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USA - A Divided Union 1941-80
Key Question: How was the Black Power movement different from the Civil Rights movement?
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Quick Links - WWII - Women, Blacks, Economy; Women in 1950s, McCarthyism, Civil Rights Reasons, Montgomery, Little Rock, Tactics, Successes; Black Power, Youth and Students, Women's Movement, JFK's New Frontier, Johnson's Great Society, Watergate |
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What
you need to know about…. Black
Power Martin
Luther King preached non-violence. Other black leaders disagreed
with this. For example, Malcolm X, a black Muslim, disagreed and
believed that white racism had to be tackled with force. MLK was
afraid that black violence would turn whites off Civil Rights reforms.
However, many young urban blacks saw Malcolm X’s message as inspiring,
even more so after his murder in 1965.
Malcolm
X was the leader of the Nation of Islam. It called for a total separation
of black and white Americans. They rejected their ‘white’ American
surnames (‘slave names’) and often replaced them with
‘X’. “I
don’t go along with non-violence unless everybody’s The slogan ‘Black Power’ became popular in 1966. It excited many black people with the idea that they should control their own communities. To many, it was the rejection of King’s non-violence.
The
Black Panthers were Revolutionary Communists who said blacks, other minorities
and working-class people should defend themselves against the American
state. Their members carried guns to protect themselves from the
violence of whites.
“I’m
not going to beg the white man for anything I deserve
– I’m going to take it. We want black power.” –
Stokely Carmichael - one of the other Black Power people. In
the mid-1960s serious riots took place in many black ghettoes
(e.g. Watts, LA, Newark, NJ, Detroit). These were the ‘long hot
summer’ riots, caused by poverty, discrimination and black anger. These
riots were a serious domestic crisis for Johnson’s government.
Whites blamed the riots on black ‘lawlessness’. Blacks knew why
their anger was boiling over. Note
– Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 seemed to
undermine the non-violence he had argued for all his life. He was shot
after moving towards bringing the black struggle together with the anti-war
struggle and the fight against poverty and capitalism. Although equal opportunities for black Americans have improved, racial conflict still remains a problem in the US today e.g. the Rodney King episode in LA in 1992.
Red
Power By
the 1960s the poorest ethnic minority was the Native Americans
– an irony because they, of course were the first Americans! They
protested about the injustices of the past. The American Indian
Movement (AIM) wanted either land returned or financial
compensation. Sometimes protests turned violent as at Wounded Knee in
1973.
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Web Links
History of the Black Panther Party at the Marxist Internet Archive
Black Panther Newspaper Collection at the Maoist International Movement
Homepage of Bobby Seale - one of the BPP founders
Black Power Posters and Pamphlets
It's About Time - the alumni of the Black Panthers
Freedom Archives - audio recordings of 1960s radical America
FBI Investigations
Elijah Muhammad (Nation of Islam)
Recommended Revision Guide £5.99
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