“We must take to the streets again”: The Black Power Resurgence in Conservative America, 1980-1997

FAIN: FEL-288450-23

George Derek Musgrove
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD 21250-0001)

Research and writing leading to a book on Black activism during the 1980s and 1990s. 

"We must take to the streets again" explores the burst of black activism that rose in opposition to the restructuring of the U.S. economy and conservative ascendance in U.S. politics of the late 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on ideas, language, symbols, activists, and organizations, this project presents the black political activism of the 1980s and 90s as a bridge between the mobilizations of the Black Power Movement in the 1960s and Black Lives Matter in the twenty-first century. It will thus help us understand not only a pivotal and understudied period in African American history, but our contentious present.