In 1996, the publication of Brenda Gayle Plummer's Rising Wind: Black Americans and Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 helped internationalize the study of African American politics in the twentieth century. Anticipating future work by Penny Von Eschen and Mary Dudziak, among others, it forced scholars to recognize the ways in which black peoples understood their plight in the global context and worked to shape US policy. In Search of Power is the sequel to this monograph, extending the theme into the era of decolonization when African Americans confronted both the success and the shortcoming of anticolonialism. Though transnationalism is now familiar fare, Plummer's insightful gaze reveals a trove of discoveries and powerful suppositions that expand the boundaries of how historians understand black nationalism, African American conservatism, North–South relations, and the Cold War.

Plummer's work is especially valuable for its focus on the common global undercurrents of civil rights and black power. Much of the literature on African American internationalism – especially the radical variety – has portrayed the 1960s and 1970s as a lost opportunity. Government repression and the messy politics of postcolonial Africa encouraged a limited integrationist domestic activism over more strident critiques of economic and political inequality. Plummer acknowledges these hindrances, but she shows that pan-Africanists and black militants continued to use borderless understandings of race and rights to articulate challenges to the status quo. In so doing, she builds on the work of Kevin Gaines and Peniel Joseph but places exile communities and footnote discussions of internationalism at the center of black life. The book follows groups ranging from Malcolm X's familiar Organization of African American Unity, through the moderate American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa, to the obscure Pan-African Skills Project, demonstrating the ways that blacks “sought the power to redefine African-Americans' identity within the United States as well as their relationship to the larger world” (36). The search for an alternative to white American nationalism forms the core of the book, but Plummer also examines how intertwined issues of race and identity shaped events in Africa, the Caribbean, and the halls of Washington itself. In this way, she uses the African American experience as a critical lens through which she can tease out unexplored connections between the Cold War, decolonization, and the ongoing struggle for global equality.

This “hybrid history” (12) demonstrates that black constituencies across the political spectrum used specific understandings of their position between white America and the world to pursue differing and at times conflicting goals. Fluidity defined these global linkages, especially as African and Asian peoples demanded greater autonomy. Through a primarily chronological approach, Plummer follows how bonds of racial identity and shared feelings of oppression united non-European peoples in opposition to systemic problems of nuclear proliferation, poverty, inadequate education, and much more. Often, the activities of groups like the African Liberation Support Committee were fleeting, but they laid the groundwork for future organizing. Plummer is careful not to push any of these metanarratives too far. Internal diversity hampered the growth of common identities, and postcolonial nations generally rejected solidarity with American minorities in favor of more traditional intergovernmental exchanges. Yet in her privileging of race and diaspora, Plummer follows her subjects in breaking down the geographic and national barriers that artificially divide scholars and populations alike. She recovers the common ground that once united black peoples in search of power and hints at the continued salience of this unfinished project.

Unfortunately, like her first book, the invaluable historical panorama presented by Plummer can prove frustrating as much as informative. The constant litany of individuals, groups, and publications allows her to delve deeply into only a handful of topics. Numerous actors often demand attention within single pages, with minimal explanation of how their activities interrelate. The lack of a master list of abbreviations further confuses matters as organizations' names can appear well before discussion of their work. This academic sprint occasionally minimizes the importance of subjects. In one example, Plummer devotes just over a paragraph to the Liberation Committee on Africa and its influential publication, The Liberator, despite contemporary praise from African nationalists and references to published articles peppering the footnotes. Such decisions of emphasis or lack thereof may lie in Plummer's apparent preference for extended ruminations on marquee names like Martin Luther King at the expense of less heralded activists such as Robert Van Lierop who arguably played greater roles in popularizing internationalist visions of racial reform. Lack of materials cannot explain such cursory discussions, as documentation of such grassroots operators is available online and in many of the archives visited by the author.

Questions of emphasis aside, Plummer deserves credit for the sharp, insightful commentary she provides on a variety of topics, as well as the sheer number of organizations and individuals that she recovers from historical anonymity. Her whirlwind journey through two pivotal decades in the African diaspora may leave some readers wanting more, but that means that In Search of Power will likely become the rare monograph that launches a hundred dissertations.