Home > Black nationalism
Black Nationalism, political and social movement prominent in the 1960s and early '70s among African Americans in the United States. The movement, which can be traced back to Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association of the 1920s, sought to acquire economic power and to infuse among blacks a sense of community and group feeling. Many adherents to Black Nationalism assumed the eventual creation of a separate black nation by African Americans. As an alternative to being assimilated by the American nation, which is predominantly white, black nationalists sought to maintain and promote their separate identity as a people of black ancestry. With such slogans as "black power" and "black is beautiful," they also sought to inculcate a sense of pride among blacks.Black Nationalism, also known as black separatism, is a complex set of beliefs emphasizing the need for the cultural, political, and economic separation of African Americans from white society. Comparatively few African Americans have embraced thoroughgoing separatist philosophies. In his classic study Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915, August Meier noted that the general black attitude has been one of "essential ambivalence." On the other hand, Nationalist assumptions inform the daily actions and choices of many diaspora Africans.
1 Background
Marcus Garvey urged African Americans to be proud of their race and preached their return to Africa, their ancestral homeland. To this end he founded the Black Star Line in 1919 to provide steamship transportation, and the Negro Factories Corporation to encourage black economic independence. Garvey attracted thousands of supporters and claimed two million members for the UNIA. Garvey set the foundation for all other Black nationalist thought following him including the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X.
During the decade between 1955 and 1965, while most black leaders worked in the civil rights movement to integrate blacks into mainstream American life, Malcolm X preached the opposite. He maintained that Western culture, and the Judeo-Christian religious traditions on which it is based, was inherently racist. Constantly attacking mainstream civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X declared that nonviolence was the "philosophy of the fool." In response to King's famous "I Have a Dream” speech, Malcolm X quipped, "While King was having a dream, the rest of us Negroes are having a nightmare." Malcolm X believed that black people must develop their own society and ethical values, including the self-help, community-based enterprises that the Black Muslims supported. He also thought that African Americans should reject integration or cooperation with whites. Malcolm was increasingly moving towards a political response to racism, he called for a " black revolution," which he declared would be "bloody" and would renounce any sort of "compromise" with whites. After taking part in a Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), he recanted such extremist opinions and was soon after murdered.
1.3 Black Power
Black Power was a political movement expressing a new racial consciousness among blacks in the United States in the late 1960s. Black Power represented both a conclusion to the decade’s civil rights movement and a reaction against the racism that persisted despite the efforts of black activists during the early 1960s. Black Power was influential mainly in the late 1960s. The meaning of Black Power was debated vigorously while the movement was in progress. To some it represented African-Americans' insistence on racial dignity and self-reliance, which was usually interpreted as economic and political independence, as well as freedom from white authority. These themes had been advanced most forcefully in the early 1960s by Malcolm X. He argued that blacks should focus on improving their own communities, rather than striving for complete integration, and that blacks had the right to retaliate against violent assaults. The publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) created further support for the idea of African-American self-determination and had a strong influence on the emerging leaders of the Black Power movement. Other interpreters of Black Power emphasized the cultural heritage of blacks, especially the African roots of their identity. This view encouraged study and celebration of black history and culture. In the late 1960s black college students requested curricula in African-American studies that explored their distinctive culture and history. Still another view of Black Power called for a revolutionary political struggle to reject racism and imperialism in the United States, as well as throughout the world. This interpretation encouraged the unity of nonwhites, including Hispanics and Asians, against their perceived oppressors.
