"Fergus has fingertip knowledge of North Carolina during this era and does a masterful job of navigating the often-complex contours of Tar Heel politics. His coverage of Little is outstanding, and his account of Soul City, that abortive attempt at a harmonious biracial community in eastern North Carolina, is marvelous. An outstanding work."
—Choice

"By digging deep in the sources, Devin Fergus's fascinating book reveals how much of the history of Black Power remains unwritten. His focus is the piedmont of North Carolina, mainly in the 1970s. By then, the movement had abandoned violence and learned how to work within the system. White liberals play a crucial role in this account, not because they co-opt, ignore, or betray the movement, but because liberal money and support helped create space for authentic black institutions. Analytically rigorous, this book offers case studies of real narrative power, and proof that the time for a reassessment of black power—and of liberalism—has arrived. This book begins that reassessment."
—Allen Matusow, author of The Unraveling of America

"With the publication of Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965–1980 Devin Fergus has produced an important and significant work of scholarship. The book has numerous qualities: it is meticulously researched; the empirical base is original and innovative; the scholarship is impressive and timely; and it is superbly written. But above all Fergus sets out a new challenge to two major parts of US history—the content of liberalism and its accommodative capacity, and the complex role of Black Power ideology and actions in American political development. Overturning conventional views, he convincingly argues that American liberalism was much more important in taming, shaping, and responding positively to black nationalists than is generally understood by scholars. In developing this innovative argument Devin Fergus presents a new and powerful intellectual voice. It will be widely adopted and cited."
—Desmond King, author of Separate and Unequal: African Americans and the U.S. Federal Government

"Devin Fergus’s Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics is an essential text for understanding the complex dance between black liberation and the liberal establishment that prepared the ground for the phenomenal rise of the Barack Obama generation of politics."
—Komozi Woodard , Esther Raushenbush Professor of History, Public Policy & Africana Studies, Sarah Lawrence College

"Devin Fergus has written a provocative reinterpretation of the relationship between Black Power and liberalism. His compelling narrative of the freedom struggles in North Carolina in the late 1960s and 1970s establishes the state as a key battleground in the post-Civil Rights era."
—Robert Rodgers Korstad, author of Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century

"Fergus has made a compelling case for an explicit relation between black nationalism and American liberalism. With exquisite research, he illustrates that Black Power stands at the center of much of our current political discourse. Suddenly the rhetoric of people like Patrick Buchanan makes more sense. What a grand contribution!"
—Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America

"In his sure to be controversial new book, Fergus takes on just about everyone in arguing that we have all gotten the story wrong, mainly because historians have been toiling away in separate vineyards, operating on untested assumptions, failing to look in the right places for evidence, and often misinterpreting the evidence they have."
—H-NC

"While Liberalism, Black Power and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980 indeeds sheds light on both the conservative and liberal politics at play in the history of the Black Power movement, Fergus crafts a believable argument that is applicable in a variety of global contexts. Fergus's books is thus recommended not only to historians of twentieth-century America, but also to anyone interested in how fringe nationalist movements wield power within conventional political frameworks."
—NC Historical Review

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