Fighting For Us

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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 Us explores the fascinating history of the US Organization, a Black nationalist group based in California that played a leading role in Black Power politics and culture during the late 1960s and early '70s whose influence is still felt today.

Advocates of Afrocentric renewal, US unleashed creative and intellectual passions that continue to fuel debate and controversy among scholars and students of the Black Power movement. Founded in 1965 by Maulana Karenga, US established an extensive network of alliances with a diverse body of activists, artists and organizations throughout the United States for the purpose of bringing about an African American cultural revolution.

Fighting for US presents the first historical examination of US' philosophy, internal dynamics, political activism and influence on African American art, making an elaborate use of oral history interviews, organizational archives, Federal Bureau of Investigation files, newspaper accounts, and other primary sources of the period.

This book also sheds light on factors contributing to the organization's decline in the early '70s--government repression, authoritarianism, sexism, and elitist vanguard politics. Previous scholarship about US has been shaped by a war of words associated with a feud between US and the Black Panther Party that gave way to a series of violent and deadly clashes in Los Angeles.

Venturing beyond the lingering rhetoric of rivalry, this book illuminates the ideological similarities and differences between US's cultural nationalism and the Black Panther Party's revolutionary nationalism. Today, US's emphasis on culture has endured as evidenced by the popularity of Kwanzaa and the Afrocentrism in Black art and popular media.

Engaging and original, Fighting for US will be the definitive work on Maulana Karenga, the US organization, and Black cultural nationalism in America. Review: A detailed and sober account ... Fighting for US is of enormous and permanent value. --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 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. --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 Us does 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 of Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol and Southern History Across the Color Line Scot Brown's Fighting for Us reveals 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