In this refreshingly candid intellectual autobiography, Robert C. Smith traces the evolution of his consciousness and identity from his early days in rural Louisiana to his emergence as one of the nation’s leading scholars of African American politics. He interweaves this personal narrative with the significant events and cultural flashpoints of the last half of the twentieth century, including the Watts Rebellion, the rise of the Black Power movement, the tumultuous protests at Berkeley, and the sex and drug revolutions of the 1960s. As a graduate student he experiences the founding of Black Studies, the grounding in blackness at Howard University, and, as a professor, the swirling controversies and contradictions of Black Studies and feminism at San Francisco State University. Smith also locates his story in the context of the scholarly literature on African American politics, imbuing it with his own personal perspective. His account illuminates the past but, at the same time, looks toward the future of the long struggle by African American scholars to use knowledge as a base of power in the fight against racism and white supremacy.
Tabella dei contenuti
Introduction
1. Growing Up Accommodating Segregation with Community and Culture
2. The Awakening: Malcolm, Black Power, and Black Studies
3. Berkeley: Revolution in the Air
4. Los Angeles Redux: UCLA and Bird
5. New York City, the New School, and Discovering Ethnicity
6. Howard and the Black Experience
7. The College at Purchase and the Conservation of Human Resources
8. Howard Redux and Prairie View
9. San Francisco State: Controversies, Contradictions, and Black Liberation Scholarship
10. The End
Notes
Index
Circa l’autore
Robert C. Smith is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University. He is the author of many books, including
African American Leadership (coauthored with Ronald W. Walters);
John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance; and
Ronald W. Walters and the Fight for Black Power, 1969–2010, all published by SUNY Press.
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