Peter D. Blackmer, "Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers" (UVA Press, 2025)

Oct 21, 2025

Peter D. Blackmer, an associate professor at Eastern Michigan University, dives into the grassroots movements in Harlem that shaped the Black Power era. He discusses the hidden influences behind his research, like archival discoveries and transformative figures such as Malcolm X. Blackmer highlights the significant link between local struggles and global anti-colonialism. He emphasizes the importance of long-term organizing, revealing how systemic repression fueled uprisings. His insights offer a fresh perspective on the dynamics of race, resistance, and community identity.

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INSIGHT

Black Power Emerged Locally Before 1966

Blackmer uses May Mallory's 1961 letter to show the term 'Black Power' predated its 1966 popularization and had local meaning in Harlem.
He argues Black Power emerged alongside civil rights in the urban North as a response to local conditions and state repression.

INSIGHT

Harlem As A Crucial Political Hub

Harlem functioned as a diasporic hub shaping national Black radicalism through local networks, culture, and international connections.
Understanding figures like Malcolm X requires centering Harlem's local political and intellectual influences.

ANECDOTE

Foundations Built In 1954–57

Between 1954–57 Malcolm X returned to lead Mosque No.7 and Mae Mallory cut her teeth organizing parents to desegregate Harlem schools.
Those years built organizing skills and networks that later powered school boycotts and tenant campaigns.

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Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers (UVA Press, 2025) explores the local dynamics, national connections, and global context of the Black freedom movement in Harlem from 1954 to 1964, illuminating how activists, organizers, and ordinary people mounted their resistance to systemic racism in the Jim Crow North. The richness of Black radical thought and action in this period made Harlem a key battleground in the national civil rights movement, transformed local Black grassroots politics, and facilitated the rise of Black Power in New York City. At the same time, the city’s attempts to clamp down on activists revealed the repressive nature of Northern liberalism and heralded the expansion of the carceral state. Peter Blackmer argues that this decade of confrontations between Black communities and white state power caused Harlem residents and activists to seek “new means” for achieving freedom within a city, state, and nation determined to deny it. Tracing the dual evolution of Black radicalism and white resistance, Unleashing Black Power offers a new framework for analyzing the epochal urban uprisings in the 1960s.

Guest: Peter Blackmer (he/him) is an associate professor of Africology and African American Studies at Eastern Michigan University and his research and teaching explore the ways in which Black-led grassroots organizing campaigns for self-determination in the 20th and 21st Century United States have shaped local and national politics through struggles for civil rights, human rights, and political power in American cities.

Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.

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