Jeffrey Lamar Coleman, professor of English, published "Singing Is Swinging: The Soul Force of Twentieth Century Black Protest Music" in "The Black Intellectual Tradition: African American Thought in the Twentieth Century" (University of Illinois Press, 2021). The book presents essays on the diverse thought behind the fight for racial justice as developed by African American artists and intellectuals, performers and protest activists, institutions and organizations, and educators and religious leaders. By including both women’s and men’s perspectives from the United States and the Diaspora, the essays explore the full landscape of the Black intellectual tradition. Throughout, contributors engage with important ideas ranging from the consideration of gender within the tradition, to intellectual products generated outside the intelligentsia, to the ongoing relationship between thought and concrete effort in the quest for liberation.
Professor Coleman's essay analyzes blues protest songs from the sharecropping era as well as music from the Civil Rights movement and songs from the initial conscious era of rap and hip hop. "Singing Is Swinging" concludes with a final section on some of the socially conscious songs of Prince Rogers Nelson, "one of America's most significant protest artists of the post-civil rights era." The volume is edited by Derrick P. Alridge of the University of Virginia, Cornelius L. Bynum of Purdue University, and James B. Stewart, professor emeritus at Penn State University.
