Soulbook, No. 12
Los Angeles: Soulbook, 1978. The penultimate issue of this important, erratically published revolutionary black nationalist journal founded in 1964 by Kenn Freeman (Mamadou Lumumba) and Ernie Allen. Freeman and Allen were involved with Donald Warden’s Afro-American Association along with Bobby Seale - who was Soulbook’s early distribution manager - Huey Newton and Ron Everett (Maulana Karenga). Besides RAM, Freeman and Allen formed a number of other groups while managing Soulbook, including the Black Panther Party of Northern California, which they abandoned after internal squabbling with Seale and Newton who continued on with their Black Panther Party of Self-Defense, and House of Umoja, a pan-African secret society. Other original editorial committee members included Donald Freeman (different from RAM co-founder Don Freeman), Issac Moore, Carroll Holmes, and New York representative Bobb Hamilton.
Issues were published very erratically with only 13 issues appearing between 1964-1980 (no issues were published for a time in the early 1970s. Its original subtitle, “The Quarterly Journal of Revolutionary Afroamerica,” was later changed to “The Revolutionary Journal of the Black World.” Content featured both political and cultural analysis and literary contributions, with early issues focused heavily on RAM’s focus on revolutionary nationalism. The journal became increasingly Afrocentric and when it was revived in the mid-1970s became the journal of the Afrikan People’s Party, which had merged with the House of Umoja in 1973.
This issue features a lengthy editorial ("Towards An Honest and Just African Liberation Day - Notes on Stokely Carmichael and the Indian Question"); a review and response by Lemoine Callender of the book Black Children - White Parents: A Study of Transracial Adoption (1974); an unattributed article, "Will the U.S. Intervene in Caribbean?"; "The Relationship of Language to National Consciousness" by Akinyele Umoja; and poetry and prose. Crudely drawn and reproduced illustrations throughout.
Stapled, photo-illustrated wrappers (cartoon to rear wrapper), 112 pp., illustrated. Some toning to wrappers, else a near fine copy of a scarce issue. Item #15363
Price: $275.00