Description
Book SynopsisScot Brown presents a history of the US organization, a Black nationalist group that played a leading role in Black Power politics and culture during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Founded in 1965 by Maulana Karenga, US established alliances with activists, artists, and organizations to establish an African American cultural revolution.
Trade Review"A detailed and sober account . . . Fighting for US is of enormous and permanent value." * Publishers Weekly *
"Readers will find Brown's study a well-researched document on the key era of the 1960s and 1970s, and it will serve as a guide to other scholars as more students of the freedom era take up the challenge to study and explore this rich period in our nation's history." * American Studies *
"Scot Browns Fighting for Us reveals a dimension of black cultural nationalism that, perhaps more than any other of recent decades, has been in need of sustained scholarly attention. A valuable study." -- Sterling Stuckey,author of Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America
"The Us Organization practically defined black cultural nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s, yet we know so little of its history and ideology. Thanks to Scot Brown's subtle and penetrating portrait of the movement and the man behind it, Maulana Karenga, we now have a more complete picture of the period. Fighting for Us will force us all to rethink our assumptions about black cultural nationalism and the Black Power era." -- Robin D. G. Kelley,author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
"What a fascinating tour through the theory and praxis of Black Power! I'm immensely grateful to Scot Brown for his fine analysis of the intellectual basis of the Us Organization as well as its actions in the 1960s and 1970s. Fighting for Us does more than situate Maulana Karenga in his various contexts. The book also explains the shifting collaborations and conflicts of the era's Black Power groups with remarkable clarity." -- Nell Irvin Painter,author of Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol and Southern History Across the Color Line
Table of ContentsForeword by Clayborne Carson Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 From Ron Everett to Maulana Karenga: The Intellectual and Political Bases for the US Organization 3 Memory and Internal Organizational Life 4 The Politics of Culture: The US Organization and the Quest for Black Unity 5 Sectarian Discourses and the Decline of US in the Era of Black Power 6 In the Face of Funk: US and the Arts of War 7 Kwanzaa and Afrocentricity Glossary of Kiswahili and Zulu Terms Notes Bibliography Index About the Author
