From Protest to Climax

Neal’s chapter 2 focuses on the Black Public Sphere during an era of brutal repression.

Objectives

After completing this assignment, students should be able to

• Recognize the recordings listed below based on a 10-15 second clip.
• Summarize the trajectory within the Black public sphere that Neal traces via Marvin Gaye’s “trilogy”: “What’s Going On,” “Trouble Man,” and “Let’s Get it On.”
• Summarize Neal’s argument about the importance of live recordings in this era.
• Identify and explain the importance of COINTELPRO.
• Identify the techniques used by COINTELPRO against activists, including “black-jacketing.”
• Identify Fred Hampton and William O’Neal.
• Paraphrase and explain this analysis of “What’s Going On”:
  

  The genius of Gaye’s work is that by mimicking the diversity of communal voices, he popularized a dominant black social paradigm, precisely at the moment when communal relations within such a paradigm were increasingly fractured and disjointed” (64).

• Summarize Neal’s argument about the “narrative silence” of “Trouble Man.”
• Summarize Neal’s argument about the reasons that Brand Nubian was drawn to “Trouble Man.”
• Summarize Paul Gilroy’s point about the political resonance of blaxploitation’s “amplified and exaggerated masculinity” (70).
• Explain the significance of women artists’ “willingness to articulate the rich diversity of human emotions within black popular culture” (75).
• Summarize the parallel Neal draws between Black feminist fiction and popular musical artists.

Reading

• Neal, “From Protest to Climax: Black Power, State Repression, and Black Communities of Resistance”
• Lecture Slides: The Black Public Sphere in Transition
• Video Lecture Slides: The Black Public Sphere in Transition (youtube.com)

Listening (on YouTube)

• What’s Going On (Marvin Gaye, 1971)
• Inner City Blues (Marvin Gaye, 1971)
• Trouble Man (Marvin Gaye, 1972)
• Let’s Get it On (Marvin Gaye, 1973)
• Meaning of the 5% (Brand Nubian, 1993)
• Hypnotized (Linda Jones, 1969)
• Walk Tall (Cannonball Adderley Quintet, 1969)
• Country Preacher (Cannonball Adderley Quintet, 1969)
• The Ghetto (Donny Hathaway, 1972)
• Precious Lord, Take My Hand/You’ve Got A Friend (Aretha Franklin, 1972)

Quiz

• Protest to Climax