Mainstreaming Black Power

Mainstreaming Black Power upends the narrative that the Black Power movement allowed for a catharsis of black rage but achieved little institutional transformation or black uplift. Retelling the story of the 1960s and 1970s across the United States—and focusing on New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles—this book reveals how the War on Poverty cultivated black self-determination politics and demonstrates that federal, state, and local policies during this period bolstered economic, social, and educational institutions for black control. Mainstreaming Black Power shows more convincingly than ever before that white power structures did engage with Black Power in specific ways that tended ultimately to reinforce rather than challenge existing racial, class, and gender hierarchies. This book emphasizes that Black Power’s reach and legacies can be understood only in the context of an ideologically diverse black community.

Tom Adam Davies is Lecturer in American History at the University of Sussex.

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction
1 • “A Mouthful of Civil Rights and an Empty Belly”: The War on Poverty and the Fight for Racial Equality
2 • Community Development Corporations, Black Capitalism, and the Mainstreaming of Black Power
3 • Black Power and Battles over Education
4 • Black Mayors and Black Progress: The Limits of Black Political Power
Conclusion

Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index