Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal. An African American Anthology.

Edited by Manning Marable and Leith Mullings. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., c. 2000. Pp. [xxvi], 675. $35.00, ISBN 0-8476-9930-7.)

In the last five years there have been a good number of anthologies chronicling African American history and letters. Even the standard textbook in black history, John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr.'s From Slavery to Freedom, has been brought out in an eighth edition (2 vols.; New York, 2000). The new century has also seen the appearance of a newly revised African American history text, The African American Odyssey by Darlene Clark Hine and others (2d ed.; Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2000), and the new two-volume historical anthology, Major Problems in African American History by Thomas C. Holt and Elsa Barkley Brown (Boston, 2000).

The appearance of Manning Marable and Leith Mullings's Let Nobody Turn Us Around raises the question as to the need for another anthology. But Marable, who heads the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University, and Mullings, who is a professor of anthropology at the Graduate School, City University of New York, assure us that they wanted to present "a collection of primary materials, rare published articles, speeches, and other sources that told the story of how black people made themselves and interpreted the world in which they lived, in their own words and specifically from their own point of view" (p. xiv). Thus Let Nobody Turn Us Around is an anthology chronicling African American "social thought, broadly defined as the bodies of knowledge through which black people theorized from their own experiences and social conditions, and proposed strategies and programs to enhance their power" (p. xiv). In other words, this collection presents the African American experience as one of collective resistance, political struggle for reform, and renewal.

In their introductory overview, Marable and Mullings state that three paradigms, "integrationism," black nationalism, and transformation ("a radical transformation of the United States based on a fundamental redistribution of resources") have dominated African American social thought (p. xx). Within this framework, Marable and Mullings are careful to attend to the race-class-gender matrix that has been central to social history for quite some time now. They also note that they have tried to present the "full range of African American thought" (p. xxiv), although there were constraints ranging from copyright problems to the unwillingness of a black conservative economist to permit reproduction of his work.

Ultimately, the purpose of this book, the editors state, "is not to assess social and political movements but rather to present the theories that informed them" (p. xxiv). This is fair enough. But the central problem with this otherwise useful collection of primary source materials is the lack of explanatory historical context. The head notes to the documents are woefully lacking in context and perspective despite the generally good introductory essays to the five sections that run from the first appearance of Africans in the Western Hemisphere through the present. For example, Langston Hughes's manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," is reprinted here, but without mentioning that it was written in response to George S. Schuyler's essay "The Negro-Art Hokum" (both originally appeared in the Nation in 1926). Schuyler's piece should have been included with an explanation of his sojourn from being a progressive to a hard-right conservative. Surely, some more recent black conservative views could have been placed alongside those of "new black public intellectuals" (who generally lean to the left). Yet these documents are missing, and as a result, a golden opportunity is lost to present scholars and students with some clearly contrasting viewpoints. That will have to be done by teachers if they use this book in their courses. For scholars, the works of black conservatives then and now will have to be hunted down.

Finally, some may question the paradigms that Marable and Mullings set down. On the one hand, they are fairly conventional--dare one say "traditional." On the other hand, the documents here are neatly slotted into those theoretical paradigms. Would that African American history (or all of history, for that matter) be so neat. Let Nobody Turn Us Around is, as stated before, a useful compendium, but it is also a clear signpost that African American history needs to develop new paradigms for the new century.

CHARLES PETE BANNER-HALEY
Colgate University