A Noble Fight: African American Freemasonry and the Struggle for Democracy in America (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780252033650)

A Noble Fight examines the metaphors and meanings behind the African American appropriation of the culture, ritual, and institution of freemasonry in navigating the contested terrain of American democracy. Combining cultural and political theory with extensive archival research--including the discovery of a rare collection of nineteenth-century records of an African American Freemason Lodge--Corey D. B. Walker provides an innovative perspective on American politics and society during the long transition from slavery to freedom.

With great care and detail, Walker argues that African American freemasonry provides a critical theoretical lens for understanding the distinctive ways African Americans have constructed a radically democratic political imaginary through racial solidarity and political nationalism, forcing us to reconsider much more circumspectly the complex relationship between voluntary associations and democratic politics.

Mapping the discursive logics of the language of freemasonry as a metaphoric rendering of American democracy, this study interrogates the concrete forms of an associational culture, revealing how paradoxical aspects of freemasonry such as secrecy and public association inform the production of particular ideas and expressions of democracy in America.

Author: Corey D. B. Walker
ISBN-10: 0252033655
ISBN-13: 9780252033650
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2008
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 11/28/2008 pg. 17
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2009 pg. 162
Choice 11/01/2009