The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power

1
The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power

• 1. Factors Influencing the Civil Rights
  Movement
• 2. Civil Rights Movement Progressive Narrative
• 3. Civil Rights Movement Tragic Redemptive
  Narrative

2
Protest as a Historical Continuum

• Progressive Narrative Tragic Redemptive
  Narrative
• DU BOIS GARVEY
• MARTIN LUTHER KING JR MALCOM X
• BARACK OBAMA BLACK PANTHERS
• SOUTH NORTH
• 
  WALTER RODNEY

3
Factors Influencing the Civil Rights Movement

• 1. Increased number of blacks in north
• 2. Impact of World War II
• 3. Increased access to education
• 4. Widespread access to television
• 5. Growth of a black culture industry
• 6. Anti-colonialist movements in Africa
• Caribbean and
• 7. Changes in US and global politics.

4
Kings Progressive Narrative

• Christian
• Non-violent
• Multiracial and
• Integrationist
• Media centered
• Student organized
• NAACP as legal
• representative

5
X and a Tragic Redemptive Narrative

• Northern
• Separatist
• Africa as source of
• inspiration
• Slavery as ongoing
• Community based
• Confrontational

6
Definition of Black Power

• It is about taking care of businessthe
• business of and for black people . . . If we
• succeed we will exercise control over our
• lives, politically, economically and
• psychically. We will also contribute to the
• development of a viable larger society in
• terms of ultimate social benefit there is
• nothing unilateral about the movement to
• free black people (Toure and Hamilton, Black
• Power 1967)

7
The Watts Riot

• A large-scale race riot lasted for six days in
  Los Angeles, California in August 1965. 34 people
  were killed, 1,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested.

8
Black Panther Party for Self-Defence

• Protection from
• police brutality
• Ten-point program
• of community
• empowerment
• Black nationalist

9
Kerner Commission (1968)

• US divided, along racial and socio-economic
  lines, into
• two societies 40 of non-whites lived below the
• federal government's poverty line
• Black men were twice as likely to be un-employed
  as
• whites and three times as likely to be in
  low-skill jobs
• The commission viewed this poverty as the cause
  of
• crime and civil unrest.

10
Walter Rodney and Black Power in a Caribbean
Context

• Historical continuity with
• Garvey
• Challenged white cultural
• Referents and valorized
• blackness
• Drew language and metaphors
• from Rastafarianism
• Critical of educational system
• and middle class
• Unable to address issues of
• Indian ethnicity