radicalism

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/17/2022
  

  Americans Misunderstand the Radical Vision of even the Young MLK

  by Victoria W. Wolcott

  Long before the escalation of the war in Vietnam, urban unrest and national battles for fair housing that animated King's late work, he expressed a vision of justice that demanded systemic transformation of American society. His wife Coretta was a profound influence. 

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• SOURCE: The Metropole
  12/8/2021
  

  Rise And Fall Of A Movement — A Review Of “The Young Lords: A Radical History”

  by Leo Valdes

  Johanna Fernandez's history of the Puerto Rican activist organization reconstructs the movement's roots and shows that an organization formed in 1969 still offers a useful diagnosis of an "urban crisis" rooted in experiences in housing, schools, hospitals, and jails. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  12/6/2021
  

  What are Frantz Fanon's Lessons for Today?

  by Pankaj Mishra

  Taken at the moment of the Algerian fight for independence and other colonial liberation movements, "The Wretched of the Earth" was first seen as a beacon of liberatory thought. A new edition frames the ambivalences in Fanon's work on freedom.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/21/2021
  

  Before Nikole Hannah-Jones, Howard U. Professor Sterling Brown was a Lightning Rod for Right-Wing Outrage

  by Carole Emberton

  Sterling Brown also engendered political opposition and debate about what constitutes U.S. history when he tried to center the narrative on the diverse experiences of Black Americans.

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• 5/23/2021
  

  Theorizing Politics as Endless Struggle: Bernard Harcourt's "Critique and Praxis"

  by Eric Laursen

  Bernard Harcourt attempts to rescue critical theory from the grasp of utopians and academics by refocusing on the need to connect critique of society with action to change it, through recognition that there is no end point of politics. 

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• SOURCE: Money on the Left Podcast
  5/1/2021
  

  Remaking Radicalism with Dan Berger and Emily M. Hobson

  Historians Dan Berger and Emily Hobson discuss their new primary source anthology on grassroots social movements in the last quarter of the 20th century. 

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• SOURCE: Spectre Journal
  4/21/2021
  

  Revolution is Illegal: Revisiting the Panther 21 at 50

  by Orisanmi Burton

  "To revisit the history of the BPP is to experience the rhyme of history. Yet, the refrain is not a pleasant one."

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• SOURCE: NPR
  4/15/2021
  

  The Real Black Panthers

  Historian Donna Murch joins NPR's The Throughline to discuss the Black Panther Party's agenda and its targeting by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. 

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• 4/18/2021
  

  Don't Erase Women's Leadership in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement

  by Robert Cohen

  Historians have yet to fully examine the role of women in leadership and at the grass roots of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Even some of the best and most insightful accounts of the FSM treat it as a movement of men and ignore the key roles of Jackie Goldberg, Bettina Aptheker and others. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  3/2/2021
  

  Newly Obtained FBI Files Shed New Light on the Murder of Fred Hampton

  by Aaron J. Leonard and Conor A. Gallagher

  New documents shed further light on the involvement of the FBI in the 1969 assassination of Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, who is the subject of the new film "Judas and the Black Messiah." 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/26/2021
  

  The Deep South Has a Rich History of Resistance, as Amazon Is Learning

  Columnist Jamelle Bouie draws on the work of historians Michael W. Fitzgerald, Paul Horton, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Robert Widell, Jr. which shows that Alabamians, and Black Alabamians in particular, have organized to fight both racial oppression and labor exploitation.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/1/2021
  

  ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ is the Film to Help Us Understand 2021. Here’s Why

  by John Beckman and Theo Zenou

  Abbie Hoffman used his conspiracy trial as a guerrila theater stage, the peak of his career as an activist who used absurdity and wit to expose the hypocrisies of American society. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/22/2021
  

  The Campaign to Free the Wilmington 10 Holds the Key to Successful Activism Today

  by Kenneth Janken

  A campaign to free 10 racial justice protesters in 1972 worked because it connected the cause to the problems with police, poverty, and racism experienced by a broad cross section of the community, and "recognize[d] racism not as separate from history but as part of historical processes and political economy."

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• 2/21/2021
  

  From Red Finn Halls to The Lincoln Brigade: Class Formation on Washington’s “Red Coast”

  by Jerry Lembcke

  If the current crisis revives interest in class as an analytical concept, a recent book on union organizing on the Washington state coast offers a model for reconstructing the work, community and social life of a community. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/17/2021
  

  The Retrograde Quest for Symbolic Prophets of Black Liberation

  by Adolph Reed, Jr.

  The prevailing pattern of invoking activist or intellectual figures from Black history as prophetic exemplars of moral and political authority takes those figures out of their historical contexts and discourages consideration of how racism connects to multiple systems of economic and political power in contemporary crises like COVID-19. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  2/1/2021
  

  Law Enforcement’s Double Standards for Black Radical Activists

  by Denise Lynn

  Those puzzled at the FBI's inability to monitor white supremacist and right-wing extremist groups like those involved in the Capitol rioting should consider how the bureau has historically worked to surveil and harass radical Black organizations like the Sojourners for Truth and Justice. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  2/1/2021
  

  Why Black Marxism, Why Now?

  by Robin D.G. Kelley

  Robin D.G. Kelley places the work of Cedric Robinson in the context of Black radical traditions that have challenged the use of Marxism as a critique of power and politics. 

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• 12/13/2020
  

  Anarchism and the Avant-Garde: Félix Fénéon at the Museum of Modern Art

  by Sam Ben-Meir

  A new MOMA exhibition centers not on artists, but on the avant-garde critic and editor Félix Fénéon, whose championing of innovative artists meshed with his radical politics as a critique of the injustices of modern society.

• 
• SOURCE: In These Times
  12/1/2020
  

  The Great Black Radical You've Never Heard Of

  by Peter Cole

  The author of a new book on an understudied Black labor radical presents context for an exerpt of an interview Ben Fletcher gave to the New York Amsterdam News, a rare surviving case of the organizer telling his own story.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  10/21/2020
  

  Aaron Sorkin Sanitizes the Chicago 7

  by Jeet Heer

  According to Jeet Heer, "Sorkin takes many liberties with the facts, most of which are designed to make both the New Left and its conservative opponents more palatable to contemporary liberal viewers."