Stephen Bantu Biko 18 December 1946 - 12 September 1977 by: Luke Teixeira Table of Contents Introduction Profile Early Life Personal Life Political Career and Influence Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) Legacy Analysis Conclusion References Steve Biko. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 03:27, Jun 22, 2015, from http://www.biography.com/people/steve-biko-38884. Introduction Stephen Bantu Biko, who was born in King William’s Town, Eastern Province (now Eastern Cape), South Africa on the 18 December 1946 (sahistory.org.za), was an anti-apartheid activist who was the co-founder of the South African Students’ Organisation in 1968 and headed the Black Consciousness Movement. He was also the co-founder of the Black People’s Convention in 1972. Biko was arrested on numerous occasions for his outspoken beliefs and anti-apartheid work and was a banned person up until his death. On the 12 of September …show more content…
His fierce belief that the best way for black people to overcome apartheid was not to succumb to the white man’s idea that being black is the colour of inferiority. As Biko said: ‘The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.’ Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) The BCM was a very important organisation headed by Steve Biko and set up to unite all ‘black’ people, a term used specifically to abolish the negative term ‘non-white’ and to frame being black as something to be proud of. This organisation included Indian, coloured and African all as one. This black consciousness was summed up well by Heaku Rachidi, another Black Consciousness activist when he said: “We are not aberrations of white people but are black people in our own
The story “A Multitude of Black People…Chained Together” written by Olaudah Equiano, is a primary source, because he is telling a story that actually happened and the main character is him. This document was written in 1789. At the young age of 11, Olaudah Equiano was captured and sold off. In 1776 he eventually bought freedom in London, and he was a big supporter to end slavery. He was the youngest son of a village leader of the Ibo people of the kingdom of Benin, which was alongside the Niger River. Slavery was an integral part of the Ibo culture, and the Ibo people never thought about being taken away to be made someone else’s slave. One day, two men and two women captured the children of the chief and sold them off to be slaves. Around
This week I read the short article on Alan Locke’s, “Enter the New Negro”. This article is discussing the Negro problem in depth. “By shedding the chrysalis of the Negro problem, we are achieving something like spiritual emancipation”. Locke believes that if we get rid of whatever is holding us back we would gain something renewing and beautiful.
Art today isn't really thought of as something big or important, but during the Harlem renaissance
As you well know, this country was found by criminal minded beasts, who colonized this area just as they did Afrika in the 1800s. As we had our plantations in the south with house negroes and field Afrikans, we find that this trend has never changed as the years have gone by. Thanks to research done by brutha Cokely, we have found that there is a black secret society that has been closely associated with maintaining the grip of white supremacy on people of color. These same secret societies, these house negroes answer to, have a long history rooted in the physical and mental enslavement of Afrikans around the globe. This black "secret society" is called the Boule' aka. Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity Incorporated, founded May 15, 1904. This is the 1st black fraternity in america and was before the 1st black "college" frat, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated.
“BETWEEN me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it….instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? They say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil (Du Bois 1)?” In “The Souls of Black Folk” W.E.B. Du Bois raises awareness to a psychological challenge of African Americans, known as “double - consciousness,” as a result of living in two worlds: the world of the predominant white race and the African American community. As defined by Du Bois, double-consciousness is a:
James H. Cone is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Cone probably is best known for his book, A Black Theology of Liberation, though he has authored several other books. Dr. Cone wrote that the lack of relevant and “risky” theology suggests that theologians are not able to free themselves from being oppressive structures of society and suggested an alternative. He believes it is evident that the main difficulty most whites have with Black Power and its compatible relationship to the Christian gospel stemmed from their own inability to translate non-traditional theology into the history of black people. The black man’s response to God’s act in Christ must be different from the whites because his life experiences are different, Dr. Cone believes. In the “black experience,” the author suggested that a powerful message of biblical theology is liberation from oppression.
Paul Tillich’s analysis of “the courage to be” further clarifies the meaning of Black Power. He says that “the courage to be” “is the ethical act in which man affirms his being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation” Black Power is then a humanizing force because it the black man’s attempt to be recognized as a “thou” in spite of the “other,” the white power which dehumanizes him. The courage they feel gives them the...
All human beings are born with genes that are unique to them and make us the individuals we become. The right to exist as an individual in society achieving the best possible potential of one’s existence irrespective of any bias is expected by most humans. In the essay, ‘The new Civil Rights’ Kenji Yoshino discusses how the experience of discovering and revealing his sexual preference as a gay individual has led to him proposing a new civil rights by exploring various paradigms of the rights of a human being to exist in today’s diverse society. In exploring the vast demands of rights ranging from political or basic human rights we have differentiated ourselves into various groups with a common thread weaving through all the demands which
The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption (ABB) was a militant black liberation group founded in 1919 by West Indian journalist Cyril Briggs. Cyril Briggs, a West Indian-born radical of mixed racial parentage living in New York. Briggs was a staunch exponent of the theory of racial separatism. The ABB was a revolutionary secret organization whose purpose and program was the liberation of African people and the redemption of the African race. It was a propaganda organization built on the model of the secret fraternity, organized in "posts." It was centered in Harlem, the ABB established local branches throughout the country.
Nearly all of the problems the Black Panther Party attacked are the direct descendants of the system which enslaved Blacks for hundreds of years. Although they were given freedom roughly one hundred years before the arrival of the Party, Blacks remain victims of White racism in much the same way. They are still the target of White violence, regulated to indecent housing, remain highly uneducated and hold the lowest position of the economic ladder. The continuance of these problems has had a nearly catastrophic effect on Blacks and Black families. Brown remembers that she “had heard of Black men-men who were loving fathers and caring husbands and strong protectors.. but had not known any” until she was grown (105). The problems which disproportionatly affect Blacks were combatted by the Party in ways the White system had not. The Party “organized rallies around police brutality against Blacks, made speeches and circulated leaflets about every social and political issue affecting Black and poor people, locally, nationally, and internationally, organized support among Whites, opened a free clinic, started a busing-to prisons program which provided transport and expenses to Black families” (181). The Party’s goals were to strengthen Black communities through organization and education.
Civil Rights Act- the benefits of being privileged allow you to navigate through society with ease in areas of employment, social economic status, and other social institutions. Those who are not privileged do not receive such benefits and fall short because of it. The oppressed group often consists of minorities, in which some cases are members of the “ Black Lives Matter” movement. Many is individuals don’t fully understand the “Black Lives Matter Movement”. Some members of society define the movement as segregation within communities that are being oppressed. This is conceptualized by the term “new racism”, invented by Patricia Collins. This new form of racism is not like the older Jim Crow Laws and is harder to distinguish from as well.
In Brent Staples’ "Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space," Staples describes the issues, stereotypes, and criticisms he faces being a black man in public surroundings. Staples initiates his perspective by introducing the audience in to thinking he is committing a crime, but eventually reveals how the actions taken towards him are because of the fear linked to his labelled stereotypes of being rapists, gangsters and muggers. Staples continues to unfold the audience from a 20 year old experience and sheds light onto how regardless of proving his survival compared to the other stereotypical blacks with his education levels and work ethics being in the modern era, he is still in the same plight. Although Staples relates such burdens through his personal experiences rather than directly revealing the psychological impacts such actions have upon African Americans with research, he effectively uses emotion to explain the social effects and challenges they have faced to avoid causing a ruckus with the “white American” world while keeping his reference up to date and accordingly to his history.
In his book, The Miseducation of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson addresses many issues that have been and are still prevalent in the African American community. Woodson believed that in the midst of receiving education, blacks lost sight of their original reasons for becoming educated. He believed that many blacks became educated only to assimilate to white culture and attempt to become successful under white standards, instead of investing in their communities and applying their knowledge to help other blacks.
Zora Neale Hurston’s writing embodies the modernism themes of alienation and the reaffirmation of racial and social identity. She has a subjective style of writing in which comes from the inside of the character’s mind and heart, rather than from an external point of view. Hurston addresses the themes of race relations, discrimination, and racial and social identity. At a time when it is not considered beneficial to be “colored,” Hurston steps out of the norm and embraces her racial identity.
Black Consciousness has been defined as an attitude of the mind and a way of life. Therefore, the purpose of teaching Black Consciousness was to conquer feelings of black inferiority and replace it with a new solid social identity which encouraged black pride and independence from white oppression. Africans should reject the myths from which Apartheid was conceived, where blacks were depicted as inferior, savage, simple and having a primitive culture which needed to be modernized. Rather blacks should believe in their true identity of being survivors with the utmost human dignity. Black people needed to become aware of their collective power both economically and politically. People of African descent must create their own value system, where they were self-defined not defined by white superiors.