Black 1968

Initially, the 1960s was a time of understandable optimism. The civil rights movement and the legislation it inspired suggested an end to institutionalized racism in the United States, while in the Global South, the emergence of independent states anticipated political liberation and increased prosperity. So, when racial discrimination, entrenched privilege, cold war politics, and fiscal reality dashed these hopes later in the decade, the world experienced a wave of protests. Conventional narratives of 1968 focus on student strikes, revolutions and coups, assassinations, and the reactionary backlash that they inspired. The chapters of Black 1968 reveal the imperfectly documented and heretofore unrecognized bonds that led peoples of African descent around the world to articulate new global conceptions of Blackness as a way to mount local challenges to racism, segregation, colonialism, economic exploitation, generational authority, and cultural chauvinism. This book will be of interest to general readers interested in the global 1968 as well as scholars of Blackness and global history.

Timothy H. Parsons is a social historian holding joint appoints in the departments of History and African and African American Studies at Washington University.

Chapter 1 Introduction Timothy H. Parsons Chapter 2 'We Are Not White. We Don't Want to Be White': Washington University's Black Radical Awakening Olivia Kerr Chapter 3 The Great Memory: How St. Clair County Remembers Martin Luther King Jr. Jeffrey Edison Chapter 4 Melvin Van Peebles, James Brown, Frank Yerby and Some Observations about the Black 1968 Gerald Early Chapter 5 Black 1968 and Palestine: Transnationalism, Anti-Imperialism, and Revolutionary Culture Michael R. Fischback Chapter 6 'We Shall Overcome' and Ireland: The Transatlantic Politics of a Protest Song Daniel Geary and Jack Sheehan Chapter 7 Black Power in Britain: How the 1968 Race Relations Act Disrupted a Movement Melanie R. Holmes Chapter 8 How the Banning of Walter Rodney Led to the Birth of Bogle L'Ouverture Publications Kadija Sesay Chapter 9 The Ideological Melting Pot of the Senegalese Rebels in 1968: Between Marxism, Fanonism and Pan-Africanism Pascal Bianchini Chapter 10 May 1968 and the Question of Africanization of the Educational System in Senegal El Hadji Samba A. Diallo Chapter 11 Black Enclaves after Reconstruction: Cultivating Collective Identity in Preparation for the Revolution of 1968 Geraldine (Geri) L. Palmer