Black power is a political slogan and a name which is given to various associated ideologies which aim to achieve self-determination for black people.Scott, James. Wilson. (1976). The Black Revolts: Racial Stratification in the U.S.A.: The Politics of Estate, Caste, and Class in the American Society. Cambridge, Mass: Schenkman Pub. It is primarily, but not exclusively, used in the United States by black activists and other proponents of what the slogan entails.Ogbar, J. O. G. (2005). Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. Reconfiguring American Political History. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 2. The black power movement was prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s, emphasizing racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture, promote and advance what was seen by proponents of the movement as being the collective interests and values of Black Americans.Appiah, Anthony and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1999). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books, p. 262.
The basis of black power is various ideologies that aim at achieving self-determination for black people in the U.S., dictating that black Americans create their own identities despite being subjected to pre-existing societal factors. "Black power" in its original political sense expresses a range of political goals, from militant self-defense against racial oppression to the establishment of social institutions and a self-sufficient economy, including black-owned bookstores, cooperatives, farms, and media. However, the movement has been criticized for alienating itself from the mainstream civil rights movement, and its support of black separatism.
Etymology The earliest known usage of the term "black power" is found in Richard Wright's 1954 book Black Power. Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Yale University Press, edited by Fred R. Shapiro. On May 1, 1965, a few months after the February 21 assassination of Malcolm X, Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs created "in our basement". the national Organization for Black Power, along "with former and then current members of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and SNCC among its members," including "representatives from Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York,"Boggs, Living for Change, ibid. as "a coordinating group of grassroots activists that looked to establish a concrete program for black self-determination centered in the cities." Already, "in the spring of 1964, together with Max Stanford of Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM); Baltimore Afro-American reporter William Worthy, and Patricia Robinson of Third World Press," the Boggses had "met with Malcolm in a Harlem luncheonette to discuss our proposal that he come to Detroit to help build the Organization for Black Power," but "Malcolm’s response was that we should go ahead while he served the movement as an 'evangelist.'"
New York politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr. used the term on May 29, 1966, during an address at Howard University: "To demand these God-given rights is to seek black power."
The first popular use of the term "black power" as a political and racial slogan was by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Willie Ricks (later known as Mukasa Dada), both organizers and spokespersons for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On June 16, 1966, in a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi, after the shooting of James Meredith during the March Against Fear, Stokely Carmichael said:"Matthew Duncan': Black Power salute by John Dominis-1968." The Chateau Theme, 7 November 2013. Web. 7 November 2013
This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested and I ain't going to jail no more! The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!
Stokely Carmichael saw the concept of "black power" as a means of solidarity between individuals within the movement. It was a replacement of the "Freedom Now!" slogan of Carmichael's contemporary, the non-violence leader Martin Luther King Jr. With his use of the term, Carmichael felt this movement was not just a movement for racial desegregation, but rather a movement to help end how American racism had weakened black people. He said, Black Power' means black people coming together to form a political force and either electing representatives or forcing their representatives to speak their needs.""Stokely Carmichael", King Encyclopedia, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University. Accessed 20 November 2006. Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton explain the term "black power" in their 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation: "It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."
Variants Black power adherents believed in black autonomy, with a variety of tendencies such as black nationalism, black self-determination, and black separatism. Such positions caused friction with leaders of the mainstream Civil Rights Movement, and thus the two movements have sometimes been viewed as inherently antagonistic. Civil Rights leaders often proposed passive, non-violent tactics while the black power movement felt that, in the words of Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, "a 'non-violent' approach to civil rights is an approach black people cannot afford and a luxury white people do not deserve." However, many groups and individuals—including Rosa Parks,Theoharis, Jeanne. "'I Don't Believe in Gradualism': Rosa Parks and the Black Power Movement in Detroit" . Paper presented at the annual meeting of the 96th Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. Robert F. Williams, Maya Angelou, Gloria Richardson, and Fay Bellamy Powell—participated in both civil rights and black power activism. A growing number of scholars conceive of the civil rights and black power movements as one interconnected Black Freedom Movement.Carson, Clayborne (1989) "Black Freedom Movement". In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris (eds.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Premilla Nadasen, "The Black Freedom Movement" , City University of New York.Ransby, Barbara (2003) Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. University of North Carolina Press.
Numerous black power advocates were in favor of black self-determination due to the belief that black people must lead and run their own organizations. Stokely Carmichael is such an advocate and states that, "only black people can convey the revolutionary idea—and it is a revolutionary idea—that black people are able to do things themselves." However, this is not to say that black power advocates promoted racial segregation. Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton write that "there is a definite, much-needed role that whites can play." They felt that whites could serve the movement by educating other white people.
Not all black power advocates were in favor of black separatism. While Stokely Carmichael and SNCC were in favor of separatism for a time in the late 1960s, organizations such as the Black Panther Party were not. Though the Panthers considered themselves to be at war with the prevailing white supremacist power structure, they were not at war with all whites, but rather with those (mostly white) individuals empowered by the injustices of the structure and responsible for its reproduction.
Bobby Seale, chairman and co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was outspoken about this issue. His stance was that the oppression of black people was a result of economic exploitation. In his book Seize the Time, he states that "In our view it is a class struggle between the massive proletarian working class and the small, minority ruling class. Working-class people of all colors must unite against the exploitative, oppressive ruling class. So let me emphasize again—we believe our fight is a class struggle and not a race struggle." For Seale, the African-American struggle was not solely a struggle for black supremacy. In 1970, this contention fulfilled aims similar to those of the languishing Poor People's Campaign, as well as Jesse Jackson's Resurrection City and his later Rainbow/PUSH, the latter a counter to Hamptonian iterations of Rainbow Coalitions.Seale, Bobby (1996). Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton. New York: Black Classic Press. p. 72.
Offshoots of black power include African internationalism, pan-Africanism, black nationalism, and black supremacy.
History
The term "black power" was used in a different sense in the 1850s by black leader Frederick Douglass as an alternative name for the Slave Power—that is, the disproportionate political power at the national level held by slave owners in the South. Douglass predicted: "The days of Black Power are numbered. Its course, indeed is onward. But with the swiftness of an arrow, it rushes to the tomb. While crushing its millions, it is also crushing itself. The sword of Retribution, suspended by a single hair, hangs over it. That sword must fall. Liberty must triumph."
In Apartheid Era South Africa, Nelson Mandela's African National Congress used the call-and-response chant "Amandla! (Power!)", "Ngawethu! (The power is ours!)" from the late 1950s onward.Mandela, Nelson (1994) Long Walk to Freedom. Little, Brown, and Co. p. 318.
The modern American concept emerged from the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s. Beginning in 1959, Robert F. Willams, president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, openly questioned the ideology of nonviolence and its domination of the movement's strategy. Williams was supported by prominent leaders such as Ella Baker and James Forman, and opposed by others, such as Roy Wilkins (the national NAACP chairman) and Martin Luther King Jr. In 1961, Maya Angelou, Leroi Jones, and Mae Mallory led a riotous (and widely covered) demonstration at the United Nations in order to protest against the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.Joseph, Peniel ed. (2013) The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era. Routledge. pp. 55–61. James Baldwin, "A Negro Assays the Negro Mood" The New York Times Magazine, March 12, 1961 Malcolm X, national representative of the Nation of Islam, also launched an extended critique of nonviolence and integrationism at this time. After seeing the increasing militancy of blacks in the wake of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and wearying of Elijah Muhammad's domination of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm left that organization and engaged with the mainstream of the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm was now open to voluntary racial integration as a long-term goal, but he still supported armed self-defense, self-reliance, and black nationalism; he became a simultaneous spokesman for the militant wing of the Civil Rights Movement and the non-separatist wing of the black power movement.
An early manifestation of black power in popular culture was the performances given by Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall in March 1964, and the album In Concert which resulted from them. Nina Simone mocked liberal nonviolence ("Go Limp"), and took a vengeful position toward white racists ("Mississippi Goddamn" and her adaptation of "Pirate Jenny"). Historian Ruth Feldstein writes that, "Contrary to the neat historical trajectories which suggest that black power came late in the decade and only after the 'successes' of earlier efforts, Simone's album makes clear that black power perspectives were already taking shape and circulating widely...in the early 1960s."