Not Ready for "Nation Time"

A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) & Black Power Politics. By Komozi Woodard. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 329 pages. $34.95 (cloth). $17.95 (paper).

Scholars are just beginning to take notice of the phase of the African American freedom movement known as Black Power. It is interesting to note that a good deal of the initial academic interest in Black Power has emphasized its cultural dimensions. This is understandable, given the prominence of cultural nationalism within Black Power. Unquestionably, for many, the Black Power era was experienced and remembered through popular culture. It was within popular culture, in the work of Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets, for example, that we received the most pointed and sophisticated critiques of mass media co-optations of Black Power militancy. Moreover, in the streetwise prose of Toni Cade Bambara, and in her edited volume, The Black Woman, one could find brilliant and impassioned criticism of the adventurism and sexism often characteristic of revolutionary nationalism after the death of Malcolm X. But while discussions of the liberatory potential of Afro-diasporic and African cultures were central to the period and to Black studies discourse (think of the influence of Frantz Fanon, Harold Cruse, and indeed, Amiri Baraka), there remains, nevertheless, the potential for historical amnesia and trivialization. Angela Davis has noted the tendency of recent mass media representations of the 1960s to repress and obscure more inclusive and progressive articulations of Black Power politics. ¹ Not long ago, what passed for "black culture" in Austin, Texas was a Blaxploitation night at the local art cinema catering to the "hip, white, and twentysomething" set. For the price of admission, one could enjoy the evening's featured attraction along with a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor.

Komozi Woodard's study of the rise and fall of the Black Power movement in Newark provides a necessary antidote to historical erasure, cultural iconography, and outright stereotyping. Grounded in rigorous archival research, Woodard's book provides a detailed account of the origins, aspirations, and achievements of Black Power. For those of us whose students clamor for scholarship on the movement, Woodard's study performs a tremendous service. ² A Nation Within a Nation is a powerful account of the co-optation of the black movement in Newark by that city's white-dominated urban regime with the complicity of black elected officials who, ironically, owed their very position to the mass mobilization for black empowerment. Its insights will enable us to revisit the complicated and stormy ideological debates of the period with the necessary calm and wisdom.

The other major subject of Woodard's book is the political activism of the poet and playwright Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones). Woodard demonstrates that Baraka was much more than the enfant terrible of American literature. By treating Baraka with the utmost seriousness, Woodard teaches us much about this major intellectual and his era. That said, in his evident desire to emphasize the depth of Baraka's engagement with black politics, Woodard's admiration for Baraka appears to have precluded a more critical approach. But compared to Baraka's antagonists in A Nation Within a Nation, including racist white police and politicians, murderous henchmen in rival black cultural nationalist organizations, and erstwhile black political allies corrupted by the mob and Newark's machine, the poet comes off as positively statesmanlike in such unsavory company. Woodard's study is valuable to researchers precisely because of its singular focus on Baraka's political activities and contributions, which might otherwise have remained obscure even to scholars of Baraka.

Throughout, Baraka's writings are quoted sparingly, and Woodard provides scant discussion of the relationship of his ideas to his political initiatives. Woodard is primarily concerned with documenting the role of black cultural nationalism as the catalyst for mass mobilization and the creation of independent black political organizations on a national scale. Usefully, Woodard directs us to regard black power politics as [End Page...