Black Power, White Heat

From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic

By: Alice Echols

Narrated by: Misty Monroe

A rich history of cross-racial coalitions and alliances of the Sixties' freedom movement, acclaimed historian Alice Echols's Black Power, White Heat reshapes our understanding of the entire era.

In Black Power, White Heat, the Sixties historian Alice Echols explores what happened some sixty years ago when whites and Blacks came together in the fight against racism. She tells this story by focusing on two Black-led organizations that bookend the Sixties: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party.

By 1967, the Black Panther Party was advancing its own unique brand of "revolutionary nationalism", and seeking out white supporters. Partnering with whites brought the group visibility and resources, but it also put the Panthers at odds with other Black radicals, with unfortunate consequences.

Black Power, White Heat explains how solidarity lost credibility, and not just from within the movement. Clear-eyed about the difficulties of solidarity, Black Power, White Heat nonetheless emphasizes the achievements and considerable promise of uniting across difference, and in ways that will inform and deepen current debates roiling progressive politics.

©2025 Oxford University Press (P)2025 Highbridge Audio

What I Have Been Waiting For— A White Woman the Same Age as Me who has gathered all the relevant facts

I wrote a book called Black Macho about the same period that Alice Echols focuses on in this book. Indeed we are about the same name. Since then I often track writing that seems to fill in the blanks of the knowledge I had about the Cilvil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement at the time. It was 1979. I was 27. No google, no Wikipedia,, no internet, ho wifi,. just saying. nonetheless I felt completely compelled to write about what I was thinking. For these present times Alice Echols’ book about the late sixties and early seventies, peaceful resistance versus self defense as embodied by many in the activist movements of the time, Let’s say that Alice Nichol’s tags it in spades in spades or do I mean hearts. She wrote, meticulously researched, relying heavily on the memoirs that the survivors and victims of the Civil Rights Movement have copiously produced. The blow by blow of the Civli Rights Movement, together with its internecine confrontations and feuds. I feel like I am actually there and the mark of a great historian, Alice wasn’t there either. I don’t know what you call it—ethography, journalism combined with oral histories. Perhaps the most idealistically embodiment of the initiat aspirations in SNCC, Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, as ably advised by the fabulous Ella Baker. I want to thank Alice for putting the “facts” in a portfolio so well designed for consumption.