Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America: A Historical Perspective (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies)

Book info: Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America: A Historical Perspective (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies) (Hardcover, 252 pages) – University Press of Mississippi, 2017. Language: English.

Contributions by Tunde Adeleke, Brian D. Behnken, Minkah Makalani, Benita Roth, Gregory D. Smithers, Simon Wendt, and Danielle L. WigginsBlack intellectualism has been misunderstood by the American public and by scholars for generations. Historically maligned by their peers and by the lay public as inauthentic or illegitimate, black intellectuals have found their work misused, ignored, or discarded. Black intellectuals have also been reductively placed into one or two main categories: they are usually deemed liberal or, less frequently, as conservative. The contributors to this volume explore several prominent intellectuals, from left-leaning leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois to conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, from well-known black feminists such as Patricia Hill Collins to Marxists like Claudia Jones, to underscore the variety of black intellectual thought in the United States.Contributors also situate the development of the lines of black intellectual thought within the broader history from which these trends emerged. The result gathers essays that offer entry into a host of rich intellectual traditions.

About the Author Brian Behnken is Professor of history at Iowa State University. He also holds affiliate faculty positions in the U.S. Latino/a Studies and African and African American Studies Programs. He is the author of Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas and, with Gregory D. Smithers, Racism in American Popular Media: From Aunt Jemima to the Frito Bandito.