Black Power Movement

As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s, it did so through the "proper" channels of the White American patriarchal system. Groups like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) defended the rights of minorities in peaceful, law-abiding ways that echoed the pacifist teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

These groups focused on assimilating into the existing power structures. However, younger activists took up the mantle of another role model, Malcolm X, who espoused a somewhat different and perhaps more transgressive approach to gaining civil rights. In this explanation, let's go deeper and explore the Black Power Movement, which earned a foothold in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s.

Black Power Movement Background

As the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s came to a crescendo with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965, the African American community had finally begun to progress in society regarding integration. There was now a parity in the public services and accommodations sector. Schools had undergone desegregation.

Southern Jim Crow laws were being dismantled on a federal level (albeit with resistance from Southern states). Discrimination in employment and housing was forbidden. African Americans would now be presumably absorbed into the American landscape. But many people felt there was much work to be done – especially young African Americans.

Fig. 2 - Voting Rights Act of 1965

These young people felt that their gains were something of a Pyrrhic victory for African Americans. Change had so far been slow and excruciatingly painful – the movement had many martyrs and victims. Civil rights leaders had used democratic, legal processes to achieve the end of integration. However, many issues of pride and self-determination were left unaddressed by leaders.

Many people felt that the gains were built on a rotten foundation. After all, America had been built on a superstructure of ingrained racism (including the slaughter of millions of indigenous peoples) and the backs of enslaved persons imported from Africa. No country that produced such a system could sustain it to the benefit of the oppressed minority.

Black Power Movement Beliefs

The Black Power Movement, rather than taking its beliefs from MLK, looked to another movement icon, Malcolm X, for inspiration. Malcolm X was not a proponent of turning the other cheek, a la Jesus Christ. Rather, he believed in fighting for autonomy and justice via "any means necessary".

Malcolm X appealed to his followers and other Black Power Movement leaders with an incendiary mix of Black pride, self-determinism, Black nationalism, and socialism. He rejected assimilation into the larger society. Black Power movements soon sprung up in Africa and Asia, paralleling those founded in the United States.

The Black Power movement gained traction in the late 1960s. The escalation of the Vietnam War fanned the flames of the sense of injustice as young African American males were drafted, fed into, and regurgitated by the American military-industrial complex.

Black Power Movement Organizations

The Nation of Islam set the template for Black Power Movement organizations, of which Malcolm X became the national spokesperson after having served a prison sentence for burglary. Inspired by his upbringing with nationalist activist parents, Malcolm X identified with the cause's goal of establishing Black nation-states.

Black Power Movement Leaders

A group of student activists heeded the call, popping up in Oakland, California. Two young graduates of Merritt College, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, formed the Black Panther Party of Self-Defense (BPP). Activist Stokely Carmichael later joined these two. Their "manifesto" was influenced by the writings of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao of Communist China, in addition to Nation of Islam's Malcolm X.

Fig. 3 - Huey Newton portrait with a gun in a rattan chair

The Ten Point Program, drawn up by Seale and Newton, summed up the philosophy of the Black Panther Party:

Women and the Black Power Movement

Change was in the air. Eventually, top Panther Stokely Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture and relocated to Africa. Huey Lawrence ended up serving a lengthy prison sentence, at which point activist Eldridge Cleaver entered the fray. His wife, Kathleen Cleaver, joined him.

Fig. 4 - Kathleen Cleaver, Florida 1971³

Cleaver and other female leaders had important roles within the Black Panthers, not least as editors for Panther publications. These women included Assat Shakan, Ericka Higgins, and Elaine Brown.

However, the new, co-ed Panthers would also contribute to simmering tensions due to chauvinistic attitudes among the ranks and the general view of women as secondary contributors and members of society. This attitude was underscored by the publication of Eldridge Cleaver's autobiography, in which he unabashedly boasted of serial sexual assault of women.

Fig. 5 - Free Huey Newton Banner, early 1970s⁴

A Movement Buckles Under Pressure

At the turn of the decade, pressures from within and outside the Black Panthers began to cause the organization to splinter. Divergent philosophies caused internal strife: many folks within the Panthers now believed in revolutionary violence instead of its original doctrine of self-defense.

Furthermore, the FBI had initiated a campaign of surveillance and intimidation, taking up original FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's challenge that the Panthers were an enemy Communist organization. The U.S. government wielded its power further with the formation of COINTELPRO, the federal Counterintelligence Program tasked with investigating American political organizations. COINTELPRO was disbanded in 1977, and the Black Panthers dissolved in 1982.

Black Power Movement Timeline

Let us take a look at the timeline of the black power movement

Legacy

The spirit of the Black Power Movement lives on today in the Black Lives Matter movement. Values like pride, justice, and autonomy infused both movements. They also inspired other minority groups to stand up for human rights passionately. The movement gave citizens more awareness of the problems facing African Americans. More concretely, free breakfast programs such as those initiated by the Black Panther Party still exist on a nationwide level.