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>> vii Acknowledgments Anthem is the product of labor; it is some of the evidence of years of reading, listening, interpreting, writing, conversing, and soul searching . It is also a labor of love, however, due to the many people whom it brought me into contact with, formally and informally. It is a nearly overwhelming honor to thank the many people who have oriented me on my life’s course. To imagine the many hours spent on my behalf by the individuals and communities acknowledged here is humbling. The names on the printed page do not do justice to most of the relationships that I signal, but I nonetheless take this opportunity to try to make your efforts legible. In a very real sense, my intellectual genealogy begins with those who taught me as a child in Wisconsin. Their support helped me to develop the determination that has made all of what I’ve done possible. Thank you Mona Lewis, Patricia Dickert, Greg Nyboe, Rick Weigel, Mary Jo Perry, Wm. Mark Murphy, and especially Everett McKinney. My time at Macalester College introduced me to the “life of the mind” with a threedimensionality that I continue to note and cherish. The friends with and from whom I learned so much are still with me: Sarah Fuentes, Cyndy Harrison, Chad Jones, Grant Loehnig, Sele Nadel-Hayes, Auyana Orr, Kwame Phillips, and Kara Von Blasingame. Professors Mahmoud ElKati , Robert Morris, and Leola Johnson fomented my passions for the study of Black life and culture and trusted my process, even as they challenged me on it. Peter Rachleff has, for more than a decade, been my biggest cheerleader. He modeled for me the political necessity of this work as well as its limits, encouraging me to be the intellectual that I desired to be while also being the activist that I needed to be. For being my mentor and so much more, I thank him. The journey begun in the Midwest led me east to a community of thinkers who continue to influence my every action. While at Yale University I had the pleasure of being part of numerous contiguous viii > ix comrade. Vijay Prashad and Ruth Wilson Gilmore ground and inspire me. George Lipsitz has been a constant reservoir of knowledge and zeal. This book was made possible through the brilliance and friendship of two men with whom I shared limited time but unlimited benefits; I often smile at thoughts of Rudolph P. Byrd and Clyde Woods, two fierce and observant men who made every community that they touched better and who have forever marked my thinking, my work, my life. I have benefitted from a number of intellectual communities along this path. The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and Social Science Research Council continue to be a resource for me all these years later; the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers grew my confidence and my opportunities; the Erskine Peters Dissertation Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame assisted me in finishing and brought me into communion with Richard Pierce; a year in the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University connected me to Dr. Byrd, Calinda Lee, Lawrence Jackson, and Vincent Lloyd, and allowed me time to write; as did the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty, which additionally made possible the important counsel that I received from Brent Hayes Edwards. Funding through the Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences fellowship from the University of Southern California facilitated my passage to South African archives. Archival workers across the country and world made this project viable; thank you to those librarians and archivists at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University where the project began, the Wisconsin Historical Society (Madison), and the Library of Congress. I especially thank Steven Fullwood and his colleagues at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and Randall Burkett at the Manuscript and Rare Book Library (MARBL) at Emory University. In South Africa, the staff of the National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Fort Hare (UFH) provided the space and resources necessary to excavate crucial materials. Bernhard Bleibinger of the Music Department at UFH was a gracious host and guide, and Graeme Gilfillan of the ZM Makeba Trust offered important documents and information while I was in Johannesburg. Robin D. G. Kelley, Vincent Lloyd, and Fred Moten read the entire manuscript. They understood the passions of this...

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