Black Power in the Bluff City: African American Youth and Student Activism in Memphis, 1965–1975 by Shirletta J. Kinchen (review)

Black Power in the Bluff City is a timely book that portrays how the long struggle for freedom is complicated by the sociopolitical context and the actors involved. Those of us who study social movements, especially during the early to late twentieth century, know that places and people greatly influence how we understand the civil rights and Black Power movements. Unfortunately, there are instances in which the narrative about a place and the people who occupy that space can become shallow. A good example of this occurring is Memphis, Tennessee. Within the historical literature of the civil rights movement, the significance of Memphis is that beloved civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., visited in support of the sanitation workers' strike, and it was the place where King met his untimely demise.

The assassination of Dr. King added to the intercommunity and intra-community friction that existed before King's death, and this tragedy exacerbated those frictions. Shirletta J. Kinchen's work is a recollection of why those frictions existed before and after the death of King. Furthermore, the author articulates how these frictions did not end the fight for justice and equality but reshaped, meshed, and morphed the local freedom movement to meet the needs of black Memphians. Kinchen's examination of Memphis complicates our understanding of a place and of people that were able to attract such a beloved figure.

By the time King made his way to Memphis, there was an awareness within the black community of the injustices that plagued the city. According to Kinchen, that awareness lead to competing actions that existed from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s. In essence, the summation of this project is about genuine concerns for communities gravely affected by injustices with very different ways to address those injustices. The author states, "Youth and student activism helped shape the black freedom movement in Memphis. Black Power… served as an ideological counterpoint to the community's established black leadership" (188). Those competing ideologies were influenced by what was going on nationally, which the author contextualizes in the introduction. The freedom movement in Memphis is further discussed in chapter 1 through an exploration of the activism and the leadership in the early 1960s. The following chapters—2 and 3—illuminate how the remnant strategies associated with civil rights along with revolutionary ideas linked with black power culminated into a more confrontational and self-determined movement. Using the Black Organization Project (BOP) and the Invaders, the author argues that the fight for equality was largely shaped by young people, students and non-students, who did not adopt non-violent direct action protest.

The most substantive chapters of this book are 3 through 5 because they provide insight into the movement in Memphis that goes beyond the sanitation strike and King's death. Even when Kinchen discusses the protest that many believed contributed to the assassination of King, she complicates this narrative by explaining why the BOP and the Invaders' refusal to adopt nonviolence should not be held liable for such a tragedy. Furthermore, the author portrays the ways in which the organization was able to move beyond the stigma of such a tragic narrative that made them essential to the student movement that took place on the campus of LeMoyne-Owen College and Memphis State University.

The effectiveness of each protest stemmed from the students' ability to curtail their grievances to their respective institution and administration. The activism of black students who attended LeMoyne-Owen, a historically black college, was very different than the black students who attended the predominately white university—Memphis State (which is now the University of Memphis). According to Kinchen, the difference in protest was based on the fact that each institution presented unique sets of challenges. Black students at LeMoyne-Owen fought to have more input and...