Black Power Ideologies: An Essay in African American Political Thought

Contents

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pp. v-vii

Preface

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pp. ix-xii

The decade of the 1960s was a period of great unrest in America. During that time the country experienced not only a very costly war in Vietnam but also a series of domestic disturbances (termed "riots" by some and "rebellions" by others), especially in the urban centers and universities. Because many of these events involved African-Americans, and because they came at a time when the call for Black Power ...

Acknowledgments

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pp. xiii-xiv

A book that has been in preparation for such a long time is both a social product and an individual one and owes much to many. First I would like to thank both my undergraduate and graduate political theory professors who, themselves fired up by a love for the matters of theory, instilled the same love in me. These fine teachers are diamonds that one ...

Chapter I: The Background to Black Power

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pp. 1-14

The Black Power Movement of the 1960s in the United States was seen by most of its advocates as the latest in a series of efforts to correct the injustices that existed in almost every dimension of life between black and white Americans. To understand the Black Power Movement fully and to appreciate its suggestions for solving these injustices, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the injustices and ...

Chapter II: Black Nationalist Thought in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

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pp. 15-31

The first movement that had as its purpose the eradication of injustices toward African-Americans was a movement that in contemporary language would be classified as Black Nationalist and Separatist. This was the Colonization Movement. In this chapter the Colonization Movement, or Pan-Negro Nationalist Movement, as the historian Hollis Lynch terms it, will be considered from the following ...

Chapter III: The Abolitionist Movement

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pp. 32-53

The historical record shows that from the beginning of the African-American presence in the United States, African-Americans and whites were calling for their integration into American society. This chapter will deal with the pre-Civil War movement centered on this theme, the Abolitionist Movement. In order to put the Abolitionist Movement in its proper context, the ...

Chapter IV: The Politics of Accommodation

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pp. 54-73

By the 1880s most African-Americans, the majority of whom lived in the South, had for all practical purposes been driven out of political life. Into this cheerless black world stepped an optimistic ex-slave named Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), whose message of hope called the "Politics of Accommodation" would capture the imagination of both blacks and ...

Chapter V: Marcus Garvey and the Resurgence of Black Nationalism

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pp. 74-90

After the decline of the Politics of Accommodation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, and later the African-American union organization the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters were the major organizations committed to fighting for integration. The interracial NAACP was founded in ...

Chapter VI: Martin Luther King and Moralism

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pp. 91-110

After the decline of the Garvey Movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), with its integrationist philosophy, continued to be the major organ of protest within the black community. The period between 1915 and 1955 is generally considered the most influential of the NAACP's years, and its contributions can best be understood by examining the major strategies it used to advance ...

Chapter VII: What Is Black Power?

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pp. 111-132

The term Black Power has a range of related but distinct meanings. Because of this it is impossible to find anyone summary definition that encapsulates the essence of the movement as a whole.¹ To seek the latter would at best yield a lowest common denominator of the Black Power ideologies, which if done well would describe that which is common to them, but at the same time such a definition ...

Chapter VIII: The Counter-Communalists: A Comparison and Analysis

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pp. 133-150

The Counter-Communalists are those proponents of Black Power who do not advocate a separate state for blacks but who argue that progressive change must come for the majority of the American people of all colors when the present system is restructured along more democratic lines. (As previously noted, for Counter-Communalists more "democratic" usually ...

Chapter IX: The Black Power Pluralists: A Comparison and Analysis

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pp. 151-165

The Pluralists are those advocates of Black Power who argue that power in the United States is divided along interest and ethnic group lines, and the inability of African-Americans to obtain their requisite portion of economic and political power steins from their failure to mobilize themselves into an effective "ethnic-interest group" that stresses collective ...

Chapter X: The Black Power Separatists: A Comparison and Analysis

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pp. 166-180

The Black Power Separatists are those advocates of Black Power who, like the Counter-Communalists, disvalue the American system of values, interests, and beliefs, but who insist that liberation for blacks can come only in a separate state. In this regard, Black Power Separatism can be described as a 1960s version of Garveyism, although as will become apparent, most of its manifestations lack the back-to-Africa goal that ...

Chapter XI: A Critical Assessment of the Black Power Ideologies

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pp. 181-190

The preceding chapters have described various Black Power ideologies, their antecedents, and their competitors and made comparisons among them. This concluding chapter presents a critical assessment of the Black Power ideologies and considers their permanent contributions to ...

Notes

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pp. 191-225

Bibliography

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pp. 227-240

Index

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pp. 241-248