Prometheus 6

(Joseph will deliver a public reading from the book at on Tuesday, November 7, at 4:00 pm in the Melville Library’s Javits Room.)

Not Just Black and White:
Peniel Joseph's acclaimed new book recaptures the nuances of Black Power

The complex realities of the Civil Rights struggle are rapidly fading into myth. While real-life heroes like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks are repackaged as cardboard saints, the fiery radicals of the Black Power movement — Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton, Stony Brook's own Amiri Baraka — are routinely denigrated, ridiculed, or ignored.

Peniel Joseph wants to change that. "We're fed a conventional version of the period that's preachy and unthreatening," says Joseph, an assistant professor in Stony Brook's Africana Studies department. "Students realize it's supposed to be good for them, so naturally it's dull — like spinach or broccoli."