The Struggle Is Eternal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Gender Egalitarianism ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Justice Movements

Using an extensive body of sources, including more than thirty interviews, this biography details and analyzes the life of human rights activist Gloria Richardson, leader of the Cambridge movement in Maryland during the 1960s. Because her radical and uncompromising positions on black liberation were highly influential on the Black Power wave of the black liberation movement, this book depicts Richardson as a progenitor of Black Power who served in its leadership vanguard. This book also moves the geographic borders of Black Power’s roots south to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, detailing the Cambridge movement’s social justice campaign for more jobs and improvements in housing, health care, and education. Activists in Cambridge used the vote and armed self-defense to achieve their goals, and Black Power activists embraced these same strategies and tactics in the mid-1960s, seeing Richardson as a transitional human rights leader and role model. In addition to examining Richardson’s social, economic, and political philosophies—secular humanism, socioeconomic egalitarianism, and gender egalitarianism—and how they impacted her human rights activism, this book analyzes the gendered interpretation of Richardson’s activism and discusses how she was both similar to and different from other national civil rights leaders. Readers also get an insider’s view of her personal life before and after the 1960s, including her marriages, motherhood, and careers and her assessments of recent social justice movements.

Prison Power

Prison Power ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 21-52
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The State ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Black Liberation Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Phase

This chapter traces rhetorical and political history of imprisonment before and after the birth of Black Power, focusing on major moments of activist imprisonment as well as movement discourses written from prison. In charting the role of prison in the movement, the chapter also discusses the emergence and legitimacy of Black Power as a slogan, as a theoretical device, and as a series of rhetorical strategies designed to be a particularly historical intervention into the stagnating discourses of “civil rights” and “law and order.” This chapter contends that incarceration became a major strategy used by both black activists and white conservatives during the Black Power era; consequently, the period following 1966 marked a new phase of Jim Crow as Black Power became a rallying cry against state repression. This chapter suggests that the legitimacy of Black Power as a term of art, as a series of vernacular signs, and as an organizing principle in a new phase of the black liberation movement, hinged upon whether the state or the activists controlled the frame and how closely it became associated with violence. Because the Black Power slogan and ideology were articulated by activists with extensive rap sheets as the state circumscribed their activism, Black Power ideology took up the relationship between state repression and incarceration as a place to excavate new arenas for the black liberation struggle, particularly in the memoirs of movement activists.

“Say What you Really Believe”1: Freedom Schools, Youth Empowerment, and Black Power in 1960s Milwaukee

2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Katerina Suchor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Youth Empowerment ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Freedom Schools ◽  
Core Components

Background The historical literature on the civil rights movement has tended to underemphasize the movement's educational activities, while literature on the civil rights and Black Power movements has overemphasized ideological and tactical differences between these chapters in the struggle for Black liberation. A few studies have examined Freedom Schools—educational projects established as part of larger civil rights campaigns—but these studies have focused almost exclusively on Freedom Schools in the Southern context. Purpose Focusing on Freedom Schools organized as part of a school desegregation campaign in Milwaukee during the mid-1960s, this article explores the pedagogical purpose and philosophy of the Freedom Schools, as distinct from other protest activities undertaken as part of the campaign, as well as the legacy of the Freedom Schools after the campaign's conclusion. Research Design This historical analysis examines materials such as lesson plans, flyers, and correspondence from the archives of the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC), the organization responsible for the school desegregation campaign. Findings This article shows that core components of the Freedom School curriculum, which sought to challenge deficit-oriented policies and empower youth to create social change, foreshadowed key tenets of Black Power ideology. Conclusions These findings suggest that the Freedom Schools, as important sites of ideological development, highlight continuity between the civil rights and Black Power movements and situate the Freedom Schools as part of a longer tradition of education for liberation and self-determination.

The “Hollow Prospect” of Integration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward G. Goetz
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The U.S

This chapter describes the tension between integration and community development from the 1940s through the end of the 1960s. It describes the conflict within the African-American community between efforts to achieve integration on the one hand and building power and capacity within the community on the other. It describes the emergence and evolution of the fair housing movement in the U.S. Finally, the ways in which this conflict played out during the civil rights and Black Power eras is highlighted.

Race, Memory, and Military Men’s Sexuality

2020 ◽  
pp. 50-83
Author(s):  
Rebecca Forgash
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
International Couples ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Racial Discourses ◽  
The U.S

This chapter analyzes Okinawan discourses on race and military men's sexuality, with a focus on how Japanese and American racial discourses have shaped local understandings of difference. It discusses how the imperial rhetoric positioned Okinawans and other Asians alongside the Japanese in unified opposition to Europeans and Americans. During the postwar occupation, the U.S. military and its personnel were introduced into the Okinawa discourses on U.S. imperialism in Asia, Jim Crow segregation, and the 1960s civil rights and black power movements. The chapter also features the personal narratives of individuals who self-consciously viewed their relationships as transgressing established racial boundaries. It narrates stories that illustrate the struggle of military international couples in order to understand and rework racial ideologies and expectations in Okinawa's postwar society.

Navigating Civil Rights and Black Power Struggles

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
Joe William Trotter
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
Urban League ◽  
National Headquarters ◽  
The 1960S

By the mid-1960s, the political and social terrain on which the Urban League worked had changed dramatically. The Pittsburgh-born children of southern black migrants had come of age and pushed hard against the color line in the city's economy, politics, and institutions. National headquarters and local branches across the country worried about the increasing black nationalist turn in African American politics. But the ULP had helped to establish the postwar groundwork and even models for the fluorescence and even militance of Pittsburgh's Civil Rights and Black Power struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 225-230
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Recognition ◽  
The 1960S

The conclusion highlights Gloria Richardson’s increasing public recognition for her human rights activism in Cambridge, Maryland, during the 1960s and her place in civil rights and Black Power histories. Also discussed are her views on some current social issues, including the Cambridge city government’s privatization of the public housing units she and other activists fought to get built. Richardson sees this as an example of government’s abrogation of its responsibility to serve and protect residents and politicians’ use of their power to undermine communities’ quality of life. She also shares her concerns about President Donald J. Trump. Although he presents himself as an authoritarian politician, his supporters either cannot or will not acknowledge this because they believe in the myth of American exceptionalism. Richardson argues that today’s activists must use creative tactics—including the strategic use of the vote—to resist the countless ways governments at all levels try to limit and restrict people’s freedoms and liberties.

Straight from the Offering Plate

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Pimblott
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Local State ◽  
Organizational Resources ◽  
Staff Support ◽  
Civil Rights Organizations ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Church Organizations

Chapter Four tracks Black Power activists’ mobilization of these new discourses to secure important organizational resources and coalitional support from local, state, and national Black church organizations. Between 1969 and 1974, the United Front secured more than half a million dollars in grants from church-based organizations as well as extensive lobbying, consultancy, and staff support for their political programming. As financial support for traditional civil rights organizations waned during the 1960s and local civic elites obstructed governmental funds, these new organizational resources proved invaluable and ensured that churches would become a significant, albeit overlooked, source of coalitional support for the Black Power Movement in Cairo and beyond.

scholarly journals British Black Power: The anti-imperialism of political blackness and the problem of nativist socialism

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 945-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Narayan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
British History ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

The history of the US Black Power movement and its constituent groups such as the Black Panther Party has recently gone through a process of historical reappraisal, which challenges the characterization of Black Power as the violent, misogynist and negative counterpart to the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, scholars have furthered interest in the global aspects of the movement, highlighting how Black Power was adopted in contexts as diverse as India, Israel and Polynesia. This article highlights that Britain also possessed its own distinctive form of Black Power movement, which whilst inspired and informed by its US counterpart, was also rooted in anti-colonial politics, New Commonwealth immigration and the onset of decolonization. Existing sociological narratives usually locate the prominence and visibility of British Black Power and its activism, which lasted through the 1960s to the early 1970s, within the broad history of UK race relations and the movement from anti-racism to multiculturalism. However, this characterization neglects how such Black activism conjoined explanations of domestic racism with issues of imperialism and global inequality. Through recovering this history, the article seeks to bring to the fore a forgotten part of British history and also examines how the history of British Black Power offers valuable lessons about how the politics of anti-racism and anti-imperialism should be united in the 21st century.

Black Studies as an Integral Tradition in African-American Intellectual History

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 73-78
Author(s):  
James Turner ◽  
C. Steven McGann
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Studies ◽  
Black College ◽  
Component Part ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
The 1960S

The modern Black Studies movement, in its present form, appeared in the 1960s as an emergent academic field and a self-conscious component part of the larger social and political movement for Black liberation. In contrast to the 1950s, which had been labeled “the silent generation” by some scholars, the 1960s were times of widespread political unrest and social movements. These currents were enlivened and precipitated by the Black liberation movement in its current stage of struggle for democratic rights, commonly referred to during that period as the “civil rights movement.” The Black college campuses were the source of leadership for this movement by young (though not exclusively) activist-intellectuals. The general social climate of self-assertion and political protest released an intellectual ferment that stimulated some Black students and Black scholars in their demand for “Black Studies” as a vanguard opposition to an entrenched intellectualism in American society.

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