A discussion of Alice Echols's new book, Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic (Oxford University Press, 2025). The author will be joined in conversation by Ula Y. Taylor (UC Berkeley) and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (UC Irvine), moderated by Hajar Yazdiha (USC). Organized in partnership with the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Van Hunnick History Department. Registration is required. REGISTER HERE

About the Book: One of the most divisive issues in recent progressive politics has been what role, if any, allies might legitimately play in other people's movements. Despite the significance of this debate, it has taken place in a historical vacuum. 

In Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic, 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. In SNCC, whites were, in part, meant to generate a "white heat" so searing it would accelerate change. Results were mixed, and white activists formed new movements, from women's liberation to draft resistance.

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. Here, the FBI played a key role, and so did the discourse of "radical chic", advanced most effectively by the journalist Tom Wolfe. Still, even as Black-white solidarity lost steam, it was not entirely played out. In some of the era's most important political trials, even courtrooms became sites of solidarity as predominantly white juries returned verdicts that suggested they trusted Black Panther defendants more than the District Attorneys prosecuting them. 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.

About the Author: Alice Echols is Barbra Streisand Professor of Contemporary Gender Studies and Professor of History and Gender and Sexuality Studies at USC. She is the author of six books including most recently Shortfall: Family Secrets, Financial Collapse, and a Hidden History of American Banking (The New Press, 2017) and Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic, forthcoming in November 2025 from Oxford University Press.

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. 

This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.