Reviewed by Nicole Sealey
By and large, scholarship on the 1960s and 70s Black Power movement is compartmentalized and limited. Essays and books detail specific components of the movement, like the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Although necessary components, such one-dimensional analysis rarely provides the context in which the subjects can be legitimately considered. Peniel E. Joseph’s Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, on the other hand, examines the whole. Drawing from and relying on every part of the phenomenon, Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour is a comprehensive narrative that marks the Black Power movement’s underpinnings, false starts, successes, failings, flailings and residuals, and does so in a way that pays respect to all involved—not just the well-known players.
In a perfect narrative history, events would occur consecutively one at a time. In reality, however, many events happen at once. Joseph takes into account the simultaneous nature of the Black Power movement and the incidents that prompted its beginnings. As a result, there are few gaps in his summary; but, at times, the continuity of Joseph’s survey can be overwhelming. Readers may find it difficult to keep up with the author as he introduces and reintroduces hundreds of facts and people in relation to the conditions in which they existed and the role in which each played.
Chapter three, for example, opens with William Worthy, a foreign correspondent for the Baltimore-Washington Afro-American, and his first encounter with the NOI in 1955. By the chapter’s end, Worthy is linked to Malcolm X and the Detroit organization made up of black nationalists called the Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL). Joseph writes, “…GOAL represent[ed] radicals in local struggles, Malcolm [expressed] the national face of a militant movement for self-determination, and Worthy’s globe-trotting internationalism round[ed] out black militancy’s rich political, intellectual, and cultural landscape.” These connections speak to layering without which the movement would not have been.
Though Malcolm X is rightfully featured in Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour, he is not—for a refreshing change—the only highlight. Joseph presents a number of local, national and international Black Power forerunners including Johnson X, a member of the New York NOI who (in 1957) interrupted police officers as they brutally beat a black suspect. He was subsequently beaten and jailed for his interference; Stokely Carmichael, who coined the phrase “Black Power” and the chairman of SNCC; Kwame Nkrumah, Pan-Africanist and Ghana’s first prime minister; and Patrice Lumumba, the first African prime minister of the Congo. From Harlem to Ghana and the Congo, activists found solidarity and solace in global successes. International achievements not only provided inspiration to the movement, but momentum as well.
Beyond the raised fists and the black berets and leather jackets, Black Power is an ideological way of thinking and being. Joseph writes in the epilogue, “Black Power most often serves as a twisted folklore, a cautionary tale featuring gun-toting militants who practiced politics without portfolio…Yet such a perspective ignores Black Power’s complex relationship to the civil rights era.” In this case, Joseph’s interpretation seeks to contextualize the movement and, in so doing, those “gun-toting militants” whose practice reflected their politics and vice versa. Such an interpretation demonstrates the intimate association between the Black Power and Civil Rights movements.
Peniel E. Joseph carefully escorts readers through a written history that is as rich as it is complete, and is as complete as it is complicated. Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America reads conversational, but the amount of information presented makes for a somewhat dense narrative. The quality of information, however, far outweighs the quantity. A thorough resource, readers will refer (and scholars will defer) to Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour. Of Joseph’s examination, Manning Marable, professor of history and African-American studies at Columbia University, writes, “[It] will become a standard interpretation of black political culture in the 1960s.” Marable’s comment is more truth than prediction.