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The Creation of an African-American Counterpublic: The Impact of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality on Black Radicalism during the Black Freedom Movement, 1965-1981

McCoy, Austin C.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1239641963

Abstract Details

2009, MA, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History.
The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the role of black radical activist-intellectuals in developing and articulating the values, discourses, and rhetoric of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Feminist Movements. The ultimate goal was to analyze how black radicals utilized and contested ideas of race, nation, gender, sexuality, and class. This thesis argues that scholars should consider these formations as intellectual movements. Through their creation of movement institutions and “texts,” black Radicals created a modern black counterpublic that challenged black exclusion in the American public. Within this counterpublic, however, black activists produced their own subordinate publics that contested the ideas, discourses, and visions of other black publics. In taking this approach, one cannot analyze the emergence of and activities within the black counterpublic by adhering to the integrationist-nationalist dichotomy because while particular black political groups and leaders may have diverged politically, points of divergence and convergence emerge when analyzing how their ideas of difference impacted their thought and texts. This thesis represents an intersection between the study of political ideologies, discourse, and rhetoric. This thesis investigates the texts of a broad range of black activist-intellectuals including the Black Panther Party’s Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver (1966-1969), who designed an alternative nationalism, gendered and classed notions of citizenship, and sexualized depictions of their enemies, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1956-1968), who transcended America’s civic and racial nationalist traditions, with his radical democratic socialist ideas and his concept of the “world house,” and a variety of black feminists including Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, and bell hooks (1969-1981), who confronted the disciplinary and homogenizing aspects of black nationalist and feminist discourse and created their own visions of human liberation.
Elizabeth Smith-Pryor, PhD (Committee Chair)
Timothy Scarnecchia, PhD (Committee Member)
Zachery Williams, PhD (Committee Member)
146 p.
African Americans; History
Civil Rights Movement; Black Power; Black Feminism; Gender; Race; Class; Sexuality; Nationalism; Black Radicalism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McCoy, A. C. (2009). The Creation of an African-American Counterpublic: The Impact of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality on Black Radicalism during the Black Freedom Movement, 1965-1981 [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1239641963

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McCoy, Austin. The Creation of an African-American Counterpublic: The Impact of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality on Black Radicalism during the Black Freedom Movement, 1965-1981. 2009. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1239641963.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McCoy, Austin. "The Creation of an African-American Counterpublic: The Impact of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality on Black Radicalism during the Black Freedom Movement, 1965-1981." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1239641963

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1239641963
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© 2009, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.