New PDF release: A Dancer in the Revolution: Stretch Johnson, Harlem

By Howard Johnson,Mark Naison,Wendy Johnson,Mark D. Naison

The lifetime of Howard Johnson, nicknamed “Stretch” as a result of his top (6'5"), epitomizes the cultural and political odyssey of a iteration of African americans who reworked the U.S. from a closed society to a multiracial democracy. Johnson’s long-awaited memoir strains his direction from firstborn of a multiclass/multiethnic” relatives in New Jersey to dancer in Harlem’s Cotton membership to communist formative years chief and, later, professor of Black experiences. A Dancer within the Revolution is a robust assertion approximately Black resilience and triumph amid sophisticated and specific racism within the United States.

Johnson’s enticing, superbly written memoir offers a window into way of life in Harlem—neighborhood lifestyles, arts and tradition, and politics—from the Thirties to the Nineteen Seventies, while the modern Black group was once being shaped. A Dancer within the Revolution explores Johnson’s twenty-plus years within the Communist get together and
illuminates in compelling element how the Harlem department functioned and flourished within the Nineteen Thirties and ’40s. Johnson thrived as a charismatic chief, utilizing the connections he equipped up as an athlete and dancer to create alliances among communist organisations and a cross-section of the Black group. In his memoir, Johnson additionally exposes the homoerotic tourism that was once a characteristic of Harlem’s nightlife within the Thirties. a few of America’s major white literary, musical, and creative figures have been interested in Harlem not just for the community’s creative creativity yet to have interaction in illicit sex—gay and straight—with their Black counterparts.

A Dancer within the Revolution is a useful contribution to the literature on Black political notion and pragmatism. It finds the original position that Black dancers and artists carry in civil rights ambitions and anti-racism campaigns within the usa and past. additionally, the lifetime of “Stretch” Johnson illustrates how political activism engenders not just social switch but in addition own achievement, a attention of goals no longer deferred yet relatively pursued and accomplished. Johnson’s trip bears witness to serious classes and occasions that formed the Black and American society within the process.

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