The movement of Americans of African ancestry to fulfill the vision of a necessary, if unpromised, land boasts its ranks of orators, defenders spiritual and real, legal philosophers and paralegal militants, prophets, and martyrs. So much is to be expected. But is it not strange that this movement has produced no satirist, no one to do for black and white what [Jonathan] Swift did for Ireland and England?… Why is there nobody but the Smothers brothers to whip out the moral dilapidation at the base of what, with choice neutrality, we call "political behaviors and socioeconomic conditions"? (p. 102)

[One] suspects that more than social style now inhibits satire; that might as readily invite it. And so one wonders if the hard reckless laughter, the irreverent wit, the brooding condensed to explosiveness, the sense of outrage and conscience and love—all of which mark Eldridge Cleaver's voice in the...