View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.
aA detailed and sober account . . . Fighting for US is of
enormous and permanent value.a
--"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"
aBrownas portrait is historically sharp and honest. . . . It
gives the organization its rightful place in the expanding story of
black peopleas quest for power in America.a
--"San Francisco Chronicle"
"Scott Brown has made an extraordinary contribution to the study
of the black power era. What [he] achieves is the difficult task of
bringing another character into view, one often obscured by the
prominence of others or misrepresented by received
characterizations. The result is a fascinating glimpse into the
rise and fall of one of the black power era's more important
organizations. Brown should be commended. The book succeeds in
making US a central character in the complex story of black
power."
--"The Journal of American History"
"Scott Brown's 'untold story' of the activist-scholar Maulana
Ron Karenga and his cultural nationalist organization called US is
both sympathetic and judicious."
--"Journal of American Studies"
"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 hisvarious 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"
"Scot Brown's 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"
"Brown's work is a necessary correction to existing
misinformation regarding the different aspects of the Civil Rights
Movement. Readable and interesting, it is a work anyone concerned
with the 1960s, civil rights, or African American history will need
to read."
--"Choice"
"Brown's treatment is the first in-depth examination of this
group and its leader. It is a useful book for students of the Back
Power movement, particularly since Karenga and US are sometimes
overlooked in treatments of the Black Power era."
--"The Journal of African American History"
In spite of the ever-growing popularity of Kwanzaa, the storyof
the influential Black nationalist organization behind the holiday
has never been told. Fighting for Us explores the fascinating
history of the US Organization, a Black nationalist group based in
California that played a leading role in Black Power politics and
culture during the late 1960s and early '70s whose influence is
still felt today. Advocates of Afrocentric renewal, US unleashed
creative and intellectual passions that continue to fuel debate and
controversy among scholars and students of the Black Power
movement.
Founded in 1965 by Maulana Karenga, US established an extensive
network of alliances with a diverse body of activists, artists and
organizations throughout the United States for the purpose of
bringing about an African American cultural revolution. Fighting
for US presents the first historical examination of US' philosophy,
internal dynamics, political activism and influence on African
American art, making an elaborate use of oral history interviews,
organizational archives, Federal Bureau of Investigation files,
newspaper accounts, and other primary sources of the period.
This book also sheds light on factors contributing to the
organization's decline in the early '70s--government repression,
authoritarianism, sexism, and elitist vanguard politics. Previous
scholarship about US has been shaped by a war of words associated
with a feud between US and the Black Panther Party that gave way to
a series of violent and deadly clashes in Los Angeles. Venturing
beyond the lingering rhetoric of rivalry, this book illuminates the
ideological similarities and differences between US's "cultural"
nationalism and the Black Panther Party's "revolutionary"
nationalism. Today, US's emphasis on culture has endured as
evidenced by the popularity of Kwanzaa and the Afrocentrism in
Black art and popular media. Engaging and original, Fighting for US
will be the definitive work on Maulana Karenga, the US
organization, and Black cultural nationalism in America.
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