In a vibrant and passionate exploration of the twentieth-century civil rights and black power eras in American history, Waldo Martin uses cultural politics as a lens through which to understand the African-American freedom struggle. In black culture, argues Martin, we see the debate over the profound tension at the core of black identity: the duality of being at once both American and African. And in the transformative postwar period, the intersection between culture and politics became increasingly central to the African-American fight for equality. In freedom songs, in the exuberance of an...