The Black power movement or Black liberation movement emerged in the 1960s from the mainstream civil rights movement in the United States, reacting against its moderate and incremental tendencies and representing the demand for more immediate action to counter white supremacy. Many of its ideas were influenced by Malcolm X's criticism of Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protest methods. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, coupled with the urban riots of 1964 and 1965, ignited the movement. While thinkers such as Malcolm X influenced the early movement, the views of the Black Panther Party, founded in 1966, are widely seen as the cornerstone. Black power was influenced by philosophies such as pan-Africanism, Black nationalism, and socialism, as well as contemporary events such as the Cuban Revolution and the decolonisation of Africa.Komozi Woodard, "Rethinking the Black Power Movement" , Africana Age.
During the peak of the Black power movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many African Americans adopted "Afro" hairstyles, African clothes, or African names (such as Stokely Carmichael, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who popularized the phrase "Black power" and later changed his name to Kwame Ture) to emphasize their identity. Others founded Black-owned stores, food cooperatives, bookstores, publishers, media, clinics, schools, and other organizations oriented to their communities. American universities began to offer courses in Black studies, and the word Black replaced Negro as the preferred usage in the country.
Some Black power organizations prioritized social programs, while others adopted a more militant approach; for instance, the Black Panther Party introduced a Free Breakfast for Children program and established community health clinics, while the Black Liberation Army carried out bombings and murdered police officers. The movement never had a central authority or structure, and its influence was diluted by legislation such as the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the expansion of federally funded welfare programs, and police action against its activists. The Black power movement declined by the mid-1970s and 1980s, as civil rights activists increasingly focused on electing Black politicians over militant struggle, though its legacy has influenced later movements, such as Black Lives Matter.
History Origin
The first popular use of the term "Black power" as a social and racial slogan was by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Willie Ricks (later known as Mukasa Dada), both organizers and spokespeople for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. On June 16, 1966, in a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi, during the March Against Fear, Carmichael led the marchers in a chant for Black power that was televised nationally.
The organization Nation of Islam began as a Black nationalist movement in the 1930s, inspiring later groups. It was strongly influenced by Pan-Asianism, especially with respect to Japan, believing in a unity between non-White peoples. Kevin Gaines has argued that in the 1950s, an early version of the Black Power movement was restrained due to Cold War tensions. This was done through methods like the restriction of passports. Figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson and Julian Mayfield were part of this and some, including Mayfield, felt forced to emigrate the United States and continue their activism elsewhere, with Mayfield going to Ghana.
Malcolm X is largely credited with the group's dramatic increase in membership between the early 1950s and early 1960s (from 500 to 25,000 by one estimate; from 1,200 to 50,000 or 75,000 by another). In March 1964, Malcolm X left the Nation due to disagreements with Elijah Muhammad; among other things, he cited his interest in working with civil rights leaders, saying that Muhammad had prevented him from doing so. Later, Malcolm X also said Muhammad had engaged in extramarital affairs with young Nation secretariesa serious violation of the group's teachings. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot and killed while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, New York City. Three Nation members were convicted of assassinating him. Despite this, there has long been speculation and suspicion of government involvement. The forty police officers at the scene were instructed to "stand down" by their commanding officers while the shooting took place.
After the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee decided to cut ties with the mainstream civil rights movement. They argued that Blacks needed to build power of their own, rather than seek accommodations from the power structure in place. SNCC migrated from a philosophy of nonviolence to one of greater militancy after the mid-1960s. The organization established ties with radical groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society.
In late October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party. In formulating a new politics, they drew on their experiences working with a variety of Black power organizations.Seale, 1970, part I; Newton, 1973, parts 2–3; Bloom and Martin, 2013, chapter 1; Murch, 2010, part II and chapter 5.
Escalation in the late 1960s
The Black Panther Party initially utilized open-carry gun laws to protect party members and local Black communities from law enforcement. Party members also recorded incidents of police brutality by distantly following police cars around neighborhoods.Bloom and Martin, 45. Numbers grew slightly starting in February 1967, when the party provided an armed escort at the San Francisco airport for Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow and keynote speaker at a conference held in his honor.Black Panther Newspaper, May 15, 1967, p. 3; Bloom and Martin, 71–72. By 1967, the SNCC began to fall apart due to policy disputes in its leadership, and many members left for the Black Panthers.Fraser, C. Gerald, "SNCC Has Lost Much of Its Power to Black Panthers", The New York Times news service (Eugene Register-Guard), October 9, 1968. Throughout 1967, the Panthers staged rallies and disrupted the California State Assembly with armed marchers.Pearson, 129. In 1956 the FBI developed COINTELPRO to investigate Black nationalist groups and others.Stohl, 249. By 1969, the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized "Black nationalist" COINTELPRO actions. In 1968, the Republic of New Afrika was founded, a separatist group seeking a Black country in the southern United States, only to dissolve by the early 1970s.
At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medalists, respectively, in the 200 meters event, each raised a black-gloved hand as the American national anthem was played during their medal ceremony. Afterwards, Smith stated that: "We are Black and we are proud of being Black. Black America will understand what we did."
By 1968, many Black Panther leaders had been arrested, including founder Huey Newton for the murder of a police officer (Newton's prosecution was eventually dismissed), yet membership surged. Black Panthers later engaged the police in a firefight in a Los Angeles gas station. In the same year, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, creating nationwide riots, the widest wave of social unrest since the American Civil War.Peter B. Levy , Baltimore '68, p. 6. In Cleveland, Ohio, the "Republic of New Libya" engaged the police in the Glenville shootout, which was followed by rioting. The year also marked the start of the White Panther Party, a group of Whites dedicated to the cause of the Black Panthers. Founders Pun Plamondon and John Sinclair were arrested, but eventually freed, in connection to the bombing of a Central Intelligence Agency office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that September.
By 1969, the Black Panthers began purging members due to fear of law enforcement infiltration, engaged in multiple gunfights with police and one with a Black nationalist organization. The Panthers continued their "Free Huey" campaign internationally. In the spirit of rising militancy, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers was formed in Detroit, which supported labor rights and Black liberation.
Peak in the early 1970s
In 1970 the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party, Stokely Carmichael, traveled to various countries to discuss methods to resist "American imperialism".Joseph, Peniel E. Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, Henry Holt and Company, 2007. In Trinidad, the Black power Movement had escalated into the Black Power Revolution in which many Afro-Trinidadians forced the government of Trinidad to give into reforms. Later many Panthers visited Algeria to discuss Pan-Africanism and anti-imperialism. In the same year former Black Panthers formed the Black Liberation Army to continue a violent revolution rather than the party's new reform movements.Marie-Agnès Combesque, "Caged panthers", Le Monde diplomatique, 2005. On October 22, 1970, the Black Liberation Army is believed to have planted a bomb in St. Brendan's Church in San Francisco while it was full of mourners attending the funeral of San Francisco police officer Harold Hamilton, who had been killed in the line of duty while responding to a bank robbery. The bomb was detonated, but no one in the church suffered serious injuries.Van Derbeken and Lagos. "Ex-militants charged in S.F. police officer's '71 slaying at station", San Francisco Chronicle (January 23, 2007).
In 1971, several Panther officials fled the U.S. due to police concerns. This was the only active year of the Black Revolutionary Assault Team, a group that bombed the New York South African consular office in protest of apartheid. On September 20 it placed bombs at the UN Missions of Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa) and the Republic of Malawi.Edward F. Mickolaus, Transnational Terrorism: a chronology of events, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1980, p. 258. In February 1971, ideological splits within the Black Panther Party between leaders Newton and Eldridge Cleaver led to two factions within the party; the conflict turned violent and four people were killed in a series of assassinations.Donald Cox, "Split in the Party", New Political Science, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1999. On May 21, 1971, five Black Liberation Army members participated in the shootings of two New York City police officers, Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones. Those brought to trial for the shootings include Anthony Bottom (also known as Jalil Muntaqim), Albert Washington, Francisco Torres, Gabriel Torres, and Herman Bell.
During the jail sentence of White Panther John Sinclair a "Free John" concert took place, including John Lennon and Stevie Wonder. Sinclair was released two days later. On August 29, three BLA members murdered San Francisco police sergeant John Victor Young at his police station. Two days later, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter signed by the BLA claiming responsibility for the attack. Late in the year Huey Newton visited China for meetings on Maoist theory and anti-imperialism.Revolutionary Suicide Penguin classics Delux Edition" page 352 Black power icon George Jackson attempted to escape from prison in August, killing seven hostages only to be killed himself. Jackson's death triggered the Attica Prison uprising which was later ended in a bloody siege. On November 3, Officer James R. Greene of the Atlanta Police Department was shot and killed in his patrol van at a gas station by Black Liberation Army members.