I enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot, and have also to say that the photographs in the book are powerful. Writing this review encouraged me to revisit some of the tapes of leading black and progressive intellectuals in the 1970s that I had obtained from the Institute of the Black World (IBW) many years ago. I listened to some of the interviews with individuals like C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, George Beckford, St. Claire Drake, and others on IBW tapes dated 1974 and 1975 as I thought about how to approach a review of this book. The review provided an opportunity to understand how one of the most significant black intellectual initiatives during a socially tumultuous period in US history banged into US capitalist and racial ideologies at the time of its establishment.

The IBW emerged from plans to establish the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Advanced Afro-American Studies at the Atlanta University Center. While it officially opened in January 1970, many of its original founders gathered throughout 1969 to discuss and plan this undertaking. Initially, the IBW was part of the new Martin Luther King Center. The author presents a highly detailed history of the IBW framed by the ideological and political issues it faced. Organizational details about specific meetings and events and personalities are utilized to explain the genesis, development, and then closing of the IBW. He places this history within a broader context of national politics and key political developments in the black community, such as the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. Readers are made aware of ideological divisions within the black community and how this impacted the development of the IBW.

Though its organizational philosophy and mission was continually in debate, the IBW nevertheless focussed on building a “Black university perspective: they emphasized intellectual opposition to the normative methodological and epistemological approaches to racial analysis, structural autonomy, and relevance to Black communities” (15). Some of the ideological challenges confronted by the IBW included a growing political conservatism in the nation. Another ideological matter was fissures with black leaders at the King Center who were apprehensive about any movement on the part of the IBW to identify itself with leftist causes, believing that such would be contradictory to the work of the late Martin Luther King Jr. There is evidence pointing towards the FBI's interest in disrupting the work of the IBW as it continually endorsed critiques of US capitalism. IBW's embrace of international black intellectuals such as Stokely Carmichael undoubtedly raised concern in some government circles.

The author is not shy about discussing some of the accomplishments and limitations of the IBW. Here, White's discussion regarding gender is very important, for example. The author describes how the IBW initially operated within a paternalistic and patriarchal framework characteristic of US society. At the same time, he suggests that the very mission and work of the IBW represented a space for black women intellectuals, artists, and activists to challenge, effectively it seems, the patriarchal practices of the IBW.

Though short-lived, the IBW's work and travails resulted in several key contributions under a framework described as “pragmatic nationalism.” It did represent an intellectual space where cultural-deficit frameworks for understanding black life in America could be critiqued and rejected. It facilitated linkages between intellectual inquiries and community activism. The IBW played a critical role in aiding the development and growth of the black studies movement unfolding in institutions of higher education in the early 1970s. Representatives of the IBW, such as William Strickland, Vincent Harding, and others, played a major role in assisting a number of black elected officials to develop progressive policy agendas, including helping Maynard Jackson to win office as the first black mayor of Atlanta, Georgia (1973). Finally, the IBW left a legacy that was tapped by later efforts such as the Black Radical Congress established in 1997 and then later the State of the Black World Conference in 2001. These later initiatives were also founded to provide continual theoretical and praxis critiques and application to policy and politics that had earlier been reflected in the work of the IBW. Indeed, knowledge and analysis of the IBW's history and this episode in the struggle for expanding US democracy remain valid and useful for analyzing black politics today.