Black Power

The raised fist - symbol of the Black Power movement

Black Power (in the sense of: Black Power ) is a slogan of a civil rights movement of African Americans in the USA , which is based on a book by Richard Wright (1908-1960). The civil rights activist and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee , Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998), coined the term in 1966 after a demonstration in Jackson, Mississippi , in which it came to a rift with the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King .

history

The forerunner of Black Power was Malcolm X (1925-1965). He was once a member of the Nation of Islam (NoI). This organization theoretically reversed discrimination against blacks in the United States, arguing that blacks are God's chosen people and that whites are inferior. One of the earliest and most determined critics of the NoI was its former mouthpiece Malcolm X, who campaigned for a black socialist revolution after he left in 1964 . His position, especially after the exit, appealed to more and more civil rights activists who adopted his ideas in the Black Power movement. Malcolm X was shot dead by three African American Muslims, members of the Nation of Islam, during one of his speeches in February 1965.

Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton , two black activists, wrote about racism in their book "Black Power" (1967). For Carmichael and Hamilton, black oppression consisted of three areas:

The political area is ruled exclusively by whites. The white parties would form a united front against the demands of the blacks. If black citizens were given top positions, they would be made MPs in white America and thus kept away from any real exercise of power.
The economic sector is characterized by the fact that blacks serve as cheap labor and receive less wages. In the area of sales, however, the ghetto serves as a market for overpriced products.
The social area is divided. White culture has its values and norms, but black citizens are equated with animals. So blacks would question their own values. Black skin and frizzy hair are considered “ugly” (cf. Oliner Demny: Die Wut des Panthers . Münster 1996. pp. 20–22).

Sports

The Black Power movement became internationally known during the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City : the two African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos held up their black-gloved fists, the symbol of movement, during the award ceremony of the 200-meter run. The International Olympic Committee saw this as a violation of the "apolitical ethos" of the event and presented the US Olympic Committee (USOC) with the choice of either sending the two athletes home or withdrawing the entire athletics team. The USOC chose the former.

criticism

Black Power has been criticized by the American public and conservative black civil rights organizations as a call to violence. According to King, the term tends to promote political and economic independence for blacks. In any case, Black Power and the movement associated with it stood for black self-confidence (Black is beautiful!) And a distancing from white society, into which the followers of the movement had tried unsuccessfully in their eyes the years before. Black Power was part of the separatist black nationalism , which grew out of the disappointment of many black people from the mid-1960s onwards, given the only moderate success of the civil rights movement.

literature

Oliver Demny: The Panther's Anger . Munster 1996.
Richard Wright: Black Power. A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos . New York 1954 ISBN 0-06-092566-3
Stokely Carmichael, Charles V. Hamilton: Black Power. The politics of liberation in America . New York 1967
Editorial collective “Right On” (Ed.): Black Power - Interviews with (ex-) prisoners from the militant black resistance . On the history of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. ID-Verlag , Berlin 1993 ISBN 3894080310 full text

Web links

Commons : Black Power - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

↑ Konrad Ege: Contemporary history: 50 years ago the radical civil rights activist Malcolm X died in an assassination attempt in New York. An announced murder that the FBI and police apparently knew about. Friday, February 25, 2015, accessed on October 11, 2017 .
↑ 1968 salute leaves lasting impact on social activism in Olympic Movement . In: Team USA . ( teamusa.org [accessed December 17, 2017]).

[1] Konrad Ege: Contemporary history: 50 years ago the radical civil rights activist Malcolm X died in an assassination attempt in New York. An announced murder that the FBI and police apparently knew about. Friday, February 25, 2015, accessed on October 11, 2017 .

[2] 1968 salute leaves lasting impact on social activism in Olympic Movement . In: Team USA . ( teamusa.org [accessed December 17, 2017]).