Struggle on their minds : the political thought of African American resistance / Alex Zamalin.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

American political thought has been shaped by those who fought back against social inequality, economic exclusion, the denial of political representation, and slavery, the country's original sin. Yet too often the voices of African American resistance have been neglected, silenced, or forgotten. In this timely book, Alex Zamalin considers key moments of resistance to demonstrate its current and future necessity, focusing on five activists across two centuries who fought to foreground slavery and racial injustice in American political discourse. Struggle on Their Minds shows how the core values of the American political tradition have been continually challenged--and strengthened--by antiracist resistance, creating a rich legacy of African American political thought that is an invaluable component of contemporary struggles for racial justice.

Zamalin looks at the language and concepts put forward by the abolitionists David Walker and Frederick Douglass, the antilynching activist Ida B. Wells, the Black Panther Party organizer Huey Newton, and the prison abolitionist Angela Davis. Each helped revise and transform ideas about power, justice, community, action, and the role of emotion in political action. Their thought encouraged abolitionists to call for the eradication of slavery, black journalists to chastise American institutions for their indifference to lynching, and black radicals to police the police and to condemn racial injustice in the American prison system. Taken together, these movements pushed political theory forward, offering new language and concepts to sustain democracy in tense times. Struggle on Their Minds is a critical text for our contemporary moment, showing how the political thought that comes out of resistance can energize the practice of democratic citizenship and ultimately help address the prevailing problem of racial injustice.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Reaction to the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Philando Castile highlights the latest, most violent manifestation of racism in the US. For African Americans, the Black Lives Matter movement is a form of resistance, publicly confronting racism and demanding reform of the police and other institutions to achieve equality. But does equality treat African Americans the same as whites in a society that embraces traditional American values? Zamalin examines the political thought of African American resistance, focusing on David Walker's and Frederick Douglass's opposition to slavery, Ida Wells and lynching, Huey Newton and black separatism, and Angela Davis and prison reform. In each case, activists confronted the defining racism and institutions of the day, articulating a theory of resistance situated in and reacting to intellectual ideas within the American political tradition. Each chapter develops how the above African American thinkers and activists forged a theory of black democracy and resistance that challenged racism. Overall, the book offers an alternative view to American consensus theories on history, politics, and race. Excellent for American history, race, and political thought collections. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --David Schultz, Hamline University