Mercy, Mercy Me

Focusing on the work of six individuals - Robert Hayden, William Demby, Paule Marshall, John Coltrane, Romare Bearden, and W. E. B. Du Bois - Mercy, Mercy Me recovers an American tradition of evaluating the "dialectic of the Enlightenment." Hall argues that the cultural actors he describes reflect and embody the complex connections of race and nation. Cosmopolitan in outlook and critical of a culture of congratulation, they highlight the close relationship between slavery and the construction of American citizenship as they document the destructive influences wrought upon the self by consumer capitalism, technology, and ritualized violence. The course of this study reveals an essential concern at the core of African-American art in the sixties - that the longing to look backward is always in danger of lapsing into nostalgia and so must constantly struggle with the horror of the very past it would champion. In its original account of black artistry and its recovery of overlooked works of the period, Mercy, Mercy Me marks a major contribution to our understanding of 1960s American culture.

James C. Hall is Associate Professor of African-American Studies and English at the University of Illinois at Chicago.