Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination PDF
Preview Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Freedom Dreams . . “A powerful book....Robin D.G.Kelley produces histories of black rad- icalism and visions of the future that defy convention and expectation.” — . Love and imagination may be the in the imaginative mindscapes of most revolutionary impulses Surrealism, in the transformative po- available to us, and yet we have tential of radical feminism, and in the failed to understand their political four-hundred-year-old dream of importance and respect them as reparations for slavery and Jim powerful social forces. Crow. This history of renegade intellec- WithFreedom Dreams,Kelley af- tuals and artists of the African dias- firms his place as “a major new voice pora throughout the twentieth cen- on the intellectual left” (Frances Fox turybegins with the premise that the Piven) and shows us that any serious catalyst for political engagement has movement toward freedom must be- never been misery, poverty, or op- gin in the mind. pression. People are drawn to social movement because of hope: their Robin D. G. Kelley, a frequent con- dreams of a new world radically dif- tributor to the New York Times,is ferent from the one they inherited. professor of history and Africana From Aimé Césaire to Paul Robe- studies at New York University and son to Jayne Cortez, Kelley unearths author of the award-winning Ham- freedom dreams in Africa and Third mer and Hoe,Race Rebels,andYo’ World liberation movements, in the Mama’s Disfunktional!He lives in hope that Communism had to offer, New York City. When History Sleeps: A Beginning i F R E E D O M D R E A M S ii Freedom Dreams Other works by Robin D. G. Kelley Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (with Howard Zinn and Dana Frank) Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America Into the Fire: African Americans since 1970 Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (coedited with Earl Lewis) When History Sleeps: A Beginning iii F R E E D O M D R E A M S T H E B L A C K R A D I C A L I M A G I N A T I O N R O B I N D . G . K E L L E Y BEACON PRESS BOSTON Beacon Press 25 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892 www.beacon.org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. © 2002 by Robin D. G. Kelley All rights reserved First electronic edition 2002 Text design by Sara Eisenman Composition by Speedlowe & Boone Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kelley, Robin D. G. Freedom dreams : the Black radical imagination / Robin D. G. Kelley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8070-0978-4 ISBN 0-8070-0976-8 (Hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Black power—United States—History. 2. African Americans—Civil rights. 3. Civil rights movements—United States—History. 4. African American arts. 5. Radicalism—United States—History. 6. United States— Race relations—History. 7. African diaspora. I. Title. E185 .K39 2002 305.896´073—dc21 2001007470 When History Sleeps: A Beginning v For my big sister, Makani Themba Nixon And in loving memory of Lisa Y. Sullivan (1961–2001) and Joe Wood, Jr. (1964–1999) Three dreamers who do. This page intentionally left blank Preface vii C O N T E N T S Preface vii “When History Sleeps”: A Beginning 1 1. Dreams of the New Land 13 2. “The Negro Question”: Red Dreams of Black Liberation 36 3. “Roaring from the East”: Third World Dreaming 60 4. “A Day of Reckoning”: Dreams of Reparations 110 5. “This Battlefield Called Life”: Black Feminist Dreams 135 6. Keeping It (Sur)real: Dreams of the Marvelous 157 “When History Wakes”: A New Beginning 195 Sources 199 Acknowledgments 227 Index 233 Credits 247 This page intentionally left blank
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