1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910790603903321

Autore

Matlin Daniel

Titolo

On the corner : African American intellectuals and the urban crisis / / Daniel Matlin

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Massachusetts : , : Harvard University Press, , 2013

ISBN

0-674-72705-3

0-674-72610-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (304 p.)

Disciplina

305.896/073

Soggetti

African American intellectuals - History - 20th century

African American intellectuals

African Americans - Social conditions - 1964-1975

Inner cities - United States - History - 20th century

Urban policy - United States - History - 20th century

Harlem (New York, N.Y.) Social conditions 20th century

New York (N.Y.) Social conditions 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Ghettos of the Mind : Kenneth B. Clark and the Psychology of the Urban Crisis -- Be Even Blacker : Amiri Baraka's Names and Places -- Harlem without Walls : Romare Bearden's Realism -- Epilogue.

Sommario/riassunto

In July 1964, after a decade of intense media focus on civil rights protest in the Jim Crow South, a riot in Harlem abruptly shifted attention to the urban crisis embroiling America's northern cities. On the Corner revisits the volatile moment when African American intellectuals were thrust into the spotlight as indigenous interpreters of black urban life to white America, and when black urban communities became the chief objects of black intellectuals' perceived social obligations. Daniel Matlin explores how the psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, the literary author and activist Amiri Baraka, and the visual artist Romare Bearden each wrestled with the opportunities and dilemmas of their heightened public stature. Amid an often fractious interdisciplinary debate, black intellectuals furnished sharply contrasting representations of black urban life and vied to establish



their authority as indigenous interpreters. In time, however, Clark, Baraka, and Bearden each concluded that acting as interpreters for white America placed dangerous constraints on black intellectual practice. On the Corner reveals how the condition of entry into the public sphere for African American intellectuals in the post-civil rights era has been confinement to what Clark called "the topic that is reserved for blacks."