By Our Own Strength: William Sherrill, the UNIA, and the Fight for African American Self-Determination in Detroit by Kenneth Jolly (review)

118 The Michigan Historical Review political and economic frameworks, like kinship and expressions of identity. The second section, Manifestations, offers readers four essays that collectively identify the expected and unexpected locations of tribal expressions of nationhood. Joshua L. Reid and Chantal Noorgard locate manifestations of national identity in language, both historic and contemporary. Adrianna Greci Green and Jenny Tome-Pah-Hote challenge readers to examine material culture as the site for the assertion of indigenous nationalism. The study of nationhood, nationalism, and the nation-state in the hands of indigenous scholars challenges established meanings and interpretations. This volume, and the insight of both editors, is evidence of those vigorous endeavors. Dawn G. Marsh Purdue University Kenneth Jolly. By Our Own Strength: William Sherrill, the UNIA, and the Fight for African American Self-Determination in Detroit. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2013. Pp. 266. Paper, $38.95. In “By Our Own Strength,” Kenneth Jolly seeks to demonstrate the centrality of William Sherrill to the Universal Negro Improvement Association, especially after the death of Marcus Garvey, and to explore early Black Nationalism in Detroit. While the two overlap—Sherrill’s columns regularly appeared in the Michigan Chronicle and he ran for a seat on the Detroit Common Council in 1939—they are two separate stories. Sherrill’s work with the UNIA was international in perspective, confirming one of Jolly’s main arguments about Garvyism. Likewise, the long struggle for black liberation in Detroit involved far more than Sherrill and the UNIA. Both stories are well worth telling, but Jolly’s effort to tell them together is ultimately disappointing. The strength of Jolly’s work lies in the sheer quantity of research. He documents Sherrill’s efforts to maintain the UNIA after Garvey’s death, showing Sherrill’s dedication to a program of economic and political self-determination for African Americans, both locally and internationally. He also explores police brutality as the crystalizing impetus for the political activism of 1939 and uses the municipal elections as a window into Black Nationalist organizing in Detroit, demonstrating that African American organizing predated the wellknown riots of 1943. However, Jolly never really explains the Book Reviews 119 relationship between William Sherrill and African American activism in Detroit beyond the election of 1939. The book’s organization is hard to follow. Chapter 4, “Expressions of Garvyism and Black Nationalism,” provides information the reader needed to fully understand Jolly’s arguments in the previous two chapters; reordering these chapters would have helped immensely. Similarly, the interjection of Sherrill’s project to incorporate a predominately black neighborhood into the separate municipality of Crispus detracts from the overall narrative of the 1939 election. The work is also redundant to the point of reusing extended quotations (p. 84 and p. 138), and the overall impression is that of a work rushed through production. Jolly leaves a variety of questions unanswered. While he establishes that Sherrill was content, at the beginning of World War II, to allow the European nations to exhaust themselves in war, Jolly moves directly from a June 1941 editorial to his views on the post war period without indicating what Sherrill thought about the war after Pearl Harbor (p. 173). Jolly also refrains from noting Sherrill’s factual errors, such as his naming Africa as the “largest continent” (p. 213). This is consistent with his general unwillingness to be critical of Sherrill. For example, Sherrill led the UNIA increasingly toward a role of supporting the African independence movements necessarily led by Africans. While Jolly’s own evidence indicates that this cost the UNIA the prophetic vision it had had under Garvey, which substantively contributed to its inability to attract or maintain members, he seems too close to Sherrill to offer such a critique of his leadership. Jolly’s arguments in “By Our Own Strength” are interesting and valuable, but the book is difficult to follow and marred by redundancy. Most tragically, the author fails to illuminate fully either William Sherrill’s contributions to Black Nationalist thought or the deep roots of black liberation in Detroit, largely because he tries to tie the two too closely together. Alan Scot Willis Northern Michigan University Edward Lorenz. Civic Empowerment in an Age...