ACHIEVEMENTS OF BLACK POWER
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies aimed at
achieving self-determination for people of African/Black descent. It is the ideology
held and promoted by Malcolm X, The Nation of Islam, Stokely Carmichael, SNCC and
The Black Panther Party.
The movement was prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s, emphasizing racial
pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and
promote black collective interests and advance black values.
BLACK IDENTITY
There was sense of self hatred and lack of identity due to slavery (they had been robbed of their African Identity, lost
their original names, uprooted from their culture, and separated from their history) and segregation which had
robbed them of their independence and pride.
Malcolm X sums it up nicely:
"The worst crime the white man has committed has been to teach us to hate
ourselves."
Personal Names:
"You must remember that slave-names will keep you a slave in
the eyes of the civilized world today. You have seen, and
recently, that Africa and Asia will not honor you or give
you any respect as long as you are called by the white man’s
name.” – Elijah Muhammad (Nation of Islam)
Malcolm Little  Malcolm X
Stokely Carmichael  Kwame Ture (after Kwame Nkrumah, first head of state of the independent Ghana)
Cassius Clay (boxer)  Muhammad Ali
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Changes in nomenclature:
Nomenclature: the term or terms applied to someone or something.
Names used for African Americans up until the 1960s:
Nigger
Negro
Negress (f)
Coloured
Changes in nomenclature in the 60s:
African-Americans wanted to called BLACK. The above names were associated with
slavery and segregation. They wanted to positively take control of language and by the
end of the 60s, terms like Negro were falling into disuse.
 James Brown’s cover of his song ‘Say It Loud, I’m Black and Proud’ (1968)
Appearance:
Up until
the 60s:
Black women were expected to conform to ‘white’ beauty – to straighten their
hair using hot metal combs and wear Caucasian hairstyles like Diahann Carrol,
the actress on the left. Though she was a pioneer in many ways (she was the
first black woman to star in a major television network series), the way she’s
made up in it, is as a darker version of the ‘all American girl’.
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Change in the 60s:
Black women (and men) by the 60s began refusing to conform to images of ‘white beauty’. Black hairstyles like corn
rows (pictured left by the actress Cicely Tyson, the first woman to wear cornrows on TV in 1963) and afros became
highly popular and a visual way of expressing their pride in their black identity. The afro was popularised by Angela
Davis (pictured left), a campaigner for black rights, women’s rights and gay rights. She was a member of the SNCC
and involved with Black Panthers.
BLACK HISTORY:
Radical Groups wanted black history to be taught in schools so that African Americans could connect with their past
and be provided with examples of strong powerful black figures. They wanted African Americans to recognise their
African heritage and recognise that they might throw off their oppressors and gain independence for themselves.
A note on Freedom Schools:
The Freedom Schools of the 1960s were part of a long line of efforts to liberate people from oppression using the
tool of popular education, including secret schools in the 18th and 19th centuries for enslaved Africans; labor
schools during the early 20th century; the Citizenship Schools formed by Septima Clark and others in the 1950s.
The Freedom Schools of the 1960s were first developed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
during the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. They were intended to counter the “sharecropper education”
received by so many African Americans and poor whites. Through reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and civics,
participants received a progressive curriculum during a six-week summer program that was designed to prepare
disenfranchised African Americans to become active political actors on their own behalf (as voters, elected officials,
organizers, etc.). Nearly 40 freedom schools were established serving close to 2,500 students, including parents and
grandparents.
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Black Music:
Music was affected by Black Power.
e.g. Miles Davis, the jazz musician, set up an all Black
band around the same time that SNCC got rid of their
white membership. Used non-western instruments
(see the drums on the left) and used ideas from
African Music).
Davis fought for black women on the covers of his records (like below) – previously white women had been used on
the covers of black music (!) Albums such as E.S.P. (1965) were ground breaking in changing this. He also
incorporated African Imagery onto his covers e.g. Bitches Brew (1970)
Media:
Black power changed the way African Americans were portrayed in the
media – more positive, strong characters.
Examples:
-
Star Trek introduced a strong female black character – Lieutenant Uhura played by Nichelle Nichols. The
character came from Africa, her name comes from the Swahili for freedom and kissed on screen Captain Kirk.
This was the second interracial kiss on american television history – it caused outrage at the time.
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Still, it laid the way for interracial relationships on TV to
become normalised and acceptable – changing attitudes.
For example, one of the complaints from a white supremacist
southerner from the time, though negative suggests a subtle
change in mind-set:
"I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any
time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a
beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna
fight it”.
Other examples from TV:
-
Eartha Kitt played Catwoman on Batman – a powerful, determined Black Woman in the late 1960s.
Bill Cosby played a highly educated Pentagon spy in the series I-SPY from 1965-8
The Film Shaft (1971) grossing what Time magazine called an "astonishing" $13 million – the film was about a black
private detective who teamed up with the Black Panthers to take down the Mafia and save New York form race riots.
1968 – Mexico City Olympics
In 1968, the winners of the 200m race at the Mexico
City Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos did the ‘Power to
the People’ salute when receiving their medals.
Both were barefoot – solidarity with Africa’s poor
Smith – wore black scarf – black pride
Carlos – wore black beads – symbolising lynching
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Social and Economic Achievements
You already know that economic and social change in the north was more difficult to achieve.
Northerners were not interested in MLK and his style of campaigning (see your notes on MLK’s Northern
Campaigns).
SNCC and Black Panthers were more successful by providing practical help for those in the Ghettos (see your notes
on Survival Programmes).
Malcolm X, Carmichael and the Black Panthers were Black Nationalists and wanted African Americans to have
control over their own communities –
Some successes:
Starting with the ‘Free D.C. Movement’ led by the SNCC activist Marion Barry
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SNCC won right in 1966 for the black citizens of Washington D.C. to have control over their own school
boards.
SNCC set up a ‘Model Police Precinct’ controlled by a police board partly elected by the local black
community.
Gained $3 million of government funding to improve community policing
Then the SNCC were able to roll out similar projects across other states e.g.
-
New York  took control of the Intermediate School 201 in Harlem
Mississippi  Freedom City set up (21 houses built for displaced African Americans) and $1.5 million raised
to set up 85 Head Start centres to support young African American children. Though there was huge
opposition from Barnett, the racist state governor eventually led to the end of government funding towards
the project – it helped thousands of black people in Mississippi in the years 1965-7.
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