The Civil Rights Movement Revised Edition

Black Power 131

Black Arts movement:

The artistic sister of the

Black Power movement.

Afrocentricity: The idea

that there are definitive

African perspectives on

knowledge and values

that those of African

descent should adopt.

Revolutionary Action

Movement: A radical

underground group

whose demands antici-

pated the Black Panthers.

Brown, H. ‘Rap’(1943– ):

SNCC national director

who coined the phrase

‘burn, baby, burn’ when

race riots erupted in the

mid-1960s.

Newton, Huey(1942–

89): Co-founder of the

Black Panther Party.

blacks emphasized their ethnic heritage by adopting African names, donning
African clothing, letting their hair grow unstraightened in an ‘Afro’ style,
learning phrases in the east African language of Swahili, and converting to
Islam. Increasing numbers of blacks observed the end-of-the-year festival of
Kwanzaa, which was devised from African antecedents by Maulana Karenga,
a black studies professor who founded the culturally-assertive group called
Organization US. Education was a particular target of criticism. Writer Amiri
Baraka, a leader in the Black Arts movement, insisted that all academic sub-
jects be presented from an Afrocentricperspective. Black college students
convinced some white administrators to admit more black students, hire
more black professors, establish black studies programs, serve ‘soul food,’
and set aside black dormitories. Perhaps the most dramatic display of racial
pride came when two track stars at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics raised
their fists in a Black Power salute transmitted the world over by television.
James Brown, ‘the godfather of soul,’ captured this cultural spirit in his
classic song, ‘Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.’
To change the larger society, black nationalists took different approaches
after the mid-1960s. Many black nationalists drew their vision from Frantz
Fanon, a Caribbean revolutionary. Fanon’s seminal book, The Wretched of the
Earth, praised anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World, including Algeria,
where he died a martyr’s death. Robert Williams, who fled to Cuba to escape
a bogus kidnapping charge, formed the Revolutionary Action Movementto
wage guerrilla warfare in American cities and thereby spark a black insur-
rection. Former SNCC leader James Forman insisted that white churches and
synagogues pay $500 million in reparations for exploiting black America.
The reparations would permit blacks to own land, run publishing compan-
ies, receive specialized education, and establish a labor strike fund. Forman
also resurrected the nineteenth-century idea that blacks were a nation, not a
minority, and should aim for an autonomous republic within the United
States. New SNCC national director H. ‘Rap’ Brownhad no patience with
the movement’s nonviolent appeal to the white man. He threatened to assas-
sinate the First Lady and condemned Israel’s conquest of Palestinian land,
prompting angry American Jews to cut off valuable donations. He incited a
crowd in Cambridge, Maryland, to ‘burn this town down.... When you tear
down the white man, brother, you are hitting him in the money....Don’t
love him to death. Shoot him to death.’ That night, young blacks rioted in
downtown Cambridge. The call for violence repelled most blacks and mobil-
ized the authorities, thus rendering militant groups impotent.
The most visible militant group was led by Huey Newtonand Bobby
Seale, who met at a junior college in Oakland, California. As marxists, they
believed that American blacks were political prisoners not unlike their
African brothers. Inspired by SNCC’s militant campaign in Lowndes county,

Seale, Bobby(1937– ):

Co-founder of the Black

Panther Party.