It was a movement defined by furious controversy and turmoil – and it was the foundation of Black America’s present

By Maida Cassandra Odom

Yohuru Williams, Charles E. Cobb Jr., Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Askia Muhammad Toure, Rex M. Ellis, Amiri Baraka, John W. Franklin

The term Black Power once conjured images of rage and riots — defiance against both the established public order of entrenched Caucasian control and the noble Civil Rights fight for equality.  Decades later, in the time of Obama, the words — Black Power — seem curious and passé — part of the old rhetoric of a bygone era. Is that because we’re post racial? Or because black power has been achieved?

Certainly not either, since no one looking at prison and poverty statistics can believe the Black Power or the Civil Rights movements have overcome. Rather, it would seem the meaning of this historical passage has been obscured between the cowardly politeness that has come to dominate racial discourse and the reactionary right-wing manipulations that dominated American politics for much of the last 40 years.        …

Bravely rejecting both considerations and  armed with the calming  passage of  time,  the Smithsonian  National Museum of African American History and Culture assembled  activists and scholars  in Washington, D.C. March 30 and 31 for a two-day symposium: 1968 and Beyond A Symposium on the Impact of the Black Power Movement in America.

The Slogan

The expression “Black Power” came into the broad public use after Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) declared it the true goal of the black freedom struggle during a 1966 civil rights march in Greenwood, Mississippi. The slogan was quickly swept  up in the turbulent times and I can remember being an adolescent  Carmichael fan (I probably couldn’t spell charisma but I knew it when I saw it) and watching him on Meet The Press when he announced  the decision by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)  to stop defining Black Power for the press.

Ah, the defiance! Ah, the mystique! Ah, the memories!

The Defiance

Poet Amari Baraka remembered exactly when, for him, the civil rights struggle gave way to a Black Power philosophy. Amid  the apparent success of the Montgomery Bus boycott (of 1955 and 1956)  Dr. King’s house was bombed along with the home of another leader, E.D.Nixon.

“Black people rushed to Dr. King’s house some with rifles raised over their heads, saying, ‘Dr. King , Dr King, ‘What should we do?’ It was King’s answer in my 23 year -old head that created two wings of the movement,” Baraka recalled during a conference panel entitled: People Get Ready, There’s a Change a’ Comin’: Civil Rights and Black Power — Rediscovering Their Distinctions and Intersections.”

“King said, ‘If there be any blood shed, let it be ours.’ I and many of my generation  rejected that,” he continued. “We might love Dr. King and love what he had begun to lead, but if there was going to be any bloodshed it was going to be everybody’s blood.”

Younger activists rejected their “passive resistance, turn- the- other- cheek mentor” according Baraka. “No, we thought! No, we spoke out! We ain’t going for no one-sided bleeding.”

For Washington. D.C.- based- activist Courtland Cox, who worked with Carmichael/ Toure in Lowndes County, Alabama, the turning point came years later – in 1964 when national leaders refused to seat  Fannie Lou Hamer’s Mississippi Freedom Democractic Party delegation at that year’s  Democratic National Convention. It was then he saw people he had believed were good, align themselves with the established political interests, said Cox during a panel discussion entitled Get Up! Stand Up!: Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. “It was clear we could not have a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”

The Mystique

Brandeis University Professor Peniel E.  Joseph, symposium lead scholar and keynote speaker, said the Black Power era has been commonly viewed as “a series of iconic yet fleeting images ranging from gun-toting Black Panthers to black gloved sprinters in 1968 Mexico City,” to an Angela Davis poster, and until recently blamed for undermining the struggle for civil rights.

However, newer historian interest is revising the chronology, and, Joseph said, the Black Power movement is now widely seen as overlapping with at least some part of the Civil Rights Movement, which spanned from the Brown decision of May, 1954 to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in August, 1965.

New assessments, according to Joseph, also credit the Black Power era with geographic followings across the nation. Supporters, he said, were engaged in pragmatic anti-poverty initiatives, promoted interest in Africa, led in the anti Viet Nam War protests, spurred student protests for Black studies programs, influenced arts, culture and fashion as well as bold feminist visions and political organizing for self determination.

The Opportunity

The symposium, chaired by Bettye J. Gardner, Professor of History at Coppin State University was the idea of John W. Franklin, the Smithsonian’s Director of Partnerships and International Programs, and the son of the late John Hope Franklin. Numerous speakers referred to the valuable service Hope Franklin had performed during a long and productive career in telling the history of black Americans and America that had been so long obscured.  The younger Franklin served as curator of the event, which quickly became a reunion for aging activists-panelists, a research opportunity for assembled scholars and a feast for an audience of witnesses to the era –  a graying crowd of about 200 each day , peppered  with young people. All were entertained between panels by 1960s- era music — some of it with clear messages:Young, Gifted and Black sung by Nina Simone and James Brown’s Say It Loud I’m Black and I’m Proud.

Connecting all of the discussions, both formal and informal, was a consensus that the era was an unprecedented historical moment. Nearly every speaker noted that the period’s intense political organizing was the foundation of the ensuing elections of black state officials, mayors, members of Congress and, ultimately, of the nation’s first African-American president. In a final symposium presentation entitled  I’ll Take you There: Black  Electoral Politics – Then and Now, University of Maryland Professor Ron Walters, and political consultant Donna Brazile both paid homage to  Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns, in which they both had worked.

“There is a direct link between Black Power and Civil Rights and where we are today,” said Brazile who lamented current politicians’ non-racial posturing. People need to “Rise up and season the new crop of leaders that have no connection to the movement,” she said.

Asked whether a post-racial approach might be advantageous for young people, Ron Walters shot back, “You can’t have post-racialism in a society that is racist.”

The Memories

The candid remarks from numerous panelists  sometimes included the bitter internecine arguments  between movement participants, as  they  rolled back the years  to unfurled a clear picture that was instructional and  — for the most part — inspiring.

Panelists and speakers from the audience told tales of facing armed whites in the South, of daring campus protests undertaken by students, many of whom were the first in their families to attend college, to press demands for increasing the admissions of black students, granting them adequate financial aid, and establishing black studies programs – actions which profoundly changed higher education and America.

Poet Sonia Sanchez, artist Paul Smith and Theater Producer Woodie King Jr., explained at length  how politics and art of the era were inextricably, and gloriously, linked and cross-nurtured and how the art from that era is being reverently reinvented today.

Not all the recollections of the era were pleasant. For example, Sanchez noted that young women  were  wrongfully being used  “on their backs to service men” even as the Black Panthers worked for critical good causes in California.

In addition, some major rifts of the era now seem irredeemably dated. It was baffling, for instance, to see longtime comrades still arguing over who should have been invited to the Sixth Pan African Congress in 1974.

One the other hand, there were signs of reconciliation: University of Massachusetts Professor Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, who worked alongside Carmichael/Ture during their college activism days at Howard University, said they had resented university leaders for not recognizing their  radical student organization in the early 1960s. “We were never recognized by the school and for a long time we thought that the failure to recognize NAG, the Non-violent Action Group, was the handkerchief-headedness of the administration.  I’ve since revised that opinion.”

He continued, “The  administration never recognized us, nor any of  the very militant and direct action we took on behalf of liberation of the world.   We thought it an anomaly  but it was very subtle cunning on the part of the administration. If they didn’t recognize us, they couldn’t stop us.

“Then, when the Dixiecrats in Congress, who had control of the budget would say, ‘What are you going to do about them young Negruhs?,’

” They would say, ‘There’s no such organization on our campus.’ And so they had deniability.

“It also gave us an organizing tool, we organized each year against the administration, ‘Recognize NAG!  Recognize NAG!’ And thank God,” Thelwell concluded, Howard’s  presidents “were smart enough to ignore us — which led the organization to grow and thrive.”

The Question

In that same vein, I wonder if  truth, the passage of  time,  increased perspective gained through watching events unfold and a scholarly historical reconsideration can reconcile the facets of the movement  and make the breach– that once separated the old-guard from the radical youths  — virtually disappear.

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Maida Cassandra Odom, a writer based in Philadelphia, is a Contributing Editor of TheDefendersOnline.com

Photos by Jason Miccolo Johnson.

1968 and Beyond  A Symposium on the Impact of the Black Power Movement in America was taped and planners indicated that some time in the future material from the event will be available for distribution through the Public Affairs Office  of the Smithsonian  National Museum of African American History and Culture.