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FREEDOMWAYS                     THIRD QUARTER 1973

too, in the atmosphere of raging McCarthyism anything sounding remotely scientific in the freedom struggle was suspect as being subversive. So we relied upon the traditions of our historic church.

"Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel,
and why not every man?"

Earlier the Council on African Affairs (1937-1955), under the leadership of Paul Robeson* and W. Alphaeus Hunton was establishing new bonds of contact and new channels of information for our movement to learn more of the political and economic problems and the strugglers of the peoples on the vast African continent.

But even in the fifties the writings of some of the earlier technicians and scientists came through to us. Frazier's critique of the Negro middle class in his book, Black Bourgeoisie, became important as did later James Baldwin's writing The Fire Next Time and Lerone Bennett popularized Afro-American history in his articles in Ebony and elsewhere. Then there was the founding of Freedomways magazine in 1961, as a quarterly journal of theoretical and practical work of our Movement, under the editorship of Esther Jackson and others.

For more than a decade FREEDOMWAYS, in both its editorials and articles has been a primary source expressing the political and social thought of the activist leadership of the Afro-American national community, in this period of civilizational crisis in U.S. society. This role has been demonstrated not only in the range of the subject matter which this magazine covers but also in the fact that one of its most salient features is its consistent internationalism. 

With the blossoming of the mass struggle for democratic rights in the 1960's the satirical art of such talents as Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor and the playwright diciplines of Lorraine Hansberry flowered in unity with the history making events of that period. And in the field of dance, a quarter century of work in this area by Katherine Dunham, and later Carmen de Lavallade saw additional talents come into the field in such personages in the 1960's as Alvin Ailey and Donald McKayle. During their apprenticeship these creative artists developed the diciplines and ingredients for a dance art of Afro-American expression which has gained international acclaim.

By the mid sixties the unity of the activists and the movement technicians and scientists began to crystalize once again. And we had


*For a fuller review and estimate of Paul Robeson's leadership during the period see the article "A Rock in a Weary Lan'," FREEDOMWAYS, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1971.

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