Barack Obama and the Contours of African American Social Protest Movements

Abstract

The fundamental impulse behind all major African American social movements throughout U.S. history has been the quest for “freedom.” During much of the long nightmare of human bondage, lasting nearly two hundred fifty years, freedom had a clear and unambiguous meaning: the shattering of shackles, the elimination of whips and chains, the reuniting of black families who had been divided and sold apart, the ownership of farms and private property by blacks, and the personal and collective feelings of safety and integrity that are guaranteed by state power and constitutional authority. Moreover, deeply embedded within these notions of black freedom were two strategic concepts implying collective action to maximize black civic capacity. The strongest of these was the struggle for equality. Supported primarily but not solely by the African American middle class, the diverse social movements that championed the cause of equality generally called for the outlawing of racial segregation laws, the granting of blacks’ voting rights, and the guarantee of civil liberties and constitutional rights. A second tendency, drawing upon greater working-class support, can be described as the social movement for collective “self-determination.” Many blacks perceived themselves as an oppressed national minority group, or even a “nation,” with distinctive history, culture, traditions, and a unique political history. As such, they had the right to determine for themselves what kinds of political arrangements should define blacks’ relationships to the U.S. nation-state. In everyday political terms, African American activists who favored this perspective have, since the nineteenth century, called themselves “black nationalists.”