Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought revisits the activism and arguments in support of separate black statehood from the mid-19th century to the present, detailing the ways black nationalism mirrors broader currents in U.S. politics and thought. This book challenges the idea that black nationalism is a timeless, unchanging, and anti-assimilationist impulse. It argues that black nationalism in the United States draws on analogous political strategy and thinking unique to specific historical eras--often inadvertently reproducing strategies and thinking responsible for racial inequality in the first place.