The entire spectrum of black political and cultural thought appears in the pages of The Black Scholar, represented by leading writers such as Clarence Lusane, Melba Joyce Boyd, Manning Marable and Maulana Karenga. Each issue focuses on a subject of major concern in the African American community. Education, black political empowerment, social movements, the multicultural debate, black women's activism, the crisis of the black male, the Ebonics debate, the Million Man March, the New South Africa and many other fundamental subjects have all been probed in the pages of The Black Scholar, which often receives national and international acclaim.
Robert Chrisman - Founding Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
Robert Chrisman is a poet and essayist who's been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Chair of the Black Studies Department of the University of Nebraska at Omaha until mid-2005 and the principal organizer of that department's Malcolm X Festival for three years. Dr. Chrisman's current research interests include: the impact of modernism on Afro-American authors of the twentieth century; and works of the Afro-Cuban poets, Nicolas Guillen and Nancy Morejon. He published Pan-Africanism (1974), as co-compiler with Nathan Hare, Court of Appeal: The Black Community Speaks Out on the Racial and Sexual Politics of Thomas vs. Hill (1992), and Robert Hayden: Essays on the Poetry, as co-editor with Laurence Goldstein (2001). Dr. Chrisman also was co-compiler (with Dr. Hare) of Contemporary Black Thought: The Best from The Black Scholar (1974), which is out of print.
Robert L. Allen - Senior Editor
Robert L. Allen is Professor of African American Studies & Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of interest include social movements, labor studies, and race & gender studies. Dr. Allen is the author of Black Awakening in Capitalist America (1990); Reluctant Reformers: The Impact of Racism on Social Movement in the U.S. (1983); The Port Chicago Mutiny (1989, republished 2006); Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America (with Herb Boyd, reprinted 1996); Strong in the Struggle (the life of labor leader Lee Brown), Honoring Sergeant Carter: A Family's Journey to Uncover the Truth About an American Hero (2004); and A Guide to Black Power in America: An Historical Analysis (1970). Dr. Allen currently is researching the life and work of C.L. Dellums, a leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union.
- The Black Scholar Mission Statement (1969) Dr. Quintard Taylor, Jr. provides in his "History 322: 20th Century African American History Manual," Chapter 7, "The Struggle Continues, The Black Power Era, 1965-1980" a section on The Black Scholar and a copy of the mission statement from the journal's inaugural issue (Vol 1, No. 1, November 1969) with this preface:
"On November 1969 the first issue of The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research appeared. As the statement below attests, The Black Scholar was the first journal to situate itself in both the scholarship and activism of the black power period. The journal continues to this day."
THE BLACK SCHOLAR has been born out of the struggle of black scholars, black intellectuals, black leaders--all black people--for an education that will provide meaningful definitions of black existence. So born, THE BLACK SCHOLAR is the first journal of black studies and research in this country.
We recognize that we must redefine our lives. We must shape a culture, a politics, an economics, a sense of our past and future history. We must recognize what we have been and what we shall be, retaining that which has been good and discarding that which has been worthless.
THE BLACK SCHOLAR shall be the journal for that definition. In its pages, black ideologies will be examined, debated, disputed and evaluated by the black intellectual community. Articles which research, document and analyze the black experience will be published, so that theory is balanced with fact, and ideology with substantial information.
We cannot afford division any longer if our struggle is to bear fruit, whether those divisions be between class, caste or function. Nothing black is alien to us.
A black scholar recognizes this fact. He is a man of both thought and action, a whole man who thinks for his people and acts with them, a man who honors the whole community of black experience, a man who sees the Ph.D., the janitor, the businessman, the maid, the clerk, the militant, as all sharing the same experience of blackness, with all its complexities and its rewards.
THE BLACK SCHOLAR is the journal for such a man. It is your journal. Support it.
Source: The contents of this Knol are excerpted from The Black Scholar lens by Roger Jennings
Vol. 38, No. 1: The Candidacy of Barack Obama
Guest Editor: Dr. Charles P. Henry, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Preface to the Spring 2008 issue:The campaign of Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States provides a rare crystallization of U.S. historical, political, and social movement. Issues of racism, gender, generation, and national identity are reticulated through the prism of Obama's candidacy. We have dedicated a special issue of The Black Scholar to this subject. Dr. Charles P. Henry, Professor and Chair of the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading black political scientist, has served as Guest Editor and assembled major scholars for this effort.
As Charles Henry points out in his article, "Obama '08 -- Articulate and Clean," Obama's march to the Presidency has been on a road cleared by purposeful black political activity and leadership in modern times, commencing with the Voter Rights Act of 1965, the 1972 presidential candidacy of Cong. Shirley Chisholm and the l984 and 1988 campaigns of Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Ronald Walters seizes precisely upon the timing of Obama and the historical moment in his essay, "Obama's Edge: Understanding Nation Time," as the black candidacy moved from a flank movement into central command of U.S. consciousness in 2008. Walters notes the juxtaposition of Obamas' new vision with the degradation of the U.S. population, resources, and morale by George W. Bush's presidency. With the phrase, "our time has come," Obama tapped into the conscious and unconscious political will of alienated Americans.
The international aspects of Barack Obama's candidacy are treated in Clarence Lusane's "We Must Lead the World: The Obama Doctrine and the Re-branding of U.S. Hegemony," which assesses both the status quo postures of Obama foreign policy, as well as the prospects for change that his transparency and legacy of Black political vision offer.
Central to this candidacy has been the competition with Senator Hillary Clinton, herself an historical first. A leading feminist, Alice Walker's "Lest We Forget: an Open Letter to My Sisters," traces her own personal history anti finds in it the rational for black political movement and supporting Obama's candidacy,
We consider methodology as Diane Pinderhughes explores the complex intersection of gender, race, and class interest in "Intersectionality: Race and Gender in the 2008 Presidential Nomination Campaign." Ronald Williams' II article, "Barack Obama and the Complicated Boundaries of Blackness" offers a review of the literature. Williams explores the ambiguities of African American identities, with emphasis upon conditions and characteristics of indigenous and non-indigenous African Americans.
We are also pleased to publish a major text by Barack Obama, his address delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, "To Form a More Perfect Union," a forthright discussion of racism and its effects, as it impedes the full realization of American democracy. Obama reaffirms his belief in "the more perfect union of the Constitution," a belief which comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. ... (and which) also comes from my own American story." We hope you enjoy this issue. As always, feel free to send us a letter with your reactions.
The Editors
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Roger Jennings
Google Search Now Finds '"The Black Scholar" Obama'
Very strange.
Roger Jennings
Knol Search Feature Doesn't Work