Black Women and Black Power

Abstract

The phrase “Black Power!” usually evokes inspiring, or frightful, images of black men in the late 1960s. They wore black berets, Afros, dark sunglass es, and slick leather coats. Maybe they sat kingly in high-backed rattan chairs. Perhaps they carried guns or shouted rancorous and aggressive “Black Power” slogans that threatened to turn the world upside down. Such spellbinding masculine images of Black Power dominated not only public attention in the late 1960s and 1970s, but also the history recalled, told, and written about the era—despite black women's presence in the visual record (1). However, as the historiography of the post-World War II black freedom struggle continues to expand, and within it the nascent field of “Black Power Studies,” scholars are complicating what has become an obfuscating and incomplete visual and historical narrative of the Black Power era (2). Unfolding at a time in the historical profession when feminist scholars and analyses of race, gender, and class have helped to destabilize and complicate male-centered histories, Black Power Studies is simultaneously being shaped and enriched by research attuned to women and gender.