Black Protests in the US, 1994-2010

We use a novel dataset to provide the first panoramic view of US Black movement protest events as reported in US newswires between 1994 and 2010 and put our quantitative data into dialog with qualitative accounts of the period. Struggles during these years presaged the Black Lives protest waves of 2014-2016 and 2020. We find that protests were building in frequency in the 1990s after the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and the widely discussed 1995 Million Man March into 2001, but dropped abruptly after the 9/11 attacks, with mobilization building again at the end of the 2000s. Protests in response to police violence and other criminal legal issues were major arenas of struggle and news coverage. Also common were issues of national identity including celebrations of Black history and Black solidarity, protests against Confederate symbols, and protests about White hate groups and hate crimes. While Black people protested about a wide variety of issues, mainstream national media attention focused disproportionately on incidents of police violence and perceived threats of Black violence. We find substantial continuity in issues, organizations, and activism between this period and the Black Lives Movement of 2014-2020. Content warning: parts of this article describe incidents of police violence.

The Civil Rights Movement. Million Man March. Black Lives Matter

The author discusses three historical civil rights movements in the United States—Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; the Million Man March; and the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). The author compares and contrasts each movement and event from his perspective as a participant in each and identifies similarities and differences among them. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was born out of a desire and need to end legalized segregation, better known as Jim Crowism, in the south. Strategies included direct action, passive resistance, and redress of grievances through the judicial system. The Million Man March, which occurred in 1995 in Washington D.C., brought together more than a million Black men from across the United States. Moreover, it was an extension of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. Whereas the latter was established as a response to legalized racial segregation in the south, the former was designed to instill a sense of responsibility and accountability among Black men as leaders in their communities. In addition, the Million Man March attempted to bring greater awareness of the unkept promise of racial equality. The BLM Movement provided an opportunity for multiple generations from multiple ethnic, cultural, and racial groups to coalesce around the issue of police brutality. Following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and continuing to the present time, the BLM platform has become the principal venue through which outrage is expressed over the deaths of innocent, unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement and White vigilantes.

Afterword

Jacques Rancière’s democratic theory affirms not only an an-archic antifoundationalism, but also an everyday theory of political subjectivization and democratic appearance, through which “the power of the people” is “re-enacted ceaselessly by political subjects that challenge the police distribution of parts, places or competences, and that re-stage the anarchic foundation of the political.” This afterword focuses on Rancière’s conceptualization of the relationship between democracy as a politics without arche, and the singular acts of political subjectivization and democratic appearance that bring this contingency to light and enact it on the public stage. I turn first to Rancière’s work and then to an examination of a series of images created by the contemporary artist Glenn Ligon that critically engage with the Nation of Islam’s 1995 Million Man March. Ligon’s work provides an occasion for thinking in more historically and aesthetically detailed ways about the forms of everyday political speech and action that Rancière’s work brings into view as distinctive modes of democratic appearance.

Looking for a Few Good Men

This chapter compares the men of the Promise Keepers and Million Man March for what they wanted from and achieved at the gatherings. It describes the revivalism and spiritualism of the marches. By exploring the way white and black men experienced manhood historically, and in the 1990s, it explains why they marched separately though for many of the same reasons. By exploring the anger and anxiety that motivated their respective gatherings, it demonstrates how the new economy, multiculturalism, and feminism affected them and their respective communities differently, even though their adaptations were paradoxically similar. The marches provide the context for learning about and comparing the way these men approached emotionalism, male bonding, male dependency, patriarchy, homosexuality, and fatherhood.