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The Challenge of Blackness: The Institute of the Black World and Political Activism in the 1970s

Online ISBN:
9780813041605
Print ISBN:
9780813037356
Publisher:
University Press of Florida
Book

The Challenge of Blackness: The Institute of the Black World and Political Activism in the 1970s

Published:
18 September 2011
Online ISBN:
9780813041605
Print ISBN:
9780813037356
Publisher:
University Press of Florida

Abstract

This book examines how the Institute of the Black World (IBW), led by historian, theologian, and political activist Vincent Harding, mobilized Black intellectuals in identifying strategy to continue the Black Freedom Struggle in the 1970s. Harding and colleagues founded the IBW in Atlanta, Georgia in 1969. Under Harding's leadership, it became an activist think tank that evaluated Black Studies for emerging programs, developed a Black political agenda for the 1970s with Black elected officials and grassroots activists, and mediated ideological conflicts among Black activists. Relying on the input from an array of activist-intellectuals, the IBW eschewed ideological rigidity, whether in the form of liberalism, Marxism, or Black Nationalism, for a synthetic and pragmatic analytic framework forged through debate and designed to generate the largest amount of political and activist support. It used its network of intellectuals and activists to emphasize structural racism and a racialized political economy, each of which was designed to foster broad consensus in the Black activist community on difficult issues in the 1970s.

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