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Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama |  | Author: Peniel E. Joseph
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 320018
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 046501366X
Dewey Decimal Number: 323.1196073
EAN: 9780465013661
ASIN: 046501366X
Publication Date: January 5, 2010
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Product Description
The Civil Rights Movement is now remembered as a long-lost era, which came to an end along with the idealism of the 1960s. In Dark Days, Bright Nights, acclaimed scholar Peniel E. Joseph puts this pat assessment to the test, showing the 60s—particularly the tumultuous period after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act—to be the catalyst of a movement that culminated in the inauguration of Barack Obama. Joseph argues that the 1965 Voting Rights Act burst a dam holding back radical democratic impulses. This political explosion initially took the form of the Black Power Movement, conventionally adjudged a failure. Joseph resurrects the movement to elucidate its unfairly forgotten achievements. Told through the lives of activists, intellectuals, and artists, including Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Amiri Baraka, Tupac Shakur, and Barack Obama, Dark Days, Bright Nights will make coherent a fraught half-century of struggle, reassessing its impact on American democracy and the larger world.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A New Civil Rights Perspective July 5, 2010
s.nunes
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Dark Days and Bright Nights" gave me a new perspective on the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's. I always viewed the efforts of Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Jessie Jackson, et.al as a unified civil action with multiple facets (NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, etc.) and that the more militant aspect evolved from this base. I was also under the impression that Malcolm X and Stokley Carmichael were, at least in the beginning, on the fringe of the movement until the Black community became frustrated and impatient with lack of progress of the "main stream" civil rights organizations and began to accept a more militant and violent agenda. I was wrong.
After reading this book I realized that my perspective was simplistic and uninformed. Dr. Joseph points out that the militant dimension of the Black Power of the Civil Rights Movement did not evolve from the more mainstream civil rights organizations but rather developed parallel to these movements. Paraphrasing Dr. Joseph's insight, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Jessie Jackson, et. al. were putting pressure to change the system (segregation, racism, Jim Crow) from the outside whereas Black Power movement, personified in Malcolm X and Stokley Carmichael, was concentrated on the inside of the Black community by advocating positive self-identity and the importance of developing a Black power base in local communities. Both Malcolm X and Carmichael were exceptional community organizers and this ultimately constituted the basis for the development of Black Power.
Though the various Civil Rights groups involved in the Movement were directly tied to the rights of African-Americans they did not constitute a united, coordinated, effort but rather constituted a very loose conglomeration of organizations and groups based on divergent philosophies on how to accomplish a single goal--full incorporation of the Black community as full participants in American society, with the rights and privileges guaranteed under the Constitution of the U.S.
Finally, Dr. Joseph's treatment of the election of President Obama is based on the his interpretation of the events of the 60's. I found his observations insightful and interesting. He points out that the election of President Obama does not signify that our racial problems are resolved--his personal achievement does equate to the sudden realization that the racial landscape has changed in America; it has not. That his election is a positive and historic step in the right direction, there is no doubt. But as Dr. Joseph implies, we still have much more to learn from the likes of Malcolm X and Stokley Carmichael.
 Pure Garbage!!!!!!! June 21, 2010
Kelvin Hawkes (Baltimore, MD)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
This drivel, isn't deserving of 1 star. Much of this book is very misleading... Any true student of Pan-African movements in this country hopefully should recognize this garbage for what it is! It is in MY OPINION that this book is and was written for liberal white revisionist historians and of course House N!@@ers! An excellent critic of this trite can be found on Black agenda report by Glen Ford.
Complete waste of money and time.
Dark Days, Bright Nights May 21, 2010
Eddie Hutchinson (Atlanta, GA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Peniel Joesph's deep dive into the civil rights era, culling out Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, et al. to examine the relationship between the men and the movement is unrivaled in its academic analysis. The participants, messages & timelines of the Civil Rights campaign, the era of Black Power/Pan-Africanism and Barack Obama's unprecedented rise to America's highest political office are carefully dissected and analyzed. By comparing and contrasting the civil disobedience generation to Carmichael's Black Power activism to transitioning to Obama's call to adhere to a higher standard of racial harmony, Joseph reveals the connective tissue that binds these iconic figures together.
Dark Days Bright Nights February 24, 2010
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Paniel E. Joseph, of Tufts University and a historical analyst during the 2008 democratic convention, explores the fact that Black Power is an aspect of American History and notes that in the election of Barack Obama as America's first African American President.
In this volume, Joseph tests whether, by means of past assumptions, many people have differing perceptions about Black Power and the Civil Rights movement. He also points out that it was not the people of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that opened a new era; the latter, according to Joseph, opened the door for increased activism. According to the author, Black Power incorporated student intellectuals and politicians who found political change of a global status. Professor Joseph examines further the actions and legacy of Black Power while evaluating the second half of the twentieth century.
This is an outstanding contemporary contribution to the role of Black Power and its influence on politics to date.
Reviewed by Claude Ury
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