives that present Black Power as related but marginal to the Civil RightsMovement, this book uncovers and centers unexpected sites of Black Poweractivism within the Black freedom struggle. In this collection, leadingscholars look at how we study the past and suggest new ways historians can recognizeBlack Power and Black radicalism in the future.

In Futures ofBlack Power, Ashley Farmer offers a framework for developing Black Powerarchives, Jasmin Young makes the case for oral history collections dedicated tothe study of the movement, and D’Weston Haywood discusses Afrofuturistunderpinnings in the Nation of Islam. Interspersed with their essays are oralhistory interviews with activists Kathleen Cleaver, Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, Mabel Williams,and Nikki Giovanni.

These essays andprimary sources show how today’s scholars of Black Power are incorporatingmemory studies, gender studies, and intellectual histories, and they point theway forward to new avenues for research and public engagement. Theycollectively illustrate the need to preserve and remember the variety of voices, actions, and imaginings that constituteBlack Power, elements of Black history that are often ignored or forgotten.

Avolume in the series Frontiers of the American South, edited by William A. Link

Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanitiesthrough the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for theHumanities.