In a January 1980 essay in Black Collegian, historian Vincent Harding remembered political activism of early 1970s with regret and disappointment compared to inspiriting sense of collective action, transformative power, great victories, and tragic wounds of 1960s. And in a revised periodization, for this scholar-activist the seventies began with Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in April 1968. Harding noted that at time of his death, King was questioning political, social, economic, and moral foundations of American society. Dr. King's murder spurred tremendous activism, but inability of social and political activists to make profound societal changes they so desperately sought revealed strengths of entrenched corporate establishment. Harding acknowledged that these substantial obstacles smashed our vague dreams up against hard limitations of American structures. (1) Harding's frustrations stemmed from partial victories of protest movements in early 1970s and eventual splintering of these movements by decade's end. During 1970s Black Power transformed civil rights activism, dispersing protests in various directions and seeking different solutions to problem of achieving racial equality. The decade witnessed growth and creation of numerous organizations such as Congress of African People, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and Malcolm X Liberation University that sought to expand and deepen meaning of civil rights and Black Power for 1970s. These groups provided depth and breadth to ongoing social activism through involvement in political arena, cultural affairs, unions and labor organizing, education, feminism, and other areas. Ideologically diverse, these organizations cooperated publicly in early 1970s in name of a hypothetical black Behind scenes, however, scholars and social activists were often wedded to particular ideological formations and resulting divisions strained well-publicized attempts at unity. (2) Despite these strained efforts, a unified front in attacking American structures and their inherent discrimination continued to be an aspiration for freedom struggle in early 1970s. The Atlanta-based Institute of Black World (IBW) was one of many new Institutions founded in late 1960s in various attempts to achieve to promote black liberation. IBW was a collective of scholar-activists and intellectuals, primarily under leadership of Vincent Harding, that forged operational unity among various ideological formations and camps within freedom struggle by emphasizing social, political, economic, and cultural analyses of American and African American society. IBW's associates, those affiliated artists and intellectuals, fostered unity within group by adhering to a form of pragmatic nationalism, believing that flexible and carefully constructed social, political, and economic goals and strategies designed to improve communities were more important than ideological pronouncements, conformity, and rigidity. (3) IBW's pragmatic nationalism differed from cultural nationalism promoted by Maulana Karenga and Amiri Baraka, and shared by many artists and college students, and focused on Africa and African peoples in Diaspora. African-descended peoples have a distinct aesthetic, sense of values, and communal ethos emerging from either, or both their contemporary folkways and continental African heritage. (4) Cultural nationalists differed ideologically from revolutionary nationalists of era who, according to literary historian James Smethurst, called for an open engagement with Marxism regarding U.S. and global political economy, and pursued alternatives to capitalist approach to economic development. (5) IBW's pragmatic nationalism was rooted in specific activities and issues such as creation of Black Studies programs and development of a black political agenda for 1970s. …
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Apr 25, 2023
Pat Hein 
Open Access