By 1970, more than 60 "Pan African nationalist" schools, from preschools to post-secondary ventures, had appeared in urban settings across the United States. The small, independent enterprises were often accused of teaching hate and were routinely harassed by authorities. Yet these institutions served as critical mechanisms for transmitting black consciousness. Founded by activist-intellectuals, the schools strove not simply to bolster the academic skills and self-esteem of inner-city African-American youth but also to decolonize minds and embody the principles of self-determination and African identity. In this book, based on his Bancroft Award-winning dissertation, historian Russell Rickford traces the brief lives of these autonomous black institutions created to claim some of the self-determination that the integrationist civil rights movement had failed to provide. Influenced by Third World theorists and anticolonial movements, organizers of the schools saw formal education as a means of creating a vanguard of young activists devoted to the struggle for black political sovereignty throughout the world. Most of the schools were short-lived, but their stories have much to tell us about Pan Africanism as a social and intellectual movement and as a key part of an indigenous black nationalism. A former journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rickford uses a virtually unknown movement to explore black nationhood and a particularly fertile period of political, cultural, and social revitalization that envisioned an alternate society.

About the Author
Russell Rickford is Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of Betty Shabazz: Surviving Malcolm X and the co-author of Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English.

Reviews
[A] significant contribution to the historiography of black power. In this thorough and comprehensive look at black power educational institutions, Rickford reconstructs the history of pro-black power institutions providing instruction, from prekindergarten through high school and postsecondary levels....Rickford should be complimented for thorough research and narration. This excellent book is a 'must' for all interested in black power and African American education. * Akinyele Umoja, The Journal of American History *
[A] strong, scholarly contribution to a much overlooked and continuing educational experiment, one that will, we should hope, start a great many debates that don't have easy answers. * Charles Payne, History of Education Quarterly *


Awards
Winner of Winner of The Liberty Legacy Foundation Award Of The Organization of American Historians.



Book Information
ISBN 9780199861477
Author Russell Rickford
Format Hardback
Page Count 400
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 726g
Dimensions(mm) 163mm * 236mm * 31mm