Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown

Manchild in the Promised Land is indeed one of the most remarkable autobiographies of

our time. This thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown's childhood as a hardened,

streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as

the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised

in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s. When the book was first published in

1965, it was praised for its realistic portrayal of Harlem -- the children, young people,

hardworking parents; the hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and numbers runners; the

police; the violence, sex, and humor. The book continues to resonate generations later, not

only because of its fierce and dignified anger, not only because the struggles of urban

youth are as deeply felt today as they were in Brown's time, but also because the book is

affirmative and inspiring. Here is the story about the one who "made it," the boy who kept

landing on his feet and became a man.

In Manchild in the Promised Land, Claude Brown reflects upon the differences and

tensions between the "Civil Rights" and "Black Power" approaches to the problems of

Race in the U.S. of the 1950s and early 1960s. In your essay, describe and analyze what

Brown has to say about these two movements. What does each approach have to offer to

the people of the urban ghetto? How does each movement hope to reach the goal, which

they share, of African-American liberation and empowerment? Finally, how does Brown's

book illluminate, expand upon, or even challenge the other material about race that we are

encountering in this course?

As you think about Civil Rights and Black Power, you will want to consider their