Radicalizing Feminisms from “The Movement” Era

Abstract

“The Movement” era largely existed from 1955 to 1975 and includes the black civil rights struggles, the American Indian Movement (MM), Chicano activism, and Puertorriqueho insurrections, and militant feminism. During the height of the black liberation and black power movements, veteran activist Ella Baker’s cogent assessment of the political contradictions of liberalism among black elites advocating civil rights distinguished between attempts to become “a part of the American scene” and “the more radical struggle” to transform society. According to Baker, “In … struggling to be accepted, there were certain goals, concepts, and values such as the drive for the ‘Talented Tenth.’ That, of course, was the concept that proposed that through the process of education black people would be accepted in the American culture and they would be accorded their rights in proportion to the degree to which they qualified as being persons of learning and culture….”1 For Baker, the common belief, that “those who were trained were not trained to be part of the community, but to be leaders of the community,” implied “another false assumption that being a leader meant that you were separate and apart from the masses, and to a large extent people were to look up to you, and that your responsibility to the people was to represent them.” This precluded people from acquiring their own sense of values; but the 1960s, according to Baker, would usher in another view: “the concept of the right of the people to participate in the decisions that affected their lives.”2