No Last Words: Class, Cultural Production, and the Black Radical Tradition in the Pre-Classical Civil Rights Movement, 1909–1948

No Last Words: Class, Cultural Production, and the Black Radical Tradition in the Pre-Classical Civil Rights Movement, 1909–1948 Chen, Anna Livia This paper argues that the strategic shape of the 1954–1965 classical civil rights movement was neither inevitable nor a simple progression of American values, but was the result of extensive ideological contestation during the pre-classical civil rights movement. Between the inflection points of 1929 and 1948, two ideologies, one rooted in Progressive Era racial stewardship and the other in the Black Radical Tradition, engaged in a Gramscian “war of position” for leadership of their coalition against white supremacy. An important tool in this Pre-Classical War of Position was cultural production.“