BLACK PRIDE

by Janet & Julius Hobson Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1969

The title is the tip-off: unlike Dorothy Sterling's Tear Down the Walls, or even Robert Goldston's The Negro Revolution, its closest equivalent, this is not the struggle against white domination so much as the struggle for a black identity and black self-determination. Goldston and Sterling together cover many if not most of the same events and developments and reading them will also boost black pride; but whereas the first two are historical studies for any situation, this is particularly suited to a Freedom School or black academy curriculum. All of which is best shown through examples: the Dred Scott decision leads into a discussion of how the ""myth of white supremacy and black inferiority"" arose (covering the shift of Negro from indentured servant to slave, the severance of the slaves one from another, the emergence of justification in the south); after the slave revolts and from the advent of the abolitionist movement, the account focuses on four key figures: Douglass, DuBois, Garvey and Malcolm X. Booker T. Washington is handled with great sensitivity (as a counter to the first two) but Martin Luther King figures only peripherally. He is used to illumine issues that are traced throughout: direct, militant action vs. passive resistance and appeal to conscience (David Walker vs. Douglass, 1843; also John Brown vs. Douglass, 1858); the ""Tuskegee experiment"" vs. ""emancipation as a stupendous fraud"" (Washington vs. Douglass, c. 1890); compromise vs. agitation (Washington vs. DuBois, 1903 on); mass action vs. elite leadership (Garvey vs. NAACP and in part DuBois, 1920's); integration vs. separatism, civil rights via nonviolence vs. black power via self-protection and direct action. The last are followed up to the present (as per the Lowndes County, etc. in the South, the Black Panthers, etc. in the North) and there is a concluding assay of current programs and proposals. This is sure to generate discussion but its positions are forthrightly taken: objection to its premises is no objection to the book.

Pub Date: March 1, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION