Politics: Radical Black History

During the social revolution that was synonymous with the sixties, perhaps nothing was more controversial than the rise of black militancy. This is a history that is rapidly becoming forgotten, as roughly half of the population was not yet alive during during the height of the “Black Power” movement. School textbooks have given them scant reason to realize that this movement grew out of peaceful attempts to bring integration to the South, and simple equality to the rest of America.

“Today’s young generation of blacks grew up in an atmosphere of tension and hostility, often threatened with injury or arrest for pressing their demands for a fair share of the American dream,” wrote historian Jules Archer nearly thirty years ago in his book “Revolution In Our Time.” “Violently handled by some white police, drafted for a violent war against another people of color in Indochina, some young blacks turned to violence themselves as ‘the American way.’”

At the beginning of the sixties, blacks and white liberals had joined forces, mainly under Martin Luther King’s guidance, in an attempt to integrate Southern schools, lunch counters and other public facilities, as well as to win blacks the right to register and vote. To unify this movement, some young African Americans formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. During the next three years of protests for civil rights, twenty thousand people were arrested. Others were shot, beaten and tear-gassed. Finally, in 1966, the SNCC leaders had enough and broke with Dr. King. “We are encouraging people to pick up arms and fight back,” said chairman Stokely Carmichael, who is credited with coining the term “Black Power.”

The SNCC began calling for the creation of a separate black America, perhaps the most public calling for a reverse segregation since the Civil War. It didn’t end there; another group in California, the W. E. B. DuBois Clubs of America, called for a referendum to let Watts voters secede from the city of Los Angeles. Malcolm X urged the black community to abandon moderate leaders like King, saying, “They’re there just to restrain you and me, to restrain the struggle...not let it get out of control.” Even whites who’d gone South to register voters didn’t escape his contempt. “They got a little taste of jail, got beaten, but they were white. That meant they could go back home and not have to worry as they walked down the street.”

For the next decade or so, black militancy would play a major role in shaping race relations, with many groups taking a militant stance. Perhaps the most influential of these was the Black Panther Party, founded in October, 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, and soon joined by Eldridge Cleaver. Within a couple of years their battle cry, “Power to the People,” would be on the lips of not only many black Americans, but many white student radicals as well. John Lennon would eventually write a song with that cry as its title.

Newton and Cleaver were an odd new breed of community leader. They both had prison records, which they wore proudly, claiming they were victims of a society that forced blacks into crime to survive, then arrested them. “We start with the basic definition: that black people in America are a colonized people in every sense of the term,” they explained, “and that white America is an organized Imperial force holding black people in colonial bondage.”

They were self-styled revolutionaries, whose uniform was a leather jacket and beret, and whose symbol was an upraised clenched fist holding a weapon. Black moderates and white liberals were shocked by the idea of ex-convicts as black leaders. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the black community continued to prefer the nonviolent approach of Dr. King, even if they were growing impatient with the slowness of change. Oddly enough, it was the white student radicals of the “Students for a Democratic Society” (SDS) who most wholeheartedly supported the Panthers, since they figured that prison had helped educate many revolutionary heroes in other countries.

Within a few years, the Panthers were gaining popular support in many urban ghettos, largely due to their free breakfast programs for poor children. This frightened J. Edgar Hoover into directing the FBI to declare an all-out war against the group and, by 1970, all of their leaders were either in jail, dead or living overseas.

The legacy of black militant groups is a mixed bag of the horrendous and the noble. On one hand, they nurtured a spirit of black pride that had probably never before existed in black America. On the other hand, they were responsible for bloodshed, as police cars were fired upon from rooftops or followed by autos full of armed Panther vigilantes in an attempt to force the police out of black neighborhoods.

Their biggest influence probably came from the subliminal message these actions sent to supporters of the status quo. The image they projected, black people armed and angry, seemed to offer a new choice to those who resisted change. “You can either give us our human rights nonviolently, according to Dr. King’s plan,” they seemed to say, “or you can deal with us.”

Americans, always prudent, mostly chose nonviolence.

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