Confrontational Politics

Abstract

The history of black social movements in the United States is a history replete with organizations created by blacks, including in some cases white supporters, crafting programs, tactics, and strategies to address the pressing problems confronting a black dispossessed and oppressed population. A description and assessment of the contemporary Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement forces an assessment of it and how and why it may be linked to previous organizations which sought comparable changes in the black community and in the larger dominant white society. The BLM movement would adopt and use direct action confrontational politics on many occasions, the first of which was the nationally organized bus trip to Ferguson, Missouri during the demonstrations in the Michael Brown case. Closely allied to the importance of the local community as the germinator of programs and leadership in the BLM movement is the importance of organizational decentralization.