The words of ‘I am Black and I am proud’ was an anthem that filled the 1960s. A time period which saw the militancy of Malcolm X, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and a student movement that would push forward an agenda of black culture empowerment that would change America. This movement arose from civil activism of the 1950s with leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and then Stokely Carmichael. The Black Power Movement arose from males who had grown weary of mistreatment and of the broken promises of the equality within American. This movement also arose from the males whose views would change after the Civil Rights Movement. Stokely Carmichael had grown weary of emphasizing nonviolence and decided to move towards more forceful actions in civil liberties. The Black Panther Party was created and the group emphasized ‘black power’. The Black Power movement empowered the black male voice. A voice that grew from the whimpers of the Jim Crow Era to a loud roar heard from the White House. Black Power inspired many black Americans to be able to look Americans in the face without fear and to fight for their rights no matter what obstacles they may face.
Incidentally, blacks did not suddenly fathom the idea of wanting equal rights and freedoms, the desire came from centuries of oppression. People of African descent, were not truly American, they were not treated as American citizens. ‘All men were created equal,’ defined America yet, people of African descent suffered from the infamous human brutality known as slavery. Abraham Lincoln used ‘colored’ people as political pawns notably when he ‘freed the slaves’ in his Emancipation Proclamation speech in 1863 which provided the enslaved population with a sense of sec...
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Schladweiler, Kief. “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).” Stokely Carmichael and
SNCC. N.p.. Web. 23 Nov 2013. http://www.aavw.org/protest/carmichael_sncc_abstract06_full.html. “Stokely Carmichael.” The History Channel website. Web. 22 Nov 2013. http://www.history.com/topics/stokely-carmichael. “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.” The History Channel website. Web. 23 Nov 2013. http://www.history.com/topics/student-non-violent-coordinating-committee. Voice, Charleston. “Black Nationalism.” Charleston Voice. N.p. Web. 19 Nov 2013. http://www.knology.net/~bilrum/BLKNATION.htm. Warren, Chief Justice. “Loving v. Virginia (No. 395) .” Legal Information Institute. N.p., 12 Jun
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If there was any one man who demonstrated the anger, the struggle, and the beliefs of African Americans in the 1960s, that man was Malcolm X. The African American cultural movement of the 1920s lost momentum in the 1930s because of worldwide economic depression. The Great Depression helped to divert attention from cultural to economic matters. Even before the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment and poverty among blacks was exceptionally high. It was under these difficult conditions that Malcolm X experienced his youth in the South. Malcolm X was a very controversial character in his time. He grew up in a very large family. His father hunted rabbits to sell to the white people for money, and his mother stayed home to take care of all the children. Several times when he was young, his family was forced to relocate due to the racist groups that would burn or run them out of their home like the Ku Klux Klan. One of these groups called the Black Legion killed his father by tying him to the railroad tracks. Malcolm’s father had life insurance but was not given to his family because they said that Earl Little had committed suicide. This was quite impossible because his head was bashed in and he tied himself to the railroad. Without his father’s income, Malcolm's family was forced to get government help and food. Applying for this type of assistance brought many white Social Workers into their home. They asked questions and interrogated the entire family. Malcolm’s mother always refused to talk or let them in.
Ever since slavery black people have been fighting for their freedom time after time and many different activists had different ways of expressing themselves to get their point across. But in the mid 1960s Stokely Carmichael had his own way of pushing freedom in the black community. He gave more awareness to the words “Black Power” as he was the leader of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) but soon changed his approach once he saw nonviolent protesters were being brutalized in the South. He had a speech at the university of California in 1966 where he addressed this issue of freedom in the black community in which he challenged the “civil rights leadership by rejecting integration and calling on blacks to oust whites from the freedom movement.” Because of Stokely Carmichael the freedom movement for blacks was heightened and was taken more seriously by whites and by other blacks and is also a main reason for blacks having the freedom we do today.
Although many laws were passed that recognized African Americans as equals, the liberties they had been promised were not being upheld. Hoffman, Blum, and Gjerde state that “Union League members in a North Carolina county, upon learning of three or four black men who ‘didn’t mean to vote,’ threatened to ‘whip them’ and ‘made them go.’ In another country, ‘some few colored men who declined voting’ were, in the words of a white conservative, ‘bitterly persecute[ed]” (22). Black codes were also made to control African Americans. Norton et al. states that “the new black codes compelled former slaves to carry passes, observe a curfew, live in housing provided by a landowner, and give up hope of entering many desirable occupations” (476). The discrimination and violence towards African Americans during this era and the laws passed that were not being enforced were very disgraceful. However, Reconstruction was a huge stepping stone for the way our nation is shaped today. It wasn’t pretty but it was the step our nation needed to take. We now live in a country where no matter the race, everyone is considered equal. Reconstruction was a success. Without it, who knows where our nation would be today. African American may have never gained the freedoms they have today without the
The Black Panther Party, which was co-founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966, was a political party that pushed to overcome social oppression. After the assassination of Black activist Malcom X, the Panthers decided they had enough of seeing their race be denied the freedom they deserved. Members of the Black Panthers were tired of a society that continued to consider them “niggers.” They were tired of not having the chance to get out of poverty and live comfortably. They were tired of not getting a quality education that public schools in America should’ve been providing them. They were tired of being beaten, harassed, and unruly discriminated against by police solely because of the color of their skin. They wanted to live in the beautiful nation that America appeared to be for Whites. They wanted freedom and equality for African-Americans.
The fight for equality has been a never-ending battle throughout American History. Stokely Carmichael addressed a speech in 1966 which the term “Black Power” was introduced; during the Black Power Movement they fought for social, political and economic equalities. The goal of Stokely who spoke at UC Berkeley, was to explain to his audience the reality of the lives of African Americans whose rights were limited, and to convince his audience to support the Black Power Movement. His Speech was very successful and full of facts which contained a few rhetorical strategies which are rhetorical questions, analogies, and lastly imagery.
Organized in the 1960s at the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther Party emerged as a revolutionist group pioneering a strategy of militancy. The Party’s aims were to eliminate the discrimination challenging African-Americans in America since the time of slavery, and to protect their communities from police brutality. Inspired by contemporary radical leaders such as Malcolm X, the party recognized that in order to restructure American society so that civil equality was obtainable by all people, a much stronger opposition was necessary. Party members felt the passive resistance adopted by their predecessors fighting for equality proved futile, and therefore the Party endorsed new tactics of self-defense and violent resistance to secure their political and social rights as American citizens. However, the promotion and employment of open violence fueled the government with legitimate reason to battle for the Party’s eradication. Regardless of its success in instituting innovative community reforms in African-American neighborhoods, during its short existence the Black Panther Party was never able to achieve its fundamental goal of eliminating racial discrimination and ensuring civil equality for all when battling against an America averse to change.
After hundreds of years of slavery in the western world, the end of the American Civil War brought forth a new age of questions which debated what rights qualifed as unalienable civil and human rights, and who should be afforded them. Whether it be the right to marry, the right to own land, the right to work, the right to vote, or the right to be a citizen, African Americans had to fight for and prove that these were rights that could not be denied to them as freedmen in America. After the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, there was a great split in opinion between white and black Americans about what American freedom entailed and whether or not African Americans had fair access to it.
Throughout history, African Americans have encountered an overwhelming amount of obstacles for justice and equality. You can see instances of these obstacles especially during the 1800’s where there were various forms of segregation and racism such as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan terrorism, Jim- Crow laws, voting restrictions. These negative forces asserted by societal racism were present both pre and post slavery. Although blacks were often seen as being a core foundation for the creation of society and what it is today, they never were given credit for their work although forced. This was due to the various laws and social morals that were sustained for over 100 years throughout the United States. However, what the world didn’t know was that African Americans were a strong ethnic group and these oppressions and suffrage enabled African Americans for greatness. It forced African Americans to constantly have to explore alternative routes of intellectuality, autonomy and other opportunities to achieve the “American Dream” especially after the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were passed after the Civil War.
The Black Panther Party was born to elevate the political, social, and economic status of Blacks. The means the Party advocated in their attempt to advance equality were highly unconventional and radical for the time, such as social programs for under privileged communities and armed resistance as a means of self preservation. The Party made numerous contributions to Black’s situation as well as their esteem, but fell victim to the ‘system’ which finds it nearly impossible to allow Blacks entry into the dominant culture. Thus, the rise and fall of a group of Black radicals, as presented by Elaine Brown in A Taste of Power, can be seen to represent the overall plight of the American Black: a system which finds it impossible to give Blacks equality.
The sun began to set below the mountains as we were finishing up the interview with my grandfather. I click the stop button on the voice recorder, “Man, you lived an interesting life. Do you have anything else you will like to add to it?” I said. “No, I think I gave you my whole life story. Do you think it is enough for your paper or whatever you are doing, Junior?” he replies. I shook my head and answer yes forgetting that my grandfather is legally blind in both eyes, a simple yes would have been enough. This was the most my grandfather talked about his past to anyone. He is a quiet man, all he needed was his smoking pipe, newspapers, an outdoor setting, and he would be just fine in this world. When I was a little boy, learning about your parents past would never cross my mind, even less my grandparents. As an adult, this was a chance to learn more about my grandfather, Amos Brown, and the life he lived. Currently, he is living with his daughter in Rancho Cucamonga, California. A far drive from his home in Pasadena, where he was born and raised, the house he laid stone by stone with his bare hands, the house he was forced to leave because of his ailing health, he misses it during long nights in bed. The goal of this interview was to see the world through his eyes and get a sense of what his life was. During the interview, I began to imagine my past and present with his, viewing every major event of his with my own. Is it possible that we have the same experiences, but in different eras? Could his memories of his younger years, time during the great depression, travels through the South as a recruit, witnessing a bloody era of the civil rights movement, and 2008 presidential race mirrors my own?
Frederick Douglas, perhaps the most famous abolitionists in history, made it known that after the Civil War, African Americans should be equal to whites. To Douglas, the definition of equality would be the, “immediate, unconditional, and universal enfranchisement of the black man, in every state of the union.” Douglas reasoned that without this specific right that, “he is the slave of society.” Without the right to vote, African Americans would still be second class citizens to whites, and still subjected to white superiority, especially in the South, which would be very much like slavery. Racism was abundant throughout the United States, so the thinki...
“Black Power”, the word alone raises an abundance of controversial issues. Black power was a civil rights movement led by the black panthers which addressed several issues including segregation and racism. Black power had a different meaning to every member of the Mc Bride family, Ruth and James both looked at black power from a different angle. In “The Color of Water”, The author James Mc Bride admired the black panthers at first, but slowly he grew afraid of them after fearing the consequences his mother might face for being a white woman in a black community influenced by black power. James’ worries were baseless, black power’s motive was to educate and improve African American communities not to create havoc or to harm members of the white community.
After the strong surge of the civil rights movement’s first years, outrage and disappointment was expanding among numerous African Americans, who saw obviously that genuine equality in social and political settings were still unfair. In the late 1960s and mid 1970s, this dissatisfaction filled the ascent of the Black Power development. The conventional social equality development and its accentuation on peacefulness, did not go sufficiently far, and the government enactment it had accomplished neglected to address the monetary and social weaknesses confronting blacks in America. Dark Power was a type of both self– definition and self– barrier for African Americans; it approached them to quit looking to the foundations of white America—which
The fight for equality has been fought for many years throughout American History and fought by multiple ethnicities. For African Americans this fight was not only fought to gain equal civil rights but also to allow a change at achieving the American dream. While the United States was faced with the Civil Rights Movements a silent storm brewed and from this storm emerged a social movement that shook the ground of the Civil Right Movement, giving way to a new movement that brought with it new powers and new fears. The phrase “Black power” coined during the Civil Right Movement for some was a slogan of empowerment, while other looked at it as a threat and attempted to quell this Black Power Movement.
The concept of Black Power stemmed from the Black Arts Movement. Black Power was a political movement that arose to express a new racial consciousness among Blacks in the United States. Black Power represented a racial dignity leading to freedom from white authority in economic and political grounds. In this era, African Americans went back to learn from old cultural history and traditions (Gladney). Major goals for Black Power were for all Blac...