The New Black Power History: A Souls Special Issue

Abstract

Black Power Studies seeks to critically historicize postwar American history at the local, national, and international level. In doing so, this new subfield offers a framework for examining not only the relationship between Black Power and civil rights, but eye-opening perspectives on black militancy, urban history, black feminism, black nationalism and pan-Africanism, the Cold War, Great Society liberalism, the New Left, law and society, and black internationalism to name a few. A rigorous historicism is often enlivened by interdisciplinary perspectives, so Black Power studies offers suggestive, indeed critically necessary, perspectives for scholars and students of Africana Studies, philosophy, political science, sociology and anthropology, Women's and Ethnic Studies, criminal justice, communications, and American Studies. In short, Black Power Studies is actively rewriting postwar American history by offering panoramic perspectives that combine social, cultural, political, and economic histories with interdisciplinary perspectives to chronicle a world historical period that, until recently, remained a largely unwritten epoch.