Historians and the Black Power Movement

Abstract

The Power Movement remains a controversial, misunder stood, and relatively neglected era in the historiography of post war American history. In striking contrast, over the past quar ter century historians have devoted considerable attention to the civil rights movement, especially its heroic years from 1954 to 1965. These years were indelibly marked by bus boycotts, sit-ins, political assassina tions, and legal and legislative victories that riveted the national con science and have been successfully upheld by contemporary historians as the most important social and political development of the postwar era. Historians, even as they have critically analyzed the movemenf s setbacks, ambiguities, and successes, generally view civil rights as a moral and political good, with many arguing that, despite all of its no table achievements, the struggle for racial justice remains incomplete. On this score, civil rights historiog raphy has developed into one of the richest and most prolific subfields of American history (i). Conversely, Power has been viewed as a destructive, short-lived, and politically ineffec tual movement that triggered white backlash, urban rioting, and se verely crippled the mainstream civil rights struggle. Power's clas sical period of 1966-1975 is most often characterized as a kind of fe ver dream dominated by outsized personalities who spewed words of fire that make this a justly forgotten era. Moreover, histories of the New Left tend to blame Power rad icalism for inspiring white radicals towards a simplistic and tragically romantic view of revolutionary violence (2). A new subfield of American historical scholarship and Africana what I have called Black Power Studies, is changing the way in which historians, teachers, students, and the general public view Power, civil rights, and the 1960s specifically, and more gen erally, postwar American history. In doing so, Black Power Studies places the history of the era within the broader context of American and African American history at the local, national, and international level. Power is too often portrayed as a temporary eruption that existed outside the confines of American history. That is, the movemenf s anti war activism, antipoverty efforts, foreign policy interventions, intellec tual and political debates, local character and national influence have been virtually ignored in the historiography of postwar America. This is as unfortunate as it is ill considered. Power grew out of the tumult of postwar America, not just the decade of the 1960s, when the possibilities of American democracy seemed unlimited. Power activists tested America's willingness to extend citizenship to blacks with a robust call for self-determination that scandalized and transformed longstanding American institutions. Some activists did this through, at times, a bellicose advocacy of racial separatism contoured by threats of civil unrest. Others sought equal access to predominantly white institutions, especially public schools, colleges, and universities while many decided to build independent, black-led institutions designed to serve as new beacons for African American intellectual achievement, political power, and cultural pride. Yet such efforts did not exist in a vacuum. Organized black activists en countered political repression at the local, national, and international level. A complex web of criminal justice and police agencies infiltrated, harassed, and helped to eventually cripple Power's most visibly militant groups. But the movement adapted to such constraints through bold ef forts to transform American de mocracy by advocating radical goals that were tempered by a surprising and effective blend of militancy and pragmatism. Organized protests for efforts to incorporate the Arts into independent and existing institutions, and the thrust to take control of major American cities through electoral strength exemplified these impulses. Power activism's influence stretched from prisons to trade unions to local and national political elections. In ternationally, Power militants forged alliances with iconic Third World leaders including Fidel Castro, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, and Julius Nyerere. Leading American political figures of the postwar era, most notably Lyndon Baines John son, Hubert Humphrey, Ramsey Clark, Nicholas Katzenbach, Richard Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover regarded the movement as dangerous, un predictable, and a threat to national security. Yet the movemenf s im pact on American history, its successes, failures, and shortcomings, as well as it contemporary legacy, remain undervalued and understudied. While scholars have made important strides in documenting the way domestic civil rights struggles played out on a Cold War interna tional stage where democracy's image was contested against the back drop of southern civil rights demonstrations, virtually no attention has been paid to the way in which Power era urban riots impacted American foreign policy. Likewise, activists such as Stokely Carmi chael's overseas trips proved embarrassing enough for American of Black Power Studies places the history of the era within the broader context of Ameri