Charles Blow's own declaration of radical thought — for Black Americans to reconsider their Great Migration North and imagine new possibilities of Black political might.

The distinguished New York Times columnist offers a daring but utterly sensible plan to advance Black civil rights.

His is a familiar argument, revitalized by the South’s recent political developments.

Blow describes his idea as 'big' and 'audacious' and 'grand' and 'revolutionary' and many additional adjectives making clear his pride and confidence. Yet this is not a fully developed proposal — more like a rough thought experiment stretched into book form. He says the reverse migration should be intentional and strategic, but the strategy is only partially laid out, reflecting a simplified interpretation of history, one in which counterfactuals are taken as given and sheer numbers are assumed to overpower politics, power and entrenched prejudice.

New York Times columnist Blow proposes a radical path toward Black empowerment in this impassioned call for 'as many Black descendants of the Great Migration as possible' to return to the South 'with moral and political intentionality.' This mass resettlement, Blow argues, would allow African Americans to 'colonize and control the states they would have controlled if they had not fled them.' He paints a devastating picture of how white liberals have failed to match rhetorical support for Blacks with action, and buttresses his political arguments with painful personal experiences of racism.

While the account evades some of the tougher questions on economic development and the dismantling of entrenched voter suppression, Blow does provide a compelling argument on how a second migration back to the South could prove a way forward for Black America.

The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto renders an unflinching diagnosis of the ravages of white supremacy and a rousing prescription for Black Americans to eliminate its harms.