The NOOK Book (eBook) of the Black Power: Strategies For Achieving And Utilizing Power In America by Michael Townsend at Barnes & Noble.
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The nation rallied behind these leaders because their arguments led to a reward. Those that understood the principles of humanity and equality found their reward in its achievement. Coercive Power is the opposite of reward power; it is the ability to control others through the fear of punishment or the loss of valued outcomes PSU, His arguments were rooted in the fact that the American people were being punished and that if the situation remained the same, the citizens would lose the outcome of peace and prosperity. Carmichael and Malcolm, on the other hand, did use coercive power.
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They warned of increasing violence in the heartland. Attempting to coerce the nation, their varying militant stances towards the situation were alarming to say the least. Five power bases were utilized by three individuals in hopes of change. In the end, it was the peaceful, integrative argument that triumphed, but only because of the sheer power of increasingly violent alternatives. The bases of social power. Such an interesting analysis! Furthermore, what will they say about what type of people we are so have succumbed to certain types of power.
It makes me think that his followers were most influenceable by morality and ethics. Would our generation today be the same? Or are we more influenceable by other types of power? Or does it entirely depend on the situation? Thanks for opening up so many thought provoking questions! All three individuals you reference have exhibited nearly all of the five taxonomies of power and the nine influence tactics.
King was utilizing expert power with his established experience within the civil rights movement, referent power because even the government appeared to give him credence as a civil rights leader. In the speech that you cite it appears that the Dr. King may have not lived to see Obama take office but his vision inspired men and woman to achieve that day. You must be logged in to post a comment. Voices of Democracy 4. Retrieved 1 March from: Institute for Social Research.
Comments Such an interesting analysis! Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Skip to toolbar Sites at Penn State. Hamilton , "a 'non-violent' approach to civil rights is an approach black people cannot afford and a luxury white people do not deserve. A growing number of scholars conceive of the civil rights and black power movements as one interconnected Black Freedom Movement. Numerous Black Power advocates were in favor of black self determination due to the belief that black people must lead and run their own organizations.
Black Power
Stokely Carmichael is such an advocate and states that, "only black people can convey the revolutionary idea—and it is a revolutionary idea—that black people are able to do things themselves. Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton write that "there is a definite, much-needed role that whites can play. Not all Black Power advocates were in favor of black separatism. Though the Panthers considered themselves to be at war with the prevailing white supremacist power structure , they were not at war with all whites, but rather with those mostly white individuals empowered by the injustices of the structure and responsible for its reproduction.
His stance was that the oppression of black people was more a result of economic exploitation than anything innately racist. In his book Seize the Time , he states that "In our view it is a class struggle between the massive proletarian working class and the small, minority ruling class. Working-class people of all colors must unite against the exploitative, oppressive ruling class.
So let me emphasize again—we believe our fight is a class struggle and not a race struggle. Internationalist offshoots of black power include African Internationalism, pan-Africanism , black nationalism , and black supremacy. The term "Black Power" was used in a different sense in the s by black leader Frederick Douglass as an alternative name for the Slave Power —that is the disproportionate political power at the national level held by slave owners in the South.
Its course, indeed is onward. But with the swiftness of an arrow, it rushes to the tomb. While crushing its millions, it is also crushing itself. The sword of Retribution, suspended by a single hair, hangs over it. That sword must fall. The power is ours! The modern American concept emerged from the Civil Rights Movement in the early s. Beginning in , Robert F. Willams , president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, openly questioned the ideology of nonviolence and its domination of the movement's strategy.
After seeing the increasing militancy of blacks in the wake of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing , and wearying of Elijah Muhammad 's domination of the Nation of Islam , Malcolm left that organization and engaged with the mainstream of the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm was now open to voluntary racial integration as a long-term goal, but he still supported armed self-defense, self-reliance, and black nationalism ; he became a simultaneous spokesman for the militant wing of the Civil Rights Movement and the non-separatist wing of the Black Power movement. An early manifestation of Black Power in popular culture was the performances given by Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall in March , and the album In Concert which resulted from them.
Nina Simone mocked liberal nonviolence "Go Limp" , and took a vengeful position toward white racists " Mississippi Goddamn " and her adaptation of " Pirate Jenny ". Historian Ruth Feldstein writes that, "Contrary to the neat historical trajectories which suggest that black power came late in the decade and only after the 'successes' of earlier efforts, Simone's album makes clear that black power perspectives were already taking shape and circulating widely By , most of SNCC's field staff, among them Stokely Carmichael later Kwame Ture , were becoming critical of the nonviolent approach to confronting racism and inequality—articulated and promoted by Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the final analysis the weakness of Black Power is its failure to see that the black man needs the white man and the white man needs the black man. However much we may try to romanticize the slogan, there is no separate black path to power and fulfillment that does not intersect white paths, and there is no separate white path to power and fulfillment, short of social disaster, that does not share that power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity.
We are bound together in a single garment of destiny. The language, the cultural patterns, the music, the material prosperity, and even the food of America are an amalgam of black and white. SNCC's base of support was generally younger and more working-class than that of the other "Big Five" [31] civil rights organizations and became increasingly more militant and outspoken over time. As a result, as the Civil Rights Movement progressed, increasingly radical, more militant voices came to the fore to aggressively challenge white hegemony.
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Increasing numbers of black youth, particularly, rejected their elders' moderate path of cooperation, racial integration and assimilation. They rejected the notion of appealing to the public's conscience and religious creeds and took the tack articulated by another black activist more than a century before, abolitionist Frederick Douglass , who wrote:.
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Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Most early s civil rights leaders did not believe in physically violent retaliation.
However, much of the African-American rank-and-file, especially those leaders with strong working-class ties, tended to compliment nonviolent action with armed self-defense. For instance, prominent nonviolent activist Fred Shuttlesworth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a leader of the Birmingham campaign , had worked closely with an armed defense group that was led by Colonel Stone Johnson. As Alabama historian Frye Gaillard writes,.
While King never endorsed the slogan, and in fact opposed the Black Power movement, his rhetoric sometimes came close to it. Although the concept remained imprecise and contested and the people who used the slogan ranged from business people who used it to push black capitalism to revolutionaries who sought an end to capitalism, the idea of Black Power exerted a significant influence.
It helped organize scores of community self-help groups and institutions that did not depend on Whites, encouraged colleges and universities to start black studies programs, mobilized black voters, and improved racial pride and self-esteem. One of the most spectacular and unexpected demonstrations for Black Power occurred at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. At the conclusion of the m race, at the medal ceremony, United States gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos wore Olympic Project for Human Rights badges and showed the raised fist see Olympics Black Power salute as the anthem played.
Though the Black Power movement did not remedy the political problems faced by African Americans in the s and s, the movement did contribute to the development of black politics both directly and indirectly. Haines refers to as a "positive radical flank effect " on political affairs of the s.
Though the nature of the relationship between the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power movement is contested, Haines' study of the relationship between black radicals and the mainstream civil rights movement indicates that Black Power generated a "crisis in American institutions which made the legislative agenda of 'polite, realistic, and businesslike' mainstream organizations" more appealing to politicians. In this way, it can be argued that the more strident and oppositional messages of the Black Power movement indirectly enhanced the bargaining position of more moderate activists.
These activists capitalized on the nation's recent awareness of the political nature of oppression, a primary focus of the Civil Rights Movement, developing numerous political action caucuses and grass roots community associations to remedy the situation [37]. Held in Gary, Indiana , a majorly black city, the convention included a diverse group of black activists, although it completely excluded whites. The delegates created a National Black Political Agenda with stated goals including the election of a proportionate number of black representatives to Congress, community control of schools, national health insurance, etc.
Though the convention did not result in any direct policy, the convention advanced goals of the Black Power movement and left participants buoyed by a spirit of possibility and themes of unity and self-determination. A concluding note to the convention, addressing its supposed idealism, read: This is our challenge at Gary and beyond, for a new Black politics demands new vision, new hope and new definitions of the possible. Our time has come. These things are necessary. All things are possible. In its confrontational and often oppositional nature, the Black Power movement started a debate within the black community and America as a nation over issues of racial progress, citizenship, and democracy, namely "the nature of American society and the place of the African American in it.
Though the aims of the Black Power movement were racially specific, much of the movement's impact has been its influence on the development and strategies of later political and social movements. By igniting and sustaining debate on the nature of American society, the Black Power movement created what other multiracial and minority groups interpreted to be a viable template for the overall restructuring of society.
Central to these movements were the issues of identity politics and structural inequality , features emerging from the Black Power movement. Many activists in the Black Power movement became active in related movements. This is seen in the case of the "second wave" of women's rights activism, a movement supported and orchestrated to a certain degree by women working from within the coalition ranks of the Black Power movement. Due to the negative and militant reputation of such auxiliaries as that of the Black Panther Party , many people felt that this movement of "insurrection" would soon serve to cause discord and disharmony through the entire U.
Even Stokely Carmichael stated, "When you talk of Black Power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created. Indeed, "fixation on the 'political' hinders appreciation of the movement's cultural manifestations and unnecessarily obscures black culture's role in promoting the psychological well being of the Afro-American people," [45] states William L. Van Deburg , author of A New Day in Babylon, "movement leaders never were as successful in winning power for the people as they were in convincing people that they had sufficient power within themselves to escape 'the prison of self-deprecation'" [46] Primarily, the liberation and empowerment experienced by African Americans occurred in the psychological realm.
The movement uplifted the black community as a whole by cultivating feelings of racial solidarity and positive self-identity, often in opposition to the world of white Americans, a world that had physically and psychologically oppressed Blacks for generations. Stokely Carmichael stated that "the goal of black self-determination and black self-identity—Black Power—is recognition of the virtues in themselves as black people. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement and black history, there has been tension between those wishing to minimize and maximize racial difference.
The Black Power movement largely achieved an equilibrium of "balanced and humane ethnocentrism. As well as his address at the Congress, he also made a speech at Speakers' Corner. Michael X also adopted Islam at this stage, whereas Black Power was not organized around any religious institution. Obi Egbuna , the spokesperson for the group, claimed they had recruited members in London during the previous seven weeks. They worked with the U. Black Panther Party in —68, and — The raincoat charge was dropped by the judge, but the judge found five of the accused guilty of the remaining charges.
A Black Power movement arose in Jamaica in the late s. Though Jamaica had gained independence from the British Empire in , and Prime Minister Hugh Shearer was black, many cabinet ministers such as Edward Seaga and business elites were white. Large segments of the black majority population were unemployed or did not earn a living wage. Guyanese academic Walter Rodney was appointed as a lecturer at the University of the West Indies in January , and became one of the main exponents of Black Power in Jamaica. When the Shearer government banned Rodney from re-entering the country, the Rodney Riots broke out.
As a result of the Rodney affair, radical groups and publications such as Abeng began to emerge, and the opposition People's National Party gained support. The cultivation of pride in the African-American race was often summarized in the phrase " Black is Beautiful. It's 'I am beautiful and I'm black. My children feel better about themselves and they know that they're black," stated a respondent in Bob Blauner's longitudinal oral history of U.
The "Black is beautiful" cultural movement aimed to dispel the notion that black people 's natural features such as skin color, facial features and hair are inherently ugly. The movement asked that men and women stop straightening their hair and attempting to lighten or bleach their skin. The Black Power movement produced artistic and cultural products that both embodied and generated pride in "blackness" and further defined an African-American identity that remains contemporary.
Black Power is often seen as a cultural revolution as much as a political revolution, with the goal of celebrating and emphasizing the distinctive group culture of African Americans to an American society that had previously been dominated by white artistic and cultural expressions. Black power utilized all available forms of folk, literary, and dramatic expression based in a common ancestral past to promote a message of self-actualization and cultural self-definition.
More generally, in recognizing the legitimacy of another culture and challenging the idea of white cultural superiority, the Black Power movement paved the way for the celebration of multiculturalism in America today. The cultural concept of "soul" was fundamental to the image of African-American culture embodied by the Black Power movement. Soul, a type of "in-group cultural cachet," was closely tied to black America's need for individual and group self-identification.
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The nonverbal expressions of this attitude, including everything from posture to handshakes, were developed as a counterpoint to the rigid, "up-tight" mannerisms of white people.