A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics [Paperback]

Komozi Woodard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 1999

Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is best known as one of the African American writers who helped ignite the Black Arts Movement. This book examines Baraka's cultural approach to Black Power politics and explores his role in the phenomenal spread of black nationalism in the urban centers of late-twentieth-century America, including his part in the election of black public officials, his leadership in the Modern Black Convention Movement, and his work in housing and community development.

Komozi Woodard traces Baraka's transformation from poet to political activist, as the rise of the Black Arts Movement pulled him from political obscurity in the Beat circles of Greenwich Village, swept him into the center of the Black Power Movement, and ultimately propelled him into the ranks of black national political leadership. Moving outward from Baraka's personal story, Woodard illuminates the dynamics and remarkable rise of black cultural nationalism with an eye toward the movement's broader context, including the impact of black migrations on urban ethos, the importance of increasing population concentrations of African Americans in the cities, and the effect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the nature of black political mobilization.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sarah Lawrence College professor Komozi Woodard convincingly argues that Amiri Baraka was not only the most original black poet, author, dramatist, and cultural critic to emerge from the 1960s but also that era's most important nexus between the politics and artistic movements. "The serious study of Black Power," he writes, "must begin with an examination of its most important experiments ... specifically, the leadership of Amiri Baraka and the dynamics of black cultural nationalism." Woodard details Baraka's visit to revolutionary Cuba and the influence of Patrice Lumumba on his thinking; the black-arts movement Baraka helped found and the black/Puerto Rican coalitions he forged; his ambitious but flawed housing ventures in Newark, New Jersey; and his heroic efforts to hold together the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. Woodard weaves a complex picture detailing the ascendance of a modern cultural icon and the political landscape he helped create. --Eugene Holley Jr.

From Publishers Weekly

Woodard examines the role of poet Amiri Baraka's "cultural politics" on Black Power and black nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. After a brief overview of the evolution of black nationalism since slavery, he focuses on activities in Northeastern urban centers (Baraka's milieus were Newark, N.J., and, to a lesser extent, New York City). Taking issue with scholars who see cultural nationalism as self-destructive, Woodard finds it "fundamental to the endurance of the Black Revolt from the 1960s into the 1970s." The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X catalyzed LeRoi Jones's metamorphosis into Amiri Baraka and his later "ideological enchantment" with Castro's revolution. After attracting national attention following the 1966 Detroit Black Arts Convention, Baraka shifted his emphasis to electoral politics. He galvanized black support for Kenneth Gibson, who was elected mayor of Newark in 1970. Woodard pays scant attention, however, to the fact that "Baraka's models for political organization had nothing revolutionary to contribute in terms of women's leadership" or the roots of "Baraka's insistence on psychological separation" from whites. Woodard's conclusion descends into rhetoric as he urges support for a school system to "develop oppressed groups into self-conscious agents of their own liberation," while offering no specific, practical suggestions. Woodard's need to be both scholar and prophet are in conflict, and the prophet's voice undermines the scholar's.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (February 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807847615
• ISBN-13: 978-0807847619
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #339,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most important book on Black Power Movement, May 22, 1999

By A Customer

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This review is from: A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Paperback)

Professor Peniel Joseph writes that, "Historian Komozi Woodard's `A Nation Within A Nation' ... stands out as the most important book to be written about the Black Power Movement. `A Nation Within A Nation' is really several books rolled into one. First, it is a well-researched and painstakingly detailed case study of the dramatic consequences of Black Power politics on [the] racial and political dynamics of Newark, New Jersey during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Second, it is a political biography that underscores the significance of Amiri Baraka to the Black Power Movement's rise and eventual decline in American politics. Third, the book explores the transformation of black cultural nationalism during the Black Power era and Baraka's pivotal role in contemporizing black nationalism as an expressive political and cultural vehicle. Finally, it's a study of the divese and complex matrix that produced black political thought and practice during the period; a historical interrogation of the national and international implications of radical anti-colonial discourses that undergirded Black Power politics."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a must read for all interested in politics and race, August 26, 1999

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This review is from: A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Paperback)

Woodard writes about the relationship of black power, black cultural arts, and the black nationalist movement with LeRoi Jones, later Amiri Baraka, one of its main supporters. ... He concludes that Black America requires an ideological and political arsenal of both nationalism and Marxism. But at no time can the emphasis be purely Marxist or nationalist without doing damage to the black community. In other words, sectarianism is the enemy of black liberation and the fight for equality. This is a must read for all interested in politics and race in the U.S. Recommended for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. -- P. Barton-Kriese, Indiana University East, Choice July/August 1999

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most comprehensive studies of black nationalism., March 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Paperback)

According to Publishers Weekly, "Woodard examines the role of poet Amiri Baraka's `cultural politics' on Black Power and black nationalism in the 1960s. After a brief overview of the evolution of black nationalism since slavery, he focuses on activities in Northeastern urban centers (Baraka's milieus were Newark, NJ, and, to a lesser extent, New York City). Taking issue with scholars who see cultural nationalism as self-destructive, Woodard finds it "fundamental to the endurance of the Black Revolt from the 1960s into the 1970s." California Senator Tom Hayden, says: "The fascinating story of a struggle that nearly succeeded in creating self-determination in the urban ghetto" And, in Professor Robin D.G. Kelley's assessment, the book "will be one of the most important studies of black urban politics and culture in the postwar period." As far as Professor Michael B. Katz is concerned, it "breaks new ground and revises standard interpretations of the era. I am particularly impressed with the way he has connected political mobilization to movements in the arts, literature, and intellectual life, on the one hand, and to the restructuring of American life, on the other. It's a hardheaded, unflinching analysis, and he tells it well and with great feeling." Finally, Professor John Dittmer found it "Balanced and moving." "It should be required reading ... for all citizens who care about the problems of race and class in urban America. ... quite simply, one of the most important books we have on the black urban experience in the twentieth century ... by one of the leading scholars of the African American experience in this country." The book concludes that there have been five distinct phases in the history of black nationality formation in the U.S. The first phase was the ethnogenesis of African Americans during slavery; that established the social and cultural foundations of Black America. The second was the black nationalism that flowered before the Civil War among free Blacks in the urban North. A third phase resulted from the failure of the Civil War and Reconstruction to guarantee full citizenship for African Americans; under racial oppression and Jim Crow segregation, a subject nation developed in the Black Belt areas of the South. The most vivid example of that phase of nationality formation was the great Kansas Exodus. The fourth phase of black nationality formation resulted from the Great Migration of perhaps 1.5 million African Americans and from the development of large, compact, black concentrations in the ghettos of America; the flowering of that nationalism is seen in the Garvey Movement of the 1920s. And finally, a fifth stage of nationality formation ensued from the migration of 4 million Black Americans form the South between 1940 and 1970 and the development of dozens of "second ghettos," that generated hundreds of urban uprisings during the 1960s; that sense of modern nationality was heralded by the Black Power movement and the politics of Black cultural nationalism.