Fighting for US : Maulana Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism

View the Table of Contents . Read the Introduction . ocirc;A detailed and sober account . . .Fighting for USis of enormous and permanent value.ouml; --Publishers Weekly "Readers will find Brown's study a well-researched document on the key era of the 1960s and 1970s, and it will serve as a guide to other scholars as more students of the freedom era take up the challenge to study and explore this rich period in our nation's history." --American Studies ocirc;Brown's portrait is historically sharp and honest. . . . It gives the organization its rightful place in the expanding story of black people's quest for power in America.ouml; --San Francisco Chronicle "Scott Brown has made an extraordinary contribution to the study of the black power era. What [he] achieves is the difficult task of bringing another character into view, one often obscured by the prominence of others or misrepresented by received characterizations. The result is a fascinating glimpse into the rise and fall of one of the black power era's more important organizations. Brown should be commended. The book succeeds in making US a central character in the complex story of black power." --The Journal of American History "Scott Brown's 'untold story' of the activist-scholar Maulana Ron Karenga and his cultural nationalist organization called US is both sympathetic and judicious." --Journal of American Studies "What a fascinating tour through the theory and praxis of Black Power! I'm immensely grateful to Scot Brown for his fine analysis of the intellectual basis of the US Organization as well as its actions in the 1960s and 1970s.Fighting for Usdoes more than situate Maulana Karenga in his various contexts. The book also explains the shifting collaborations and conflicts of the era's Black Power groups with remarkable clarity." --Nell Irvin Painter, author ofSojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol and Southern History Across the Color Line "Scot Brown'sFighting for Usreveals a dimension of black cultural nationalism that, perhaps more than any other of recent decades, has been in need of sustained scholarly attention. A valuable study." --Sterling Stuckey, author ofSlave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America "The US Organization practically defined black cultural nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s, yet we know so little of its history and ideology. Thanks to Scot Brown's subtle and penetrating portrait of the movement and the man behind it, Maulana Karenga, we now have a more complete picture of the period.Fighting for Uswill force us all to rethink our assumptions about black cultural nationalism and the Black Power era." --Robin D. G. Kelley, author ofFreedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination "Brown's work is a necessary correction to existing misinformation regarding the different aspects of the Civil Rights Movement. Readable and interesting, it is a work anyone concerned with the 1960s, civil rights, or African American history will need to read." --Choice "Brown's treatment is the first in-depth examination of this group and its leader. It is a useful book for students of the Back Power movement, particularly since Karenga and US are sometimes overlooked in treatments of the Black Power era." --The Journal of African American History In spite of the ever-growing popularity of Kwanzaa, the story of the influential Black nationalist organization behind the holiday has never been told.Fighting for

Scot Brown is Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at UCLA.