| Agitations
Ideologies and Strategies in African American Politics
Kevin R. Anderson
Explores the diverse approaches
of civil rights activists
“Kevin Anderson has expertly plumbed the depths of the
black political
experience in creating for the reader an eminently causal
linkage between the historical nature of the oppression the
black community has faced and the emergence of this factor
as the foundation for a politics of resistance. That resistance
or ‘agitation,’ he found, took various forms;
however its ideology, tactics and strategies were most dependent
upon the leadership that evolved and the social location of
organizations that were created.”
—Ron Walters, professor emeritus of
government and politics at the University of Maryland, College
Park
“A cogent account of the trajectory of black American
strategic political thought in the 20th century.... Will be
useful for courses in black politics and history, twentieth
century American history, and political development.”
—Adolph Reed, co-author of Renewing
the Black Intellectual History: The Ideological and Material
Foundations of African American Thought
Though the activities of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) were unified in their common idea of resistance
to oppression, these groups fought their battles on multiple
fronts. The NAACP filed lawsuits and aggressively lobbied
Congress and state legislatures, while Martin Luther King
Jr. and SCLC challenged the racial status quo through nonviolent
mass action, and the SNCC focused on community empowerment
activities. In Agitations, Kevin Anderson studies these various
activities in order to trace the ideological foundations of
these groups and to understand how diversity among African
Americans created multiple political strategies.
Agitations goes beyond the traditionally acknowledged
divide between integrationist and accommodationist wings of
African American politics to explore the diverse fundamental
ideologies and strategic outcomes among African American activists
that still define, influence, and complicate political life
today.
Kevin R. Anderson
is assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois
University.
April
6 x 9, 263 pages, index
$34.95 (s) cloth
ISBN 978-1-55728-926-1
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