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American Quarterly.
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Liberation,1955-1970
MELANIMcALISTER
The George Washington University
spheresof culturalactivity,markedtheextraordinary
influenceof Islam
in the African American community in the 1960s. Two prominent
African American men, one an athlete, the other a poet and a
playwright,took highly visible and conscious steps away from theirold
identities and affiliations and began instead to articulate a black
Melani McAlister is an assistant professor of American studies at The George
WashingtonUniversityin Washington,D.C. Her book on the culturalpolitics of U.S.Middle East encountersis forthcoming.
AmericanQuarterly,
Vol.51, No. 3 (September
1999) 1999AmericanStudiesAssociation
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In the early to mid-1960s, the Nation of Islam broughtits interpretation of Islam to prominencein the African American community,and
defined Islam as the religion of black Americanmilitancy.For African
Americans disaffected with the Christianchurch-those frustratedby
the commitment of black Christians to brotherhoodwith whites or
angered by the continuing violence by white Christiansagainst nonviolent civil rights activists-Islam offered an alternative.Islam, its
adherentsargued,providedthe basis for a black nationalistconsciousness that was separatefrom the civil rights goals of integrationinto a
white-dominatedand oppressive nation. Islam offered a set of values
and beliefs that were at once spiritual,political, and cultural.As LeRoi
Jones described it, Islam offered "what the Black man needs, a
reconstruction... a total way of life that he can involve himself with
that is post-American,in a sense."'17The Nation of Islam in particular
provided an both an alternative religious affiliation and a countercitizenship, an identity that challenged black incorporationinto the
dominantdiscourse of Judeo-ChristianAmerican-ness.
The NOI emerged as a significant social and political force in the
black community in the late 1950s after a period of disarray and
declining membershipin the 1940s. When Malcolm X was released
from Norfolk prison in 1952, he quickly came to play a majorrole in
the organization'sexpansion, establishingtemples in cities all over the
country.By December 1959, the Nation had fifty temples in twentytwo states; the numberof members in the organizationis difficult to
estimate, but by 1962 was probablyin the range of 50,000 to 100,000,
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the late 1950s and early 1960s, ministersbroughta message of worldwide black Islam to thousands of African American converts.22The
Nation taught that Islam was the "naturalreligion of the black man,"
which had been strippedfrom the Africans who were sold into slavery
and taught their masters' Christianity.Lectures in the temples often
harshly indicted the traditionalChristianityof the African American
church and arguedthat AfricanAmericans should recognize their true
heritageas the descendantsof the Muslim prophetMuhammed.Arabic,
the Nation taught,was the original language of black people, not only
because many of the Africans who were taken into slavery and carried
to the new world spoke Arabic, but also because "the so-called
Negroes"in Americawere descendantsof the originalArabic-speaking
peoples to whom Islam was revealed.23As the religious service began,
the minister greeted his parishioners with the Arabic greeting: Assalaam-alaikum(peace be with you) and the membersresponded,waAlaikumas-salaam (and also with you). At the Islamic schools set up
by the Nation, Arabic lessons were an integralpart of the curriculum:
Arabic language instructionwas said to began at the age of three.24
The Nation's theology included an alternativegenealogy for black
Americans, who were understoodto be descendants of the original
inhabitants of Asia in general and Mecca in particular.As Elijah
Muhammadwrote in his 1965 treatise, Message to the Blackman in
America: "It is Allah's (God's) will and purpose that we shall know
ourselves. ...He has declared that we are descendants of the Asian
black nation and the tribe of Shabazz ... [t]he first to discover the best
part of our planet to live on. The rich Nile Valley of Egypt and the
present seat of the Holy City, Mecca, Arabia."25
The Nation of Islam's assertionthat all black people were by nature
Muslims was part of its critique of black Christianity-a critique that
was at once theological, political, and historical. NOI meetings often
had a display, drawnon a blackboard,featuringtwo flags: on one side
of the boardwas a U.S. flag with a cross beside it, and underneathit the
caption, "Slavery,Suffering,and Death."On the other side was drawn
a flag bearing the Crescent, and underneathit the words, "Islam:
Freedom,Justice, and Equality."Beneathboth was a question:"Which
one will survive the War of Armageddon?"26Elijah Muhammad's
message to African Americans focused on pride and transformation.
The Christianityof their slave mastershad functionedto continuetheir
spiritual enslavement, he argued, but Islam, which built upon the
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Within the NOI paradigm,Jews were not those whose ancient history
was the prototypefor contemporaryliberation,as was the case for King
and other civil rights leaders, but those whose putative status as "the
chosen people"had usurpedthe position of the black people in relation
to God. This scripturalinterpretationdid a complex culturalwork for
the Nation. Surely this metaphoricalremoval of Jews from the stories
of the Old Testamenthad particularsalience in terms of the domestic
tensions that were alreadyrife in urbanareas between AfricanAmericans and Jews.34Obviously, it carriedthe kernels of the NOI's anti-
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Egyptian seizure of the Suez canal and opposed the invasion in its
various publications.42And though the Suez crisis did not receive as
extensive coverage as Bandunghad in the rest of the black press (which
was focused on the Montgomerybus boycott and other developments
in the emergent civil rights movement), many black intellectuals also
respondedcritically. Right after Suez, W. E. B. Du Bois, a long-time
supporterof Israel, hailed Nasser (and criticized Israel's role in the
invasion) in a poem published in Masses and Mainstream:"Beware,
white world, that great black hand/ Which Nasser's power waves/
Grasps hard the concentrated hate/ Of myriad million slaves."43
Observers would later look back on Suez as something of a turning
point in African American perceptions of the Middle East-the moment in which Arab anticolonialismcame home to black Americans.44
The Nation of Islam identified with colonized nations politically,
from the standpointof a "colored"nation oppressed by whites, but it
also drew very specifically on cultural and religious identifications
with Arab nations, which were understood to be also racial and
historical.A year after Suez, in December 1957, Malcolm X organized
a meeting on colonial and neocolonial issues that included representatives from the governments of Egypt, the Sudan, Ghana, Iraq, and
Morocco. That meeting, hosted by the Nation, sent a cable from Elijah
Muhammad to Nasser, who was hosting the Afro-Asian People's
Solidarity Conference in Cairo. In it, Elijah Muhammad,describing
himself as the "SpiritualHead of the Nation of Islam in the West,"
addressed Nasser and the other national leaders as brothers, as coreligionists, and as peers:
As-Salaam-Alikum.Your long lost Muslim brothershere in America pray
that Allah's divine presence will be felt at this historic African-Asian
Conference,and give unity to our efforts for peace and brotherhood.
Freedom, justice, and equality for all Africans and Asians is of far-
reachingimportance,
notonlyto youof theEast,butalsoto over17,000,000
of yourlong-lostbrothersof African-Asian
descentherein theWest....May
our sincere desire for universalpeace which is being manifestedat this great
conferenceby all Africansand Asians, bringaboutthe unity andbrotherhood
among all our people which we all so eagerly desire.45
The cable, and Nasser's friendly reply, circulated widely within the
Nation; these contacts later facilitated Malcolm X's trip to Egypt in
1959, where he laid the groundworkfor Elijah Muhammad'svisit to
Mecca in 1960.46
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say it
sweet nigger
i believe in black allah
governorof creation
Lord of the Worlds
As Salaam Alikum
-Amiri Baraka, 196953
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The culturaland religious influence of Islam would play an importantrole in AfricanAmericanresponsesto the 1967 Arab-Israeliwara war that marked the first major armed conflict in eleven years
between Israel and Arab states, and which for the first time made
Palestinians(the "refugees"from the foundingof Israelin 1948) into a
highly visible componentof the conflict. In May of 1967, the ongoing
tensions between Israel, Egypt, and Syria escalated dramatically.
EgyptianpresidentNasser, involved in a war of words with conservative Arabregimes over the directionof Arabpolitics, had recentlybeen
criticizedby Jordanand Syria for hypocrisy and cowardicein continuing to allow UN troops to be stationed on the Egyptian side of the
borderwith Israel. The UN troops had been positioned in the Sinai in
1957, to guardthe peace afterthe Suez crisis, but Israel had refused to
allow UN peacekeeperson its side of the border.Nasser, stung by the
accusations and attempting to regain his prestige as the region's
preeminentnationalistleader, moved his own troops into the Sinai in
May 1967 and asked the United Nations to withdraw.Several days
later,Nasser provocativelyclosed the Straitof Tiranto Israelishipping.
As American and Europeandiplomats scrambledto cobble together a
multilateraldiplomaticand/ormilitaryresponse (the United States was
particularly concerned to act carefully in light of the increasing
controversiesover the war in Vietnam), Israel insisted on the right of
navigation throughthe internationalwaters of the Strait and declared
the closure an act of war. On 5 June with tensions escalating on all
sides, Israel launched an air attack that virtually destroyed both the
Egyptianand Syrianair forces on the ground.Immediately,Jordanalso
enteredthe battle, attackingIsrael with artilleryand air power. In just
six days, the war was over, with Israelthe clear victor.As a resultof the
conflict, the Israelis conqueredseveral territoriesthat had been previously controlled by Arab countries: the Gaza strip (Egypt), East
Jerusalemandthe WestBank (Jordan),andthe GolanHeights (Syria).82
The mainstreamAfricanAmericanreactionto the war was generally
muted, though decidedly on the side of Israel. But the younger black
liberationmovement, now moving in an increasinglyradicaldirection,
had a very differentresponse.Already,young black activists, building
on the cultural politics articulatedby leaders like Malcolm X and
Baraka and influenced by the writings of anticolonialist and marxist
FranzFanon, had begun to describethe situationof AfricanAmericans
as one of internalcolonization. Increasingly,they drew parallelsto the
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struggles for decolonization:from MuhammadAli's jubilant affirmation that he was "not an American,"but "a black man,"to the young
activistscarryingaroundworn copies of Wretchedof the Earth.83These
are "The Last Days of the American Empire,"Jones/Barakawrote in
1964, and for AfricanAmericansto love America would be to become
"equallyculpable for the evil done to the rest of the world."84
This was nowhere more true than in SNCC, which, though it had
been originally allied with the SouthernChristianLeadershipCouncil
(SCLC) and the Christian-basedcivil rights organizations,had become
increasinglyidentified with the internalcolonization model for understandingAfricanAmerican oppression.In May 1967, the organization
made its internationalist approach apparent by declaring itself a
"Human Rights Organization,"establishing an InternationalAffairs
Commission, applying for non-governmentalorganization(NGO) status at the United Nations, and announcingthatit would "encourageand
supportthe liberation struggles against colonialism, racism, and economic exploitation"aroundthe world.85This internationalistapproach
was not an innovation, or a radical departure;it built on both the
anticolonialactivism of earliergenerationsof black Americansand the
more recentculturaland political influence of Islam andAfrican-based
religions. But SNCC's stance was seen-as it was intended to be
seen-as a clear indicationthatthe organizationwas makinga decisive
breakwith the mainstreamcivil rights organizationsand theirmodel of
liberationin one country.
It was in this context that the SNCC newsletter, in the summer of
1967, printedan article about the Arab-Israeliwar. In June,just after
the six-day war erupted, the Central Committee had requested that
SNCC's researchand communicationsstaff investigatethe background
to the conflict. A few weeks later,the organizationnewslettercarriedan
articlethat describedthe war and the post-warIsraelioccupationof the
West Bank and Gaza in a decidedly pro-Arabfashion. The list of facts
about"thePalestineproblem"was highly criticalof Israel(and not just
the recent war):
Did you know that the Zionists conqueredArab homes throughterror,force,
and massacres?Did you know ... thatthe U.S. governmenthas workedalong
with Zionist groups to supportIsrael so that America may have a toehold in
that strategicMiddle East location, therebyhelping white Americato control
and exploit the rich Arab nations?"86
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withAfrica.Thisalternative
was farmorethana policycritique,it was
a redefinitionanda remapping.It was the searchfor an identitythat
would be, as both Baraka and Neal put it, "post-American"-some-
NOTES
1. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York, 1963), 46. Originallypublished
in TheNew Yorker,17 Nov. 1962. I owe thanksto the friendsand colleagues who read
earlierversions of this article,particularlyCarlConetta,Ruth Feldstein,Jane Gerhard,
James A. Miller, Teresa Murphy,Brad Verter,Uta Poiger, RobertVitalis, Stacy Wolf,
participantsin the religion and culture workshop at PrincetonUniversity's Center for
the Study of Religion, and the anonymousreviewers for American Quarterly.
2. Malcolm X, speech at Boston University, 15 Feb. 1960, quoted by C. Eric
Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, 3d. ed. (New York, 1994), 169.
3. On the day afterthe fight, Clay announcedthathe "believedin Allah";at a second
press conferencethe following day, he clarifiedhis membershipin the Nation of Islam.
See Thomas Hauser,MuhammadAli: His Life and Times (New York, 1991), 81-84.
John McDermott,"Champ23: A Man-ChildTaken In By the Muslims,"Life, 6 Mar.
1964, 38-39; Huston Horn, "The First Days in the New Life of the Championof the
World,"SportsIllustrated,9 Mar. 1964, 26ff; "Prizefighting:With Mouthand Magic,"
Time, 6 Mar. 1964, 66-69.
4. See "CassiusMarcellusClay," Time, 22 Mar. 1963, 78-81; Pete Hamill "Young
Cassius Has a Mean & Sonny Look,"New YorkPost, 8 Mar. 1963; HowardTuckner,
"'Man, It's Great To Be Great,'"New YorkTimes, 9 Dec. 1962; and "C. Marcellus
Clay Esq." Sports Illustrated, 10 June 1963, 19-25.
5. Malcolm X with Alex Haley, TheAutobiographyof MalcolmX (1964; New York,
1992), 349-56; Bruce Perry,Malcolm: the Life of a Man who ChangedBlack America
(Barrytown, N.Y., 1991), 245-50; Stan Koven, "The Muslim Dinner and Cassius
Clay," New YorkPost, 23 Jan. 1964; William Braden,"MuslimsClaim the Creditfor
Clay's Victory,"New YorkPost, 2 Feb. 1964; "CassiusX," Newsweek, 16 Mar. 1964.
6. Ted Poston, "Clay in Malcolm X's Cornerin Black Muslim Fight," New York
Post, 3 Mar. 1964; J. Cannon,"TheMuslims' Prize,"JournalAmerican,23 Feb. 1965;
"CassiusClay Says He is Not 'Scared' of Killing Reprisal,"New YorkTimes, 24 Feb.
1965; Milton Gross, "TheMen AroundCassius Clay,"New YorkPost, 28 May 1965;
"FBI Probes Muhammadand Clay," New YorkPost, 28 Feb. 1966.
7. Robert Lipsyte, "Cassius Clay, Cassius X, MuhammadAli," New York Times
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Magazine, 25 Oct. 1964, 29ff. See also Alex Haley's Playboy interview with Ali in
Oct. 1964, repr.in MurrayFisher,ed., Alex Haley: ThePlayboy Interviews(New York,
1993), 46-79.
8. Bill Jaus, "Cassius:I'm Still Unfit," New YorkPost, 21 Feb. 1966. See Henry
Hampton and Steve Fayer, Voices of Freedom (New York, 1990), 321-34; Hauser,
MuhammadAli, 142-201.
9. Sanchez is quoted in Hamptonand Fayer, Voices of Freedom, 328.
10. For a very useful discussion of Baraka'searly work, see JamesA. Miller, "Amiri
Baraka,"in TheBeats: LiteraryBohemiansin PostwarAmerica:Dictionary of Literary
Biography, Vol. 16 (Detroit, 1983), 3-24.
11. Barakadescribes writing the play in The Autobiographyof LeRoi Jones/Amiri
Baraka (New York, 1984), 210; his affiliation with Sunni Islam is discussed, 267-69.
Barakasays thatJaaber"buriedMalcolm X," but PeterGoldmanmentionsonly Sheikh
Ahmed Hassoun, the Sudanesecleric who had returnedwith Malcolm X from Mecca.
The Death and life of Malcolm X (Urbana,I11.,1979), 302.
' 12. The designation of Barakacame from a poll of thirty-eightprominentblack
writerspublishedin the Jan. 1968 issue of Negro Digest. The writersalso voted Baraka
"the most importantliving black poet," and "the most importantblack playwright."
WernerSollors,AmiriBaraka/LeRoiJones: Questfor a PopulistModernism(New York,
1978), 264n.6. On Baraka'stransformation
to Maoism, see his Autobiography,308-14.
13. On the Nation of Islam in the 1960s, see MathiasGardell,In the Name of Elijah
Muhammad:Louis Farrakhanand the Nation of Islam (Durham,N.C., 1996); and C.
Eric Lincoln, Black Muslims. See also, Aminah Beverly McCloud,AfricanAmerican
Islam (New York, 1995).
14. Michael Shapiro, "Moral Geographies and the Ethics of Post-Sovereignty,"
Public Culture6 (spring 1994): 479-502. Here I am also, of course, engaging with the
issues raisedby Benedict Anderson,ImaginedCommunities:Reflectionson the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York, 1991).
15. For example, two otherwise excellent books, Howard Sitcoff, The Strugglefor
Black Equality,1954-1992 (New York, 1993); and RhodaBlumberg,Civil Rights: The
1960s Freedom Struggle, rev. ed. (Boston, 1991). Brenda Plummer's wonderfully
comprehensiveRising Wind:Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1935-1960
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996) is interestedin foreign policy positions of the NOI, but not
the broaderreligious or culturalinfluence.
16. Addison Gayle, "Cultural Strangulation:Black Literature and the White
Aesthetic,"in The Black Aesthetic (New York, 1968), 46.
17. MarvinX and Farkuk,"Islamand Black Art: An Interviewwith LeRoi Jones,"
Negro Digest 18 (Jan. 1969): 4-10ff, repr. in Jeff Decker, ed., The Black Arts
Movement:Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series, Vol. 8 (Detroit,
1991). Jones used the phrase "post-American"earlier as well, in his essay "Whatthe
Arts Need Now," Negro Digest (Apr. 1967): 5-6.
18. Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad,65. E. U. Essien-Udom, Black
Nationalism:A Searchfor an Identityin America (Chicago, 1962), 84.
19. John Voll, Islam Continuity and Change in the Modern World, 2d. ed.
(Syracuse, N.Y., 1994).
20. PerhapsElijah Muhammadwas also incorporatingsome referencehere to Asia
Minor, which comprises most of modernTurkey.
21. Penny M. Von Eschen's Race Against Empire: Black Americans and
Anticolonialism,1937-1957 (Ithaca,N.Y., 1996), discusses each of these figures in her
excellent study of the internationalismof African American politics in the period,
focused primarilyon Africa.
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22. Until Elijah Muhammad'sdeath in 1975, NOI generally used the term temples;
after Wallace D. Muhammadtook over leadershipand began a transformationof the
organizationinto the American Muslim Mission, with a more orthodox doctrine, the
term mosques was used. Eventually, followers simply joined whatever local mosque
was in theircommunity,and the organizationdissolved. The originalNOI was revived
by Louis Farakkanin 1985. Gardell,In the Name of Elijah Muhammad,99-135.
23. On Muslim slaves and early Muslim communities in the United States, see
RichardTurner,Islam in the African-AmericanExperience(Bloomington,Ind., 1997).
Thereis some indication,however, thatMuslim Africanswere less likely thanothersto
be takenand sold as slaves; see MorroeBerger,"TheBlack Muslims,"Horizon (winter
1966), 49-64.
24. According to Lincoln, Black Muslims in America, 120.
25. Elijah Muhammad,Message to the Blackman(Chicago, 1965), 31.
26. Describedby MalcolmX, Autobiography,224-225. Also in Perry,MalcolmX, 142.
27. On the theological differencebetween Nation of Islam and both Christianityand
orthodox Islam, see Gardell,In the Name of Elijah Muhammad,144-86.
28. JonathanKaufmandescribes the exodus metaphoras a primarylink between
black and Jewish historyin BrokenAlliance: The TurbulentTimesbetweenBlacks and
Jews in America, rev. ed. (1988; New York, 1995), 35.
29. I discuss this connectionin more detail in Epic Encounters:Race, Religion, and
Nation in U.S. Representations of the Middle East 1945-2000 (Berkeley, Calif.,
forthcoming).Lowrey makes the link while being interviewedby Howell Raines, My
Soul is Rested:MovementDays in the Deep SouthRemembered(New York, 1977), 69.
For one example of MartinLutherKing's use of the trope, see his last speech: "I See
the PromisedLand,"speech given on 3 Apr. 1968 at the Mason Temple in Memphis,
and repr.in A Testamentof Hope, ed. James Washington(New York, 1986), 279-86.
30. Robert Weisbord and Richard Kazarian, Jr., Israel in the Black American
Perspective (Westport,Conn., 1985), 20-22.
31. See David Garrow,Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the Southern
ChristianLeadership Conference(New York, 1988), 110-15; and King, "My Trip to
the Land of Gandhi,"in A Testamentof Hope, 23-30.
32. JonathanBoyarinarguespersuasivelythatthe influence of the Exodus tropealso
worked in the other direction:the civil rights connotationsof exodus played a role in
the increasingtendency to use that rhetoricto representIsrael. "ReadingExodus into
History,"New LiteraryHistory 23 (summer 1992), 540.
33. E. Muhammad,Message to the Blackman,95-96.
34. Of the many that explore this history, perhapsthe best single source is Bridges
and Boundaries:AfricanAmericansand AmericanJews, ed. JackSalzamn(New York,
1992). On the pre-war period, see Hasia Diner, In the Almost Promised Land:
AmericanJews and Blacks, 1915-1935 (Baltimore,Md., 1992).
35. Paul Gilroy explores the link with Zionism in TheBlackAtlantic:Modernityand
Double-Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); see also Hollis Lynch, Edward
WilmontBlyden: Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832-1912 (New York, 1967).
36. Autobiographyof Malcolm X, 320.
37. Malcolm X, "Message to the Grassroots,"Nov. 1963, repr. in Malcolm X
Speaks, ed. George Breitman(1970; New York, 1992), 5-6.
38. Plummer, Rising Wind, 284-85; Louis Lomax, When the Word is Given: A
Report on Elijah Muhammad,Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World (New York,
1963), 72-73.
39. For a discussion of black responsesto the King Tut exhibit, for example, see my
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raphyon the Free SouthernTheatercompanyin Black Theatrein the 1960s and 1970s:
A Historical-CriticalAnalysis of the Movement(Westport,Conn., 1985), 62.
55. Baraka,Autobiography,204.
56. See Ed Bullins, "A Short Statement on Street Theatre,"The Drama Review
(summer 1968), 93.
57. New publishinghouses included Dudley Randall's BroadsidePress, Chicago's
ThirdWorldPress, andWashington'sDrumand SpearPress. For a useful discussion of
the publishing scene, see The Norton Anthology of African American Literature,ed.
Henry Louis Gates and Nellie McKay (New York, 1997), 1791-806.
58. Baraka,Autobiography,249.
59. HaroldCruse, "Intellectualsand the Theaterof the the 1960s," in Crisis of the
Negro Intellectual (New York, 1967), 531. See also the penultimatechapter of the
book, '"TheHarlem Black Arts Theater.The special issue of The Drama Review on
black theatrewas summer 1968.
60. PierreBourdieu, The Field of CulturalProduction (New York, 1993).
61. Peter Burger, Theoryof the Avant-Garde(Minneapolis,Minn., 1984).
62. Interviewwith Ed Bullins, New Plays from the Black Theatre,ed. Bullins (New
York, 1969), vii.
63. Carmichael,"We are going to Use the Term 'Black Power' andWe are Going to
Define It Because Black Power S eaks to Us," in Black Nationalismin America, ed. J.
Bracey, August Meier, and E. Rdwick (New York, 1970), 472. Carmichaelis also
quoted by Philip B. Harper,Are Pe Not Men? Masculine Anxietyand the Problem of
African-AmericanIdentity(New York, 1996), 51.
64. Baraka,"The Need for a C lturalBase to Civil Rites and Bpower Mooments,"
originally published in The Black Power Revolt, repr. in Raise, Race, Rays, Raze:
Essays since 1965 (New York, 1971), 43-46. On the broad diffusion of cultural
nationalism, see William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power
Movementin American Culture,1965-1975 (Chicago, 1992).
65. Lincoln, Black Muslims in America, 72.
66. Publicationhistory from Te Black Arts Movement,ed. Jeff Decker, 120-21.
The following dicussion quotes from the text Four Black RevolutionaryPlays (New
York, 1969). Subsequentpage numbersin parentheses.
67. For example, in his pamphlet,"7 Principlesof US MaulanaKarenga& the Need
for a Black Value System," later repr. in Raise, Race, Rays, Raze.
68. LarryNeal, "TheBlack Arts Movement"in Visionsof a LiberatedFuture:Black
Arts Movement Writings, ed. by Michael Schwartz (New York, 1989), 73. Mance
Williams points out thatthe music of Sun-Rahad big influence on A Black Mass--Sun
Ra performedthe music for the originalproduction,also heardon the recordedversion
of the play. Black Theatre,23.
69. K. William Kgositsile, "Towards Our Theater: A Definitive Act" in Negro
Digest (Apr. 1967), 15.
70. Elijah Muhammad explained the story of Yacoub frequently, including in
Message to the Blackman, 117-19. This myth was dropped from Nation of Islam
theology after Wallace D. Muhammadtook over leadership of the community after
Elijah Muhammad'sdeath in 1975. McCloud,AfricanAmericanIslam, 72-88.
71. The transformationof the name of the villain Yacub into a name (and a spelling)
that looks more like Jacob may have anti-Semiticovertones,though this is not explicit
elsewhere in the play.
72. As WernerSollors has pointed out, Baraka'sversion of the story draws on the
Frankensteintale; he conflates the 600 years of Elijah Muhammad's"history"into a
single, terriblemoment. Questfor a Populist Modernism,211.
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73. For a critique of the "Western aesthetic," see Larry Neal, "The Black Arts
Movement," in Visions of a Liberated Future and "Some Reflections on the Black
Aesthetic,"in The Black Aesthetic, ed. Addison Gayle (New York, 1968).
74. The link betweensexualityandclassic horrorfilms has been extensivelydiscussed;
one interestingrecent example is Rhona Berenstein,Attack of the Leading Ladies:
Gender,Sexuality,and Spectatorshipin Classic Horror Cinema(New York, 1996).
75. Philip Brian Harper,"Black Rhetoric and the NationalistCall," in Are We Not
Men, 50.
76. There have been several otherimportantstudies of the masculinistbias of much
of the Black Arts movement. See Joyce Hope Scott, "FromForegroundto Margin:
Female Configurationsand Masculine Self-Representationin Black Nationalist Fiction," in Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker,et. al. (New York, 1992);
and E. Frances White, "Africa on My Mind: Gender, Counterdiscourse,and African
AmericanNationalism,"in Wordsof Fire, ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall(New York, 1992).
77. "From:The Book of Life," for example, writtenafter the Newark riots in 1967
and collected in Raise, Race, Rays, Raze.
78. LarryNeal and LeRoi Jones, eds. Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American
Writing(New York, 1968). Essays with Islamic themes in the anthologyinclude David
Llorens,"TheFellah, the Chosen Ones, The Guardian,"and NathanHare,"Brainwashing of Black Men's Minds." In the Bullins anthology, other examples of NOIinfluencedplays are "El HajjMalik:A Play aboutMalcolm X," by N. R. Davidson, Jr.
and "TheBlack Bird (Al TairAswad)"by MarvinX. See also For Malcolm:Poems on
the Life and Death of Malcolm X, ed. Dudley Randall and Margaret Burroughs
(Detroit, 1969).
79. LarryNeal, "The Black Arts Movement,"77.
80. Amiri Baraka,"It's Nation Time,"originallypublishedin It's Nation Time,repr.
in Selected Poetry ofAmirit Baraka/LeRoiJones (New York, 1979), 198-200.
81. Addison Gayle, The Black Aesthetic (New York, 1971), xvi.
82. Useful descriptions of the 1967 war include William Quandt, Decade of
Decisions: American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1967-1976 (Berkeley,
Calif., 1977); and Donald Neff, Warriorsfor Jerusalem (New York, 1988).
83. Alvin Poussaint, "An Overview of Fanon's Significance to the American Civil
Rights Movement,"in An InternationalTributeto Frantz Fanon (New York, 1978).
84. LeRoiJones,"TheLastDays of the AmericanEmpire(Includingsome Instructions
for Black People),"repr.in Home: Social Essays (1966; Hopewell, N.J., 1998).
85. ClayborneCarson,In Struggle: SNCC and The Black Awakeningof the 1960s
(Cambridge,Mass., 1981), 192-98 and 266. See also Stokley Carmichaeland Charles
Hamilton,Black Power: The Politics of Liberationin America (New York, 1967).
86. Weisbordand Kazarian,Israel in the Black Perspective, 33.
87. "ThirdWorld Round Up: the Palestine Problem:Test Your Knowledge,"SNCC
Newsletter, June-July 1967. The cartoons and photos are described in Weisbord and
Kazarian,Israel in the Black Perspective, 35-36.
88. Carson,In Struggle, 265-69.
89. Carson, "Blacks and Jews in the Civil Rights Movement," in Bridges and
Boundaries, ed. Jack Salzman.
90. MurrayFriedman,WhatWentWrong:The Creationand Collapse of the BlackJewish Alliance (New York, 1995), 227-233. JonathanKauffman'swonderful study,
BrokenAlliance, also makes a similarpresumption.
91. See ArthurHertzberg,"Israeland AmericanJewry," Commentary,Aug. 1967.
Taylor Branch, "Blacks and Jews: The Uncivil War," in Bridges and Boundaries.
Michael Stab argues that Holocaust memory and Israel were both importantto Jews
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well before 1967; "HolocaustConsciousness, Black Masculinity, and the Renegotiation of Jewish AmericanIdentity, 1957-67," paperpresentedat the annualmeeting of
the AmericanStudies Association.
92. Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph,and Bayard Rustin sharplycriticized the
SNCC leaflet, and MartinLutherKing made several statementsof supportfor Israel
after the 1967 war. In 1975, several leaders, including Bayard Rustin, William
Fautnoy, and Andrew Young, formed BASIC (Black Americans in Supportof Israel
Committee),pamphletin Schombergclipping file, labeled "Israel."
93. Cornel West points out the significance of the principle of Palestinianrights in
"On Black-Jewish Relations," in Black and Jews: Alliances and Arguments (New
York, 1994), 144-153. Alice Walker makes a similar point in, "To the Editorsof Ms.
Magazine,"in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (San Diego, 1983), 347-54. See
also June Jordan,Civil Wars(Boston, 1981).
94. James Baldwin, "Negros are anti-Semiticbecause they are anti-White"(1967),
repr.in The Price of the Ticket:CollectedNon-Fiction, 1948-1985 (New York, 1985).
95. "Black Art,"originally published in The Liberator(Jan. 1966) and collected in
Black Magic (1969). Reprintedin Selected Poetry. See Amiri Baraka,"I was an AntiSemite," Village Voice (20 Dec. 1980), 1.
96. Carson points to one such example in the press conference given by SNCC
programdirectorRalph Featherstonein the wake of the crisis, In Struggle, 268. Since
the Nation of Islam was revived by Louis Farakkhanin 1975, these kind of statements
have been frequent.Gardell,In the Name of Elijah Muhammad,246ff. See also Ellen
Willis, "The Myth of the Powerful Jew," in Blacks and Jews.
97. Lisa Lowe, ImmigrantActs (Durham,N.C., 1996); Jose David Saldivar,Border
Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies (Berkeley, Calif., 1997); George
Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism,and the Poetics of
Place (New York, 1994). These scholars are often drawing on postcolonial theory,
including Homi Bhabha,esp. The Location of Culture(New York, 1994).
98. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 208.