The Black Power Movement

The Black Power movement steadily gained momentum through the 1950’s and 1960’s. It marked a turning point in how African American people saw themselves. Some saw the movement as a positive and proactive force aimed at helping black people achieve full equality with white people but others saw it as a radical and violent group whose primary goal was to drive a wedge between whites and blacks. The Black Power movement was a complex event that took place at a time when society and culture was being transformed throughout the United States.

Most of my previous posts have focused on people that were heavily involved in the NAACP and the SCLC. These organizations worked with blacks and whites to create a desegregated society and end racial discrimination. Their efforts generated positive responses from a broad spectrum of people across the country. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made significant headway with his devotion to his nonviolent policy. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the “Civil Rights Act” and a year later he signed the “Voting Rights Act”.

Civil Rights Act legislation was an effective step toward eliminating inequality between blacks and whites. However, the reality was that prejudice could not be legislated away. African Americans still faced lower wages than whites, higher crime rates in their neighborhoods, and faced intense racial discrimination. Young African Americans lost hope in the civil rights movement ability to generate real social change. What they wanted was something that would accelerate the process and give them the same opportunities as white people, socially, economically, and politically. They felt that the civil rights movement was based more on white perceptions of civil rights than black perceptions.

By the mid-1960s, dissatisfaction with the pace of change was growing among the community. The term “black power” had been around since the 1950’s, but it was Stokely Carmichael who popularized the term in 1966 and brought forth the movement. Carmichael led a push to transform Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commettee (SNCC) from a multiracial community activist organization into an all-black social change organization.

Late in 1966, two young college students, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, formed the Blank Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP). The group’s goal was to track incidents of police violence. Within a short time groups such as SNCC and BPP gained momentum, and by the late 1960’s the Black Power movement had made a definite mark on American culture and society.

The Black Power movement instilled a sense of racial pride and self-esteem in African Americans. They were told that it was up to them to improve their lives. Black Power advocates encouraged blacks to form or join all-black political parties that could provide a formidable power base and offer a foundation for real socioeconomic progress. The movement’s leaders said “black people had been trying to aspire to white ideals of what they should be.” The Black Power movement was “time for blacks to set their own agenda, putting their needs and aspirations first.” An early step, in fact, was the replacement of the word “Negro” (a word associated with the years of slavery and oppression) with “Black.”

The movement had a number of positive results. The most important was its influence on black culture. For the first time, blacks in the United States were encouraged to acknowledge their African heritage. Colleges established African American studies programs and departments. Blacks who had grown up believing that they were descended from a worthless people now found out that African culture was as rich and diverse as any other, and they were encouraged to take pride in that heritage. The Black Arts movement, born from the Black Power movement, flourished in the 1970s. Young black poets, authors, and visual artists found their voices and shared those voices with others.

There were also negatives results from the movement. That same spirit of racial unity and pride that made the Black Power movement so dynamic also made it problematic and, to some, dangerous. A good amount white people, and a number of black people, saw the movement as a “black separatist organization bent on segregating blacks and whites and undoing the important work of the civil rights movement.” The civil rights leaders agreed that Black Power advocates had valid and pressing concerns. Blacks were still victims of racism, whether they were being charged a higher rate for a mortgage, getting paid less than a white coworker doing the same work, or facing violence at the hands of white racists. But they felt that the solutions that some Black Power leaders advocated seemed only to create new problems. For example, some suggested that blacks receive military training and carry guns to protect themselves. Though this was exclusively a means of self-defense and not a call to violence, it was still unnerving to think of armed civilians walking the streets regardless of race.

The biggest problem for the movement was the leadership. Because the Black Power movement was never a formally organized movement, it had no central leadership. This meant that different organizations with divergent agendas often could not agree on the best course of action. The more radical groups accused the more mainstream groups of capitulating to whites, and the more mainstream accused the more radical of becoming too ready to use violence. By the 1970s, most of the formal organizations associated with the Black Power movement, such as the SNCC and the Black Panthers, had disappeared.

The Black Power movement did not succeed in getting black people to break away from white society and create a separate society nor did it end discrimination or racism. It did, however, make being black something you can be proud of and it helped black people and white people gain a better understanding of each other.