Mainstreaming Black Power

"The traditional narrative of the civil rights movement has been that the more moderate demands of the mainstream movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., worked, but that the more "radical" demands of the Black Power movement derailed further success. Mainstreaming Black Power upends the traditional narrative by showing how Black Power Activists in New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles during the 1960s through the 1970s navigated the nexus of public policies, black community organizations, elected officials, and liberal foundations. Tom Adam Davies unites local and national perspectives and reveals how the efforts of mainstream white politicians, institutions, and organizations engaged with Black Power ideology, and how they ultimately limited both the pace and extent of change."--Provided by publisher

Mainstreaming Black Power upends the narrative that the Black Power movement allowed for a catharsis of black rage but achieved little institutional transformation or black uplift. Retelling the story of the 1960s and 1970s across the United States—and focusing on New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles—this book reveals how the War on Poverty cultivated black self-determination politics and demonstrates that federal, state, and local policies during this period bolstered economic, social, and educational institutions for black control. Mainstreaming Black Power shows more convincingly than ever before that white power structures did engage with Black Power in specific ways that tended ultimately to reinforce rather than challenge existing racial, class, and gender hierarchies. This book emphasizes that Black Power's reach and legacies can be understood only in the context of an ideologically diverse black community