Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

262 Pages·2003·1.45 MB·English

by  Robin D.G. Kelley

Freedom Dreams
 . . 
“A powerful book....Robin D.G.Kelley produces histories of black rad-
icalism and visions of the future that defy convention and expectation.”
— . 
Love and imagination may be the in the imaginative mindscapes of
most revolutionary impulses Surrealism, in the transformative po-
available to us, and yet we have tential of radical feminism, and in the
failed to understand their political four-hundred-year-old dream of
importance and respect them as reparations for slavery and Jim
powerful social forces. Crow.
This history of renegade intellec- WithFreedom Dreams,Kelley af-
tuals and artists of the African dias- firms his place as “a major new voice
pora throughout the twentieth cen- on the intellectual left” (Frances Fox
turybegins with the premise that the Piven) and shows us that any serious
catalyst for political engagement has movement toward freedom must be-
never been misery, poverty, or op- gin in the mind.
pression. People are drawn to social
movement because of hope: their Robin D. G. Kelley, a frequent con-
dreams of a new world radically dif- tributor to the New York Times,is
ferent from the one they inherited. professor of history and Africana
From Aimé Césaire to Paul Robe- studies at New York University and
son to Jayne Cortez, Kelley unearths author of the award-winning Ham-
freedom dreams in Africa and Third mer and Hoe,Race Rebels,andYo’
World liberation movements, in the Mama’s Disfunktional!He lives in
hope that Communism had to offer, New York City.
When History Sleeps: A Beginning i
F R E E D O M D R E A M S
ii Freedom Dreams
Other works by Robin D. G. Kelley
Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century
(with Howard Zinn and Dana Frank)
Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in
Urban America
Into the Fire: African Americans since 1970
Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the
Great Depression
To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans
(coedited with Earl Lewis)
When History Sleeps: A Beginning iii
F R E E D O M
D R E A M S
T H E
B L A C K
R A D I C A L
I M A G I N A T I O N
R O B I N D . G . K E L L E Y
BEACON PRESS
BOSTON
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2002 by Robin D. G. Kelley
All rights reserved
First electronic edition 2002
Text design by Sara Eisenman
Composition by Speedlowe & Boone
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelley, Robin D. G.
Freedom dreams : the Black radical imagination / Robin D. G. Kelley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8070-0978-4
ISBN 0-8070-0976-8 (Hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Black power—United States—History. 2. African Americans—Civil
rights. 3. Civil rights movements—United States—History. 4. African
American arts. 5. Radicalism—United States—History. 6. United States—
Race relations—History. 7. African diaspora. I. Title.
E185 .K39 2002
305.896´073—dc21 2001007470
When History Sleeps: A Beginning v
For my big sister,
Makani Themba Nixon
And in loving memory of
Lisa Y. Sullivan
(1961–2001)
and
Joe Wood, Jr.
(1964–1999)
Three dreamers who do.
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Preface vii
C O N T E N T S
Preface vii
“When History Sleeps”: A Beginning 1
1. Dreams of the New Land 13
2. “The Negro Question”: Red Dreams of Black Liberation 36
3. “Roaring from the East”: Third World Dreaming 60
4. “A Day of Reckoning”: Dreams of Reparations 110
5. “This Battlefield Called Life”: Black Feminist Dreams 135
6. Keeping It (Sur)real: Dreams of the Marvelous 157
“When History Wakes”: A New Beginning 195
Sources 199
Acknowledgments 227
Index 233
Credits 247
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