New Day in Babylon

The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975

William L. Van Deburg

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 1993
• Print ISBN:
  9780226847153
  9780226847146
• eBook ISBN:
  9780226172354
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The most comprehensive account available of the rise and fall of the Black Power Movement and of its dramatic transformation of both African-American and larger American culture. With a gift for storytelling and an ear for street talk, William Van Deburg chronicles a decade of deep change, from the armed struggles of the Black Panther party to the cultural nationalism of artists and writers creating a new aesthetic. Van Deburg contends that although its tactical gains were sometimes short-lived, the Black Power movement did succeed in making a revolution—one in culture and consciousness—that has changed the context of race in America.

"New Day in Babylon is an extremely intelligent synthesis, a densely textured evocation of one of American history's most revolutionary transformations in ethnic group consciousness."—Bob Blauner, New York Times

Winner of the Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Award, 1993

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction - A Black Power Paradigm
• One - What Is "Black Power"?
• Two - Precursors and Preconditions: Why Was There a Black Power Movement?
• Three - Who Were the "Militants"?
• Four - The Ideologies of Black Power
• Five - Black Power in Afro-American Culture: Folk Expressions
• Six - Black Power and American Culture: Literary and Performing Arts
• Conclusion - Whatever Happened to Black Power?
• Notes
• Index