SOURCE: MacPhail, Scott. “June Jordan and the New Black Intellectuals.” African American Review 33, no. 1 (spring, 1999) 57-71.

In the following essay, MacPhail addresses the models of African-American intellectuals which influenced Jordan.

In Race Matters, Cornell West states that “the time is past for black political and intellectual leaders to pose as the voice for black America.” The contemporary black political and intellectual leader should “be a race-transcending prophet who critiques the powers that be … and who puts forward a vision of fundamental social change for all who suffer from socially induced misery” (70). If we are to believe a series of articles in popular American magazines,¹ a whole generation of African-American intellectuals is making the transition from experts on race matters to the more broadly defined role of the public, national intellectual, and in the process redefining “what it means to be an intellectual in the United States” (Bérub...