Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics

by Cedric G. Johnson

The Black Power movement represented a key turning point in American politics. Disenchanted by the hollow progress of federal desegregation during the 1960s, many black citizens and leaders across the United States demanded meaningful self-determination. The popular movement they created was marked by a vigorous artistic renaissance, militant political action, and fierce ideological debate.

Exploring the major political and intellectual currents from the Black Power era to the present, Cedric Johnson reveals how black political life gradually conformed to liberal democratic capitalism and how the movement’s most radical aims—the rejection of white aesthetic standards, redefinition of black identity, solidarity with the Third World, and anticapitalist revolution—were gradually eclipsed by more moderate aspirations. Although Black Power activists transformed the face of American government, Johnson contends that the evolution of the movement as a form of ethnic politics restricted the struggle for social justice to the world of formal politics.

Johnson offers a compelling and theoretically sophisticated critique of the rhetoric and strategies that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive archival research, he reinterprets the place of key intellectual figures, such as Harold Cruse and Amiri Baraka, and influential organizations, including the African Liberation Support Committee, the National Black Political Assembly, and the National Black Independent Political Party in postsegregation black politics, while at the same time identifying the contradictions of Black Power radicalism itself.

Documenting the historical retreat from radical, democratic struggle, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders ultimately calls for the renewal of popular struggle and class-conscious politics.

Cedric Johnson is assistant professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Race, American, American History

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Cedric G. Johnson is associate professor of African American Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His book, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics was named the 2008 W.E.B. DuBois Outstanding Book of the Year by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Johnson is the editor of The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans. His 2017 Catalyst essay, “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Anti-policing Struggles and the Limits of Black Power,” was awarded the 2018 Daniel Singer Millenium Prize. Johnson’s writings have appeared in Nonsite, Jacobin, New Political Science, New Labor Forum, Perspectives on Politics, Historical Materialism, and Journal of Developing Societies. In 2008, Johnson was named the Jon Garlock Labor Educator of the Year by the Rochester Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He previously served on the representative assembly for UIC United Faculty Local 6456.

Reviews

[Pascal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good explanation of the process by which the Black power movement evolved into creating today's Black political establishment. The book effectively shows how the concept of race unity as the basis of political mobility was unsound because of class divisions within the Black community. The book also discuses how the philosophies of both Harold Cruse and Amiri Baraka played a role in the development of the current Black political establishment. Discusses very important and tragic trends in Black politics like the system of political brokerage, and Black elite co-optation.

[David Selsby · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book and I recommend it. The best part of Cedric Johnson’s book “Revolutionaries to Race Leaders” is the crispness of Johnson’s writing. He’s a fantastic stylist. Sometimes when I’m reading I don’t even notice whether or not I’m appreciating the way the words are being put together in sentences. Cedric Johnson puts his sentence together in a way I can only call brisk. Or maybe sturdy. There’s a rat-a-rat smartness to the way he links one idea to the next. The overall sensation it gave me was that I was reading the ideas of someone who not only knew the subject matter very well but would brook none of the foolishness usually ladled onto this subject matter.

The subject matter is the manner in which various discrete movements within the black intellectual milieu of the sixties evolved across the seventies and eighties as a result of historical contingencies. One of the theses that Cedric Johnson addresses explicitly and that runs implicitly through all the evidence he marshals in defense of this argument is there is no “Black movement” or “Black intellectual milieu,” or any other univocal Black tendency. In this way his project shares many similarities to Adolph Reed Jr., whom I think I was probably reading when I first came across Cedric Johnson’s name. Actually, that’s not true. Ironically, I came across Johnson’s name for the first time when I was in the midst of my love affair with Ta-Nehsisi Coates’s writing, specifically “Between the World and Me.” An acquaintance had posted an article Johnson wrote that critically engaged with Coates’s work. I didn’t “get” it in that I wasn’t ready to take on board the structural, class analysis through which Johnson engaged with Coates’s work. I’ve revisited that piece and it’s fantastic. Anyway, like Reed Jr. Johnson dismisses the notion there is a “Black movement” for which one can speak. This is what he refers to as “brokerage” politics, whereby a (usually) unappointed person behaves as though he or she is speaking on behalf of all Black people. In these instances the self-selected speaker, representative, scholar, academic, politician, whatever articulates ideas or positions as if these ideas and positions are representative of a “real” or “authentic” Black population. Often what is even more pernicious than these “race hustlers” or “grifters'' as Reed and Johnson have it is the way elite media and discourse interact with Black public intellectuals as though they (the Black public intellectuals in question) actually are representative or speak for the concerns of 37 million Americans (equal to the population of Canada). There’s a subtle racism smuggled in with this dynamic--that the full, multivalent, contradictory, multi-class complexity of any ascriptive group could be ventriloquized for by someone of stature (however acquired) of that ascriptive group. As a result of this “grift,” this “hustle,” this ventriloquization contributes to the reification of the ascriptive group--“Black”-- and this reification is shuffled on down the discursive highway for consumption.

What I’ve just described is Johnson’s project in several of his essays published elsewhere. What he is after in “Revolutionaries to Race Leaders” is a little different. I think this book might have been his Phd thesis. It has that feel because it’s a hyper-specific topic and he goes into great detail on this topic. I’ll be honest, I had never heard of Harold Cruse before I picked up this book. A big part of the beginning of the book charts the intellectual output of Cruse throughout the sixties. This was kind of interesting. Then Johnson shift gears and focuses on Amira Baraka (formally LeRoi Jones). There are several chapters about the political organizations Baraka was a part of, or headed; it was at times hard to follow and one doesn’t feel compelled to follow it closely unless one is really interested in these political actors and the evolving formations of these groups. For the reader who’s not interested in the minutia of these actors and organizations the formal concerns of these formulations are still interesting. To wit, there were just as many changes of policies, personnel, tendencies, and outcomes of these largely if not exclusively African American political organizations as there were in “white” political organizations. In other words, these groups were at times ungainly collections of conflicting class interests and consistently embodied evolving divergences of desired policy outcomes.

The book also covers the eighties and the rise of Jesse Jackson as a national, electoral figure. A lot of the information in this book has not stayed with me. There were different organizations meeting here and there in this year and that, and I’d have to sit here for many minutes trying to remember the specifics and even if I did I don’t know what I’d be able to come up with. As I said, what I took from this book was the formal constructions Johnson set up for understanding Black politics, especially the strand of Black politics that occupied a radical, militant space concerning their actions and rhetoric and how members of that cohort evolved politically and the alliances they made in the decades after the 60s. Johnson also does an excellent job explaining and illustrating brokerage politics and the manner by which the variant and divergent forces within the “Black” electorate are ventriloquized for, and he charts the evolution and discrete historical contingencies that discipline and inform the patronage networks in which this ventriloquizing is done. He does a lot more of this particular type of scholarship in a series of excellent articles he’s written on nonsite.org, Jacobin, New Labor Forum and elsewhere.

Cedric Johnson is a fantastic writer and I do recommend this book; however, it is detailed and even slightly repetitive in a way that may become taxing if you don’t find the material being covered compelling.

[Ravi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is rare for a book to make an entirely new contribution in an established field and force you to rethink old dogmas but Johnson clearly does again and again in this thoroughly documented volume. A stunning piece of committed scholarship that thoughtfully provides new insights into the legacy of Harold Cruse, Amiri Baraka, and the political legacy of Black nationalism in the 70s. This author has gone on to have spectacular success since then (winning the Daniel Singer Prize for his essay The Panthers Cant Save Us Now in Catalyst Journal) and one cannot help but think he has always been inspired at least in part by the contrarian spirit of Cruse. Engaging, thoughtful and with explosive and controversial conclusions, this is the book you need to read now in a post-Obama world. I would have liked to have seen more content on how African American militants of the 1970s related to white radicals who were not Maoists. The author really does not consider how say folks around Hal Draper or white anarchists might have conceptualized African American alliances. Nonetheless this is a tiny quibble. Make no mistake: this is a magisterial achievement. Buy it today.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn't call it compelling or theoretically sophisticated, but it does lay out the appropriate facts an figures for easy reading. I was expecting significantly more analysis and/or insight into the reasons why these revolutionaries swerved from activism and fighting to laying down their arms, literally and figuratively, and being co-opted by the ruling elites of both parties. So while there is a lot of quality information here, there is nothing done with it. I learned some new things, but I wasn't pressed to think too deeply by the manner of its presentation.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

or as Florence once said to George Jefferson, "How come we overcame and no one told me?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmxfl...

[Neil Tredray · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m probably not smart enough to have gotten everything out of this book that’s there to get.