Waiting Till the Midnight Hour

Abstract

After years of neglect by mainstream American academics, the impact of black radicalism¹ on postwar American and world history has begun to be examined in recent social science scholarship.² Such historical inquiry requires journeying to the “lower frequencies”³ and addressing the substantive intellectual, political, and practical questions posed by African American radicals. These intellectual pursuits reflect the resurgence of an increasingly radical black public sphere.⁴ Moreover, this new emphasis on the study of black radicalisms shift from a marginal to a central position within a global political arena provides the potential contextual and historical basis for a counterdiscourse to celebratory pronouncements regarding contemporary historical developments. Amid the rather bleak political landscape proffered by contemporary global political developments,⁵ the dawn of the twenty-first century has provided a much-needed space to reflect on some of the world-historic events that encapsulated the three decades following World War II. As the progenitor for social and political transformation in the postwar era, the civil rights movement provides a historical context for the confusing contemporary political dialectic that oscillates between the erasure and recovery of a modern black radical tradition.