Book Selections

To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonvoilence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement's militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different family histories, religious affiliations, and class backgrounds, inspired each other throughout their adult lives. Malcolm's push to connect pan-Africanism to an international human rights agenda mirrored the "beloved community" that King eloquently articulated at the March at Washington. Similarly, the anti-war and anti-poverty campaigns of King's final years unleashed a stinging critique of racism, militarism, and materialism that echoed Malcolm's impassioned anti-colonialsim. In short, King was more revolutionary, and Malcolm more pragmatic, than we've been told. The Sword and the Shield is the definitive history of not only the revolutionary lives and political impact of these leaders, but also of the movement and era they came to define. --

"Celebrated intellectual and activist Cornel West offers an unflinching look at nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies. In an accessible, conversational format, Cornel West, with distinguished scholar Christa Buschendorf, provides a fresh perspective on six revolutionary African American leaders: Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida Wells-Barnett. West examines the impact of these men and women on their own eras and across the decades. He not only rediscovers the integrity and commitment within these passionate advocates but also their fault lines. West finds that Douglass and, to some extent, Du Bois fall short of the high standards he holds them to, while King has been sanitized and even 'Santaclausified, ' rendering him less radical. By providing new insights that humanize all of these well-known figures, West takes an important step in rekindling the Black prophetic fire so essential in the age of Obama"--