The Civil Rights Movement is now remembered as a long-lost era, which
came to an end along with the idealism of the 1960s. In Dark Days, Bright Nights,
acclaimed scholar Peniel E. Joseph puts this pat assessment to the
test, showing the 60s—particularly the tumultuous period after the
passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act—to be the catalyst of a movement
that culminated in the inauguration of Barack Obama. Joseph argues that
the 1965 Voting Rights Act burst a dam holding back radical democratic
impulses. This political explosion initially took the form of the Black
Power Movement, conventionally adjudged a failure. Joseph resurrects
the movement to elucidate its unfairly forgotten achievements. Told
through the lives of activists, intellectuals, and artists, including
Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Amiri Baraka, Tupac Shakur, and Barack
Obama, Dark Days, Bright Nights will make coherent a fraught half-century of struggle, reassessing its impact on American democracy and the larger world.
Peniel E. Joseph is professor of history at Tufts University and the author of Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour.
He is the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars and the Ford Foundation, and his work
has appeared in Souls, New Formations, and The Black Scholar. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
