The day Walter White was buried in 1955 the New York Times called him "the nearest approach to a national leader of American Negroes since Booker T. Washington." For more than two decades, White, as secretary of the NAACP, was perhaps the nation's most visible and most powerful African-American leader. He won passage of a federal anti-lynching law, hosted one of the premier salons of the Harlem Renaissance, created the legal strategy that led to Brown...

This groundbreaking and highly acclaimed work examines the two most influential African American leaders of the twentieth century. While Martin Luther King, Jr., saw America as "essentially a dream... as yet unfulfilled," Malcolm X viewed America as a realized nightmare. James Cone cuts through superficial assessments of King and Malcolm as polar opposites to reveal two men whose visions are complementary and moving toward convergence.

"The other great Renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place--Pittsburgh, PA--from the 1920s through the 1950s. Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson's famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely...

The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children's publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audiences that not...

Mary Helen Washington recovers the vital role of 1950s leftist politics in the works and lives of modern African American writers and artists. While most histories of McCarthyism focus on the devastation of the blacklist and the intersection of leftist politics and American culture, few include the activities of radical writers and artists from the Black Popular Front. Washington's work incorporates these black intellectuals back into our understanding...

"The cacophonous intellectual tradition outlined in The Race for America spans practical emigration schemes, informal foreign policy, and theories of diaspora. Through this internationalist print culture, Black writer-activists proffered substitutes for and contestations of the "American Legend" that took root during the feverish age of Manifest Destiny. Their engagements sought to unravel its premises and reweave them into novel arrangements of political...

The Harlem Renaissance was like a magnificent fireworks display; it was colorful, brilliant, and in a few moments, it was over. This was the first time African Americans had led a cultural movement and the first time that white Americans had paid attention to their achievements. Through striking images and fascinating details, this book examines the origins of the Harlem Renaissance, especially the key roles played by W.E.B. Du Bois and other prominent...