How Black Awakening in Capitalist America Laid the Foundation for a New Internal Colonialism Theory (Critical Essay)

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE with Robert L. Allen's Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History was in 1971 after my participation in the Black Panther Party (BPP). I was Lieutenant of Information in the New Haven, Connecticut chapter in 1969-70, and after I had separated from the organization, I had the foolish audacity to draft and send "A Letter of Criticism and Suggestion to Huey P. Newton and the Central Committee of the Black Panther Party" intending to make suggestions about party line, policy and practice (Pinderhughes). I became an Anti-colonial Marxist in the process of writing that "letter," which turned out to be eighty-five pages, since I was also processing the rest of my previous eight years experience in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Black Awakening was one of the key books I read, in addition to looking for quotations in Mao's Little Red Book and then reading myself back through the citations all the way to Hegel. Of course, the BPP didn't listen. My first use of Black Awakening in a class was in 1973 at Tufts University's Experimental College in a course co-sponsored by the Afro-American Cultural Center. The course, "Black Survival as a Political Science," was very well-received by the students, but of course the counter-insurgents in the administration and at the Center considered it way too radical. Thus, it was actually replaced the next term by a course in African textiles and basket weaving! They weren't taking any chances. Thereafter, as a community organizer, at every political education opportunity, I continued to use it. Of course, I've also assigned it in the classroom for appropriate courses.