Abstract
Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, Houston Baker, Jr. Columbia University Press, 2008. Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual, Robert Reid-Pharr. New York University Press, 2007. During the heyday of the Black Power movement, critic Larry Neal imagined the blues singer as “the voice of the community, its historian, and one of the shapers of its morality” (38). The performer's “ideas and values are, in fact, merely expressions of the general psychology of the people” (38). Neal understood this vocalist as both repository and expressive medium in the consolidation of a nationalist consciousness that would liberate African Americans from white “ideas and values that finally attack the core” of black “existence” (38). In this regard Neal and his fellow nationalists marshaled vernacular culture as armament in combating the hegemony of a white America. So potent was the era's...
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.