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Book

The Black utopians : searching for paradise and the promised land in America

Call Numbers

  • 305.896 R6491 (POW)
  • H 305.896 R6491 (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024.

Physical Description

x, 382 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Summary

"When the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage, Jr., founded the innovative church known as the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroint, he had an audacious goal: to combine Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members. Central to this endeavor was the Shrine's chancel mural of a black Virgin and Child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine's members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, raised their children communally, and eventually established the country's largest black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for black people continue today. In his intimate and wide-ranging debut, Aaron Robertson sets the Shrine's story alongside a diverse array of black Utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the counter cultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. He also traces his own family's journey from the historic blacktown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit, where Cleage's remarkable experiment got its start. The Black Utopians offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces-both ideological and physical-where black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. this book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making-one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future."--Front jacket flap.

Contents

  • Letter I: Love, Doe
  • Introduction: Utopia in Black
  • The Furnace and the Forge. Promise Land
  • A church and a one-room school
  • Letter II: Genesis
  • The promised land that wasn't
  • Black Bottom
  • No one starved in California
  • The kingdoms of God
  • Southeast corner of my cell
  • Letter III: Bad spirit multiplying
  • Imperium in imperio
  • Letter IV: Just a prisoner
  • A strategy of chaos
  • 'You were beautiful when your apparition formed'
  • A new faith
  • Counterculture. New Afrika
  • Letter V: Connecting the dots
  • Politisk asyl åt Glanton Dowdell!
  • Letter VI: From Eight Mile to the infinite South
  • The valley of dry bones
  • Letter VII: The art shop
  • Time rituals
  • Formation
  • Messiahs
  • Letter VIII: Free thoughts
  • The science of becoming what you already are
  • Black kibbutzniks
  • The Land of Corn & Wine. Letter IX: Prodigal son
  • The prison letters of Dorian Robertson are missing
  • An armful of beautiful roses
  • A place flowing with milk and honey
  • The world system
  • A model community
  • Shrines
  • The Cumberland
  • Rest.

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