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The Black Panther Party: Three Moments of Music

Eamonn Kelly

in Red Strains: Music and Communism Outside the Communist Bloc

This chapter examines the ways in which the Black Panther Party (BPP) used popular music as a means to represent its ideology and politics to potential supporters during the peak of its activism in ... More

This chapter examines the ways in which the Black Panther Party (BPP) used popular music as a means to represent its ideology and politics to potential supporters during the peak of its activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following an initial discussion of the ways in which the traditions of the U.S. left and popular music impacted upon the BPP, it explores the idea of black nationalism as understood and represented by the Panthers, its relationship to the traditions of Marxism, and the ways in which this relationship informed the cultural practice of the BPP. Finally, there is an examination of the ‘three moments’ alluded to in the title, a series of musical performances and recordings sponsored by the party.Less

Rewriting the American Jeremiad: On Pluralism, Black Nationalism, and a New America

Jonathon S. Kahn

in Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois

Sacvan Bercovitch's influential account of the American Jeremiad swallows the African American jeremiad whole. This chapter argues that Du Bois's African American jeremiads—in their conception of ... More

Sacvan Bercovitch's influential account of the American Jeremiad swallows the African American jeremiad whole. This chapter argues that Du Bois's African American jeremiads—in their conception of America without divine guarantee and riven with dissent, and of African Americans as a distinctly chosen people within America at large—represent a swerve from the Puritan form. First, Du Bois's jeremiads try to imagine a new type of America, a pluralistic democratic America that does not suppress dissent or its fraught history. Du Bois's jeremiads reject the idea of America's divine guarantee, as they reject a steadfast optimism and unshakeable faith in the American experience. The second critical way Du Bois's jeremiads disrupt Bercovitch's norm is in the way he uses them to establish and consolidate what Du Bois calls “A Negro Nation Within the Nation.” Du Bois does not mean by “nation” a separate political entity of African Americans, but a type of cultural, political, and social solidarity within America. For Du Bois, this emphasis on the integrity of black American culture represents a form of black nationalism that extends itself toward a larger pluralistic America.Less

Intellectual Predicaments: Black Nationalism in the Civil Rights and Post-Civil Rights Eras

Simon Wendt

in Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America: A Historical Perspective

This chapter looks at black nationalist thought from the 1950s to the 1990s. It argues that “black nationalism” has been a term fraught with inaccuracies and misconceptions. The term would seem to ... More

This chapter looks at black nationalist thought from the 1950s to the 1990s. It argues that “black nationalism” has been a term fraught with inaccuracies and misconceptions. The term would seem to indicate a desire for a separate nation-state, but this was only one aspect of black nationalism. The chapter adopts an understanding of black nationalism that emerged from the Black Power era, calling for racial solidarity and black self-determination, highlighting its postcolonial or anticolonial nature. It also focuses specifically on “paraintellectuals”: black thinkers who did not necessarily originate in academia and who viewed the lived experience of black people as the best route to overcome the problems of black America.Less

Freedomways, the Communist Party USA, and Black Freedom in the Post–Civil Rights Years

Sara Rzeszutek Haviland

in James and Esther Cooper Jackson: Love and Courage in the Black Freedom Movement

As the civil rights movement gave way to black nationalism, Black Power, and urban unrest, Freedomways and the Communist Party worked to navigate these changes. Jack remained committed to Party work ... More

As the civil rights movement gave way to black nationalism, Black Power, and urban unrest, Freedomways and the Communist Party worked to navigate these changes. Jack remained committed to Party work despite its waning relevance, but his writings on the Angela Davis case and on Vietnam offer examples of his commitment to pressing issues. For Esther, a Popular Front approach to her work at the Freedomways allowed discussion, debate, and the promotion of a range of views on the journal’s pages. Freedomways also became a central part of the transformation of black history and black studies in the 1970s and 1980s. As managing editor, Esther shaped the journal by soliciting, selecting, and publishing articles and responding to correspondence. Esther and Jack continued to support one another while they developed their independent careers and activism.Less

“Let My People Go”: Exodus in the African American Experience

David W. Kling

in The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times

This chapter focuses on the Book of Exodus in the history of African-American Christians. It surveys the biblical exodus and then turns to various African-American understandings and expressions of ... More

This chapter focuses on the Book of Exodus in the history of African-American Christians. It surveys the biblical exodus and then turns to various African-American understandings and expressions of exodus themes in the context of slavery, emancipation, migration, the civil rights movement, and black liberation theology.Less

Introduction

Kate Dossett

in Bridging Race Divides: Black Nationalism, Feminism, and Integration in the United States, 1896-1935

This book examines the involvement of women in the fight against racism and segregation which was prevalent in the United States during the early twentieth century. While criticisms on the perceived ... More

This book examines the involvement of women in the fight against racism and segregation which was prevalent in the United States during the early twentieth century. While criticisms on the perceived dichotomy of the stand on racism and segregation of African Americans from the Caucasians existed, this book does not provide any suggestion of the advantage of integrationalism or black nationalism over one another, rather it looks on these two perceived different stands on race divide as a complex, rather than dichotomous, and multiple, rather that a singular, strategy; and it sees interdependent, rather than mutually exclusive, philosophies against racial discrimination. In this book, the involvement of prominent black women, their contributions and their strategies that helped define black feminist thought and curb the racial issue, is examined and analyzed. This book focuses on the political thought and activism exhibited by black women between the founding of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 and the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. Evaluation of the literary endeavors, the activism, and entrepreneurship of some of the prominent women showed that black women challenged the existing dichotomy on the stand against racial discrimination, developed the black feminist tradition, and shaped black nationalism within the feminist framework. Among the studied black women include clubwomen Margaret Murray Washington, Nannie hellen Burroughs and Mary McLeod Bethune; black women leaders Eva Bowles and Cecilia Cabaniss; entrepreneurs Madam J. Walker and A'Lelia Walker; and writers such as Amy Jacques Garvey and Jessie Fauset.Less

Walk the Way of Free Men: Malcolm X, Displaying the Original Man, and Troubling the Black Press as the Voice of the Race

D'Weston Haywood

in Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement

This chapter reinterprets the rise of black radicalism as a moment of competing “voices” across competing mass medias amid rapid changes in the black freedom struggle and media landscape of the ... More

This chapter reinterprets the rise of black radicalism as a moment of competing “voices” across competing mass medias amid rapid changes in the black freedom struggle and media landscape of the 1960s. It also reinterprets Malcolm X as a newspaper publisher, a rather underanalyzed side of Malcolm. Black publishers had long considered their papers the “voice” of the race, and Malcolm’s founding of Muhammad Speaks in 1960 to amplify the voice of Elijah Muhammad signified this. Yet, the paper’s founding also marked the beginning of the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) robust media campaign to use various medias—radio, books, and albums of Muhammad’s speeches—to promote Muhammad’s vision for racial advancement over others. His vision promised to redeem black manhood by renewing their lives, a vision displayed through salesmen for Muhammad Speaks. Thus, readers could read both the paper and their bodies. Malcolm, however, made his display through television. But when he began to gain a voice through television that rivaled that of Muhammad’s in print, the NOI’s media campaign turned from promising to renew the lives of black men to promising to take it away. Malcolm became a newspaperman cut short of his full publishing potential.Less

Introduction: The Art of Revolution

GerShun Avilez

in Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism

This introductory chapter provides a background of Black Nationalism. Black Nationalism is a political philosophy that has played an integral part in African American social thought from the ... More

This introductory chapter provides a background of Black Nationalism. Black Nationalism is a political philosophy that has played an integral part in African American social thought from the nineteenth century forward. There are two main threads of this philosophical tradition: classical and modern. Classical Black Nationalism is a political framework guided primarily by concerns with the creation of a sovereign Black state and uplifting and “civilizing” the race. With regards to Black Nationalist thought in the twentieth century, two moments loom large: Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1910s/1920s and the Black Power Movement in the 1960s/1970s. Modern Black Nationalism is characterized by two specific shifts away from the foundational ideas that governed the classical form. It departs from its predecessor in the general lack of an explicit emphasis on an independent Black nation-state. It also shifts attention to mass culture and Black working-class life.Less

Epilogue: Delta Journeys

John M. Giggie

in After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875-1915

The conclusion explores the legacies of religious change among Delta blacks, including those who left for Chicago as part of the Great Migration of African American southerners northward beginning in ... More

The conclusion explores the legacies of religious change among Delta blacks, including those who left for Chicago as part of the Great Migration of African American southerners northward beginning in the mid-1910s. It tracks the explosive career of Rosetta Tharpe, a Gospel and blues singer from the Arkansas Delta who embodied the new intersection between the sacred and commercial world. It also reveals how key features of modern black sacred life in Chicago actually took root during in the rural South the post-Reconstruction era, especially black nationalism and Garveyism, the linking of spiritual identity and consumption, and civil rights protests that focused on boycotting racist stores.Less

“Love for These People”: racial piety as religious devotion

Jonathon S. Kahn

in Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois

This chapter argues that Du Bois's religious voice is at its best when it is devoted to reclaiming and recovering the spiritual strivings of black America. The pragmatists understand this project as ... More

This chapter argues that Du Bois's religious voice is at its best when it is devoted to reclaiming and recovering the spiritual strivings of black America. The pragmatists understand this project as one of natural piety, and natural piety represents a crucial religious virtue for pragmatic religious naturalism. Du Bois's uses a pragmatist's natural piety to construct a deep sense of racial loyalty that forms that heart of his understanding of black peoplehood and black nationalism. What's distinctive about Du Bois's natural piety is that he uses it to forge a black nationalism devoted to democratic participation and reform. Democracy, as Du Bois conceives of it, requires thick historical ties to race, or what Du Bois calls a “democracy of race”.Less

“The Irish are for Freedom Everywhere”: Eamon de Valera, the Irish Patriotic Strike, and the “last White Nation … Deprived of Its Liberty”

Bruce Nelson

in Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race

This chapter is situated within the framework of the “Green Atlantic” and its relationship to socialism and black nationalism. New York City became a world capital of insurgent movements during and ... More

This chapter is situated within the framework of the “Green Atlantic” and its relationship to socialism and black nationalism. New York City became a world capital of insurgent movements during and after the Great War. The experience of Irish nationalists in New York during this critical decade in Ireland's history—above all, the experience of the Irish Progressive League—further complicates the narrative of Ireland as “sacra insula” and of Irish emigrants as narrowly conservative. The Irish Progressive League, played a critical role in launching one of the most remarkable episodes of Ireland's war for independence—the Irish Patriotic Strike, which took place in New York Harbor for three weeks in August and September 1920. It was a rare moment—when Green and Black came together in a common struggle—but it was followed by Eamon de Valera's public lament that “Ireland is now the last white nation that is deprived of its liberty.”Less

The Debate Within: White Backlash, the New Thing, and Economics

INGRID MONSON

in Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa

One of the most notable differences between the Down Beat of the 1950s and that of the 1960s is the amount of space devoted to public forums which aired intense and racially polarized debates on ... More

One of the most notable differences between the Down Beat of the 1950s and that of the 1960s is the amount of space devoted to public forums which aired intense and racially polarized debates on these themes. Although these events frequently climaxed with deep divides between black and white participants, secondary splits often occurred as well — between older and younger musicians, between white advocates of color blindness and white leftists sympathetic to black nationalism, and between those for whom merit was measured in relationship to musical standards of mainstream jazz, and those who advocated the unbounded experimentalism of the New Thing. This chapter analyzes two of these panel discussions — “Racial Prejudice in Jazz” (Down Beat, March 1962) and “Point of Contact” (Down Beat Music 1966) — not only for what they reveal about the racial discourse of the 1960s, but also for their ongoing relevance to debates about music and race in the 21st century.Less

Introduction

INGRID MONSON

in Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the purpose of the book, which focuses the arguments and debates that defined the scope of jazz as an aesthetic practice, a social community, and ... More

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the purpose of the book, which focuses the arguments and debates that defined the scope of jazz as an aesthetic practice, a social community, and an economic livelihood — that is, what people fought about as well as agreed upon. Many of these arguments were about race and racism, even when the ostensible subject of discussion was something else, like harmonic choices or swinging. The aim is not only to capture the multiple points of view expressed about music and politics, but also to understand the social and musical logic that informed them. It also discusses the structural significance of Jim Crow policies for the musical world, legal definitions of race, cultural hybridity, Black nationalism, how issues of race mediated between the aesthetic and political views of the modern, and the growth of African American studies since the 1960s.Less

Liberation Through Literacy: African American Bookstores, Black Power, and the Mainstreaming of Black Books

Joshua Clark Davis

in From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs

Chapter two examines Black-Power activists who founded scores of bookstores throughout the country in the 1960s and ‘70s, hoping to prompt both a “revolution of the mind” and a transformation of ... More

Chapter two examines Black-Power activists who founded scores of bookstores throughout the country in the 1960s and ‘70s, hoping to prompt both a “revolution of the mind” and a transformation of business culture in black communities. These activists hailed bookstores as information centers where African American community members could meet to learn about and agitate for radical movements for racial equality and black progress. African American booksellers’ sought to further the work of the Black Power movement by affirming racial pride, celebrating black history and identity, and promoting connections to and interest in Africa. As Black Power declined over the course of the 1970s, however, black bookstores were compelled to deal in an ever broader range of black-authored written works, many of them less political in nature.Less

Administering Poetic Breath for the People: Charles Olson and Amiri Baraka

Lisa Siraganian

in Modernism’s Other Work: The Art Object’s Political Life

This chapter explores Charles Olson’s and Amiri Baraka’s various ways of letting the body into their writing. Olson’s Maximus (1960-1970), for example, equates fidelity to a viewer’s particular ... More

This chapter explores Charles Olson’s and Amiri Baraka’s various ways of letting the body into their writing. Olson’s Maximus (1960-1970), for example, equates fidelity to a viewer’s particular perception and body with fidelity to meaning, privileging American immigrant experiences in the process. He imagines that the puff of air he breathes (when speaking a word) can be an element of that world—like a piece of newspaper—captured by the poet. Drawing on archival sources, we see how Olson injects his pluralist poetics with the administrative ideology he developed in the 1940s at the US Office of War Information. Such a relationship between perception, politics, breath, and meaning also characterizes Amiri Baraka’s early writing (as LeRoi Jones), when he identifies Olson’s influence on his work in “How You Sound??” (1960). Although Baraka’s Black Nationalist poetry of the 1960s and early 1970s explicitly rejects white American poetry, his adoption of Olson’s poetics of identity emphasizes racial qualities of voice over the meaning of words.Less

Explicating Black Nationalism

in In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America

This chapter focuses on the nationalist politics of the black power era, but not with the intent of bashing the shortcomings of black nationalism during the 1960s and 1970s. It does not hold the ... More

This chapter focuses on the nationalist politics of the black power era, but not with the intent of bashing the shortcomings of black nationalism during the 1960s and 1970s. It does not hold the view, for example, that the black power era represents a moment of decline in the black freedom struggle, where the powerful and persuasive moral claims of Martin Luther King Jr. gave way to the polemics of violence. Instead, the chapter holds the view that much of the politics of the era was premised on problematic conceptions of black identity, black history, and black agency, and also considers the problems of definition that plague accounts of black nationalism. One such problem involves judgments as to the merits of nationalist politics. This problematic evidences itself in two distinctive tendencies: celebratory accounts and hypercritical accounts.Less

The Making of a Movement

Kenneth Robert Janken

in The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s

The growth of the movement in Wilmington was stimulated by the presence of organizations dedicated to breaking through the suffocating restrictions of paternalism that the white elite of North ... More

The growth of the movement in Wilmington was stimulated by the presence of organizations dedicated to breaking through the suffocating restrictions of paternalism that the white elite of North Carolina and elsewhere deployed to manage the change in the racial order that they were knew they would not be able to stop. The chapter follows three organizations in North Carolina as they promoted their variants of black nationalism and Black Power and struggled to break the gradualist consensus on race liberation: the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice, the Wilmington Movement organized by the North Carolina chapter of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student (later Youth) Organization for Black Unity. Bombastic Black Power rhetoric was part of the three organization’s plans, and the idea that emboldening blacks and scaring whites could shake things up and alter the balance of power. But they tested their theories of social change in practice, and it was through that process that the organizations made gains.Less

Garvey Must Go: The Black Press and the Making and Unmaking of Black Male Leadership

D'Weston Haywood

in Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement

This chapter reinterprets the New Negro era as an intense moment of jockeying for racial leadership among certain black male leaders and black male publishers in Harlem. This chapter argues that when ... More

This chapter reinterprets the New Negro era as an intense moment of jockeying for racial leadership among certain black male leaders and black male publishers in Harlem. This chapter argues that when Marcus Garvey arrived in Harlem to build his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), he stepped into a crucible of New Negro thought, organizing, and publications with competing visions for racial advancement. The UNIA’s businesses and paper, the Negro World, helped make Garvey the premier black leader of his day. But debates about his ideas among many black leaders quickly led to a public war of words between Garvey and critics in which they strove to use their papers to destroy the leadership of the other. Garvey used the Negro World to perform a rhetorical emasculation of critics. Garvey’s critics retaliated with the “Garvey Must Go” campaign. It not only laid bare a contentious battle in print among rival black male leaders, but also the influence the black press now had to elevate and/or destroy black male leadership.Less