Learning Module 4: Activity One

Civil Rights v. Black Power

 

General Information:  This activity provides two points of view about the Black Freedom Movement of the 1960s: The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power, Black Nationalism movement.  The objective of those associated with the Civil Rights Movement was to end segregation and discrimination of blacks and to gain full equality. To achieve this objective, the participants applied a strategy of non-violent direct action. The objective of those associated with Black Power/Black Nationalism was to empower the black community so that blacks would unite and take control of their communities and gain self-reliance, race pride and political and economic empowerment. To achieve this objective, the participants stated that they would take control by “any means necessary” and liberate themselves from white domination. In this activity, we will evaluate and compare the effectiveness of (1) non-violent direct action and (2) empowerment of the black community.

Timing:  November 30

Assessment: 20 points.
  

Process: 

  • This activity requires that you read introductions and documents on two topics: The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power, Black Nationalism
  • The in-class quiz will be on both topics
  • Read the introductions and documents for each the topics
  • Class discussion: Be prepared to compare/contrast the ideas in of these two topics.

 

The Documents: Attached and Posted on the Class Website.

The Civil Rights Movement:

  1. Introduction
  2. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Strategy of Nonviolent Direct Action”
  3. Fannie Lou Farmer, “Fighting for the Vote in Mississippi

 

Black Power, Black Nationalism

  1. Introduction
  2. Malcolm X, “Black Nationalism and Black Revolution
  3. Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power Defined”

 

Questions of the Documents:  The answers to these questions will be the basis for the quiz. These questions are at the end of each document.

 

 

Introduction: The Civil Rights Movement[1]

In  1955 a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, initiated a new phase in the African American struggle for racial justice. Civil rights activists now employed a .new strategy—“nonviolent direct action"—

which used marches, boycotts, and similar mass actions to create crises intended to force segregated southern communities to abandon their Jim Crow laws and practices. It called for nonviolence on the part of participants, in spite of racial taunts, arrest, or physical attack. The most visible and eloquent spokesman for· this approach was a black Baptist preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), who had studied the ideas and technique of India's Mohandas Gandhi and sought to apply a similar method in the struggle for black equality. As the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he set out to employ his nonviolent strategy in community after community throughout the South. King became an internationally known figure and in 1964 won the Nobel Peace Prize for his civil rights activities. Although assassinated in 1968, he remains the most potent symbol of the Civil Rights movement.

As King and SCLC brought their strategy to communities throughout the South, new groups adopted the technique. In February 1960 four black college students sat down· at a "whites only" lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave unless they were served. Within weeks, the sit-in movement had spread to seventy southern cities and attracted thousands of black college students. Many of them came together in April to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Their tactics were soon expanded to include kneel· ins at segregated churches and wade·ins at segregated public pools. In 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sent an interracial group of “freedom riders" across the South on buses to force compliance with a Federal ban on segregation in interstate travel. After repeated physical assaults in Alabama forced them to go home, SNCC volunteers carried on these so-called Freedom Rides. In 1962 SNCC turned its attention to a voter registration campaign with the assistance of SCLC, CORE, and the NAACP.

Before 1963 the Civil Rights movement achieved many local successes. In that year, it started to pressure the federal government for sweeping change. This resulted in several landmark pieces of civil rights legislation. In August the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom brought nearly 250,000 Americans to the nation’s capital to demonstrate on behalf of a pending civil rights bill. It was capped by King's stirring "I Have a Dream” speech envisioning an integrated America. Congress responded by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most comprehensive civil rights law it had ever enacted. This act prohibited discrimination or segregation in employment and public facilities, outlawed bias in federally assisted programs, and authorized the attorney general to institute law­suits challenging discrimination in public schools and other facilities operated by state and local governments.

The movement then stepped up its campaign for voting rights. In 1964 the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, ending use of the poll tax. After a Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama publicized continuing disfranchisement, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed literacy tests and simi­lar devices and sent federal examiners to register voters in areas that had historically excluded blacks from the ballot. A century after emancipation, African Americans had finally gained legal equality.

Question: Be familiar with the contents of this overview

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Strategy of Nonviolent Direct Action

The lessons of Montgomery convinced King and other civil rights activists to employ the strategy of nonviolent direct action against Jim Crow throughout the South. In 1957 they gathered in Atlanta and formed SCLC for that pur­pose. Under King's leadership, SCLC organized nonviolent direct action cam­paigns in dozens of cities over the next decade, most notably Albany (1961), Birmingham (1963), S10 Augustine (1964), and Selma (1965). But the strategy was not without its critics. Many whites, especially in the South, condemned the tactics and timing of the campaigns and accused King and other SCLC officials of being "outside agitators." Some blacks criticized the strategy of nonviolent direct action as too passive and called for a more forceful approach. On the heels of the Selma campaign, which used a controversial march to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery to publicize African American demands for equal access to the ballot in Alabama and the South, King penned the following piece for the Saturday Review. He noted the strat­egy's forceful nature-how it worked to provoke crises in segregated south­ern communities in order to prompt federal action in behalf of civil rights. In response to the Selma campaign, President Lyndon B. Johnson called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation to address the historic disfranchise­ment of blacks in the South[2]

The goal of the demonstrations in Selma, as elsewhere, is to dramatize the existence of injustice and to bring about the presence of justice by methods of nonviolence. Long years of experience indicate to us that Negroes can achieve this goal when four things occur:

1.      Nonviolent demonstrators go into the streets to exercise their constitutional rights.

2.      Racists resist by unleashing violence against them.

3.      Americans of conscience in the name of decency demand federal intervention and legislation.

4.      The administration, under mass pressure, initiates measures of immediate interven­tion and remedial legislation.

The working out of this process has never been simple or tranquil. When nonviolent protests were countered by local authorities with harassment, intimidation, and brutality, the federal government has always first asked the Negro to desist and leave the streets, rather than bring pressure to bear on those who commit the criminal acts. We have always been compelled to reject vigorously such federal requests and have rather relied on our allies, the millions of Americans across the nation, to bring pressure on the fed­eral government for protective action in our behalf. Our position has always been that there is a wrong and right side to the question of full freedom and equality for millions of Negro Americans and that the federal government does not belong in the middle on this issue.

During our nonviolent direct-action campaigns we have always been advised, and again were so advised in Selma, that violence may ensue. Herein lies a dilemma: Of course there always exists the likelihood that because of the hostility to our demon­strations, acts of lawlessness may be precipitated. We realize that we must exercise extreme caution so that our direct-action program is not conducted in a manner that might be considered provocative or an invitation to violence. Accordingly, each situa­tion must be studied in detail; the strength and temper of our adversaries must be esti­mated and any change in any of these factors will affect the details of our strategy. Nevertheless, we often must begin a march without knowing when or where it will actually terminate.

Questions:

How does Martin Luther King define and promote nonviolent direct action?  Explain the concept behind the strategy. 

  1. How does Martin Luther King define and promote nonviolent direct action?  Explain the concept behind the strategy. 
  2. What are the four things that need to occur to achieve the goal on non-violent direct action?

 


Fannie Lou Hamer, Fighting for the Vote in Mississippi

While national attention focused on King and other prominent figures in the Civil Rights movement, the success of the struggle often depended upon mobilizing the African American masses. Even though SCLC, SNCC, and other civil rights organizations sent trained workers into southern communities to coordinate campaigns against Jim Crow laws and disfranchisement, those campaigns required the courage and determination of local people. In 1962 SNCC initiated a voter registration drive in Mississippi, where only five per­cent of the black residents were registered to vote. One of the first local blacks to respond was a sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977). But after attempting to register to vote, she was subjected to unceasing eco­nomic intimidation, arrest, and physical violence. In 1964 she joined the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which organized mock elec­tions among blacks in the state and sought representation in that year's Democratic National Convention. The following testimony by Hamer before the convention's Credentials Committee exposed the hazards of trying to vote in Mississippi and called for the nation to live up to its democratic ideals.[3]

Mr. Chairman and the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator [John] Stennis.

It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty -six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to try to become first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by Mississippi men, highway patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola, where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.

After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me the plan­tation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register. After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising cain because I had tried to register, and before he quit talking the plantation owner came, and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know-did Pap tell you what I said?"

I said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "I mean that," he said. "If you don't go down and withdraw your registra­tion, you will have to leave," he said, "Then if you go down and withdraw," he said. "You will-you might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi."

And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself." I had to leave that same night.

On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in.

And in June, the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop, was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people-to use the restaurant-two of the people wanted to use the washroom. The four people that had gone in to use the restau­rant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out, I got off the bus to see what had happened, and one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a chief of police ordered us out."

I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too. As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the four peo­ple in a highway patrolman's car. I stepped off the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the four workers was in and said, "Get that one there," and when I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.

I was carried to the county jail, and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman.... After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams. I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams, and I could hear some­body say, "Can you say, yes sir, nigger? Can you say yes, sir?"

And they would say other horrible names. She would say, "Yes, I can say yes, sir." "So say it."

She says, "I don't know you well enough."

They beat her, I don't know how long, and after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.

And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from, and I told him Ruleville. He said, "We are going to check this." And they left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word, and he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."

I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners.

The State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack. The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman for me, to lay down on a bunk bed on my face, and I laid on my face. The first Negro began to beat, and I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted, and I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side because I suffered from polio when I was six years old. After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.

The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat to set on my feet to keep me from work­ing my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush. One white man-my dress had worked up high, he walked over and pulled my dress down-and he pulled my dress back, back up....

All of this on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

Questions

  1. What effort did Hammer volunteer for in Mississippi?
  2. What were the consequences of Hammer’s participation?  Be aware of the specific details from her testimony.
  3. What actions were taken by the State Highway Patrolman and chief of police in Winona Mississippi?
  4. What happened to Hamer in Winona?

Black Power, Black Nationalism – Introduction

In the wake of its greatest legislative triumph, the Civil Rights movement began to frag­ment. On 11 August 1965, less than a week after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the black Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts exploded into a firestorm of looting and vio­lence. When the riot ended, 34 people lay dead and property damage exceeded 35 million dollars. But Watts was only one incident in a half decade of rage. From 1964 through 1968, the ghettoes of the North and West combusted in some three hundred riots involv­ing at least a half million African Americans.

The riots illustrated the limits of the Civil Rights movement. By the 1960s, a major­ity of African Americans lived in inner-city neighborhoods, most of them outside the South. They faced no Jim Crow laws or disfranchisement devices, only the economic ills and social alienation of places like Watts-widespread poverty, massive unemployment, welfare, inadequate housing and schools, and racist police. The boycotts, marches, sit-ins, and freedom rides had raised black awareness and expectations but could do little to ame­liorate the conditions of ghetto life. Now many black activists, especially younger ones, searched for a different strategy.

"Black Power" became the new watchword. The term, coined by Stokely Carmichael in 1966, became a rallying cry for urban blacks increasingly alienated from the Civil Rights movement. The idea derived from Black Nationalism-the belief that people of African descent share a common experience, culture, world view, and destiny. Most Black Power advocates were heavily influenced by Malcolm X, who urged African Americans to band together and take control of their communities "by any means necessary." Like Malcolm X, they generally eschewed the goal of integration and the strategy of nonvio­lence. But Black Power meant different things to different people. Most whites and some older blacks saw it as synonymous with violence. For younger black activists, it usually referred to self-reliance, race pride, and political and economic empowerment. The rising importance of Black Power became evident in 1966 when both SNCC and CORE embraced this more radical direction.

Black Power advocates shared a common goal empowering black communities-but they differed on how that would best be achieved. Revolutionary nationalist groups, such as the Black Panther Party, called for armed struggle and espoused Marxist thought. Seeing racism as an inevitable product of capitalism, they welcomed alliances and coalitions with like-minded whites. Cultural nationalist groups, such as the US Organization based in Los Angeles, insisted that African Americans could liberate themselves from white domina­tion only after they had adopted a cohesive culture, completely divorced from white ways. Its founder and leader, Maulana Ron Karenga, urged his fellow blacks to adopt African clothing and hairstyles, abandon their European surnames, learn Swahili, and celebrate distinctive holidays like Kwanzaa. He viewed Marxism as alien to the black struggle, rejected alliances and coalitions with whites, and maintained that armed struggle was impossible until blacks had rediscovered their cultural roots. By the time the Black Power movement drifted into decline in the 1970s, both approaches had left their mark. Revolutionary nationalists had raised the political and economic consciousness of a gen­eration of African Americans, while cultural nationalists had revolutionized their cultural values and practices. These changes were to be the chief legacies of Black Power.

Question: Be familiar with the contents of this overview

Malcolm X, Black Nationalism and Black Revolution

Most Black Power advocates were inspired by the life and legacy of Malcolm X (1925-1965). Born Malcolm Little, he suffered through a troubled childhood, only to become a teenage hustler, pimp, and cocaine addict on the streets of Boston and Harlem. After a bungled burglary, he was sent to prison, where he read voluminously and converted to the separatist doctrines of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Released in 1952, he was appointed the minister of a Harlem mosque. Before long, his trenchant analysis of white racism, his confrontational language, and his charismatic style made him into the chief evangelist for the Black Muslims. But his growing popularity and independence brought estrangement from Muhammad and the Nation. After a 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm X became convinced of the possibility of white redemption, rejected his unequivocal separatism, and considered politics as a possible vehicle for black empowerment. But to the end, he con­tinued to preach the value of black nationalism and the likelihood of black revolution, as in the following 1964 speech. After his assassination one year later, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) became a "nearly universal sacred text" for the Black Power movement.

Friends and enemies, tonight I hope that I can have a little fireside chat with as few sparks as possible being tossed around. Especially because of the very explosive condi­tion that the world is in today. Sometimes, when a person's house is on fire and some­one comes in yelling fire, instead of the person who is awakened by the yell being thankful, he makes the mistake of charging the one who awakened him with having set the fire. I hope this little conversation tonight about the black revolution won't cause many of you to accuse us of igniting it when you find it at your doorstep....

I'm still a Muslim but I'm also a nationalist, meaning that my political philosophy is black nationalism, my economic philosophy is black nationalism, my social philoso­phy is black nationalism. And when I say that this philosophy is black nationalism, to me this means that the political philosophy of black nationalism is that which is designed to encourage our people, the black people, to gain complete control over the politics and politicians of our own community.

Our economic philosophy is that we should gain economic control over the economy of our own community, the businesses and the other things which create employment so that we can provide jobs for our own people instead of having to picket and boycott and beg someone else for a job.

 

And, in short, our social philosophy means that we feel that it is time to get together among our own kind and eliminate the moral evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our society, like drug addiction, drunkenness, adultery that leads to an abundance of bas­tard children, welfare problems. We believe that we should lift the level or the standard of our own society to a higher level wherein we will be satisfied and then not inclined toward pushing ourselves into other societies where we are not wanted....
 

By the hundreds of thousands today we find our own people have become impatient, turning away from your white nationalism, which you call democracy, toward the mili­tant uncompromising policy of black nationalism. I point out right here that as soon as we announced we were going to start a black nationalist party in this country we received mail from coast to coast, especially from young people at the college level, the univer­sity level, who expressed complete sympathy and support and a desire to take part in any kind of political action based on black nationalism, designed to correct or eliminate immediately evils that our people have suffered here for 400 years.

The black nationalists too many of you may represent only a minority in the commu­nity. And therefore you might have a tendency to classify them as something insignificant. But just as the fuse is the smallest part or the smallest piece in the powder keg it is yet that little fuse that ignites the entire powder keg. The black nationalists to you may represent a small minority in the so-called Negro community. But they just happen to be composed of the type of ingredient necessary to fuse or ignite the entire black community. And this is one thing that whites-whether you call yourselves liberals or conservatives or racists or whatever else you might choose to be-one thing that you have to realize is, where the black community is concerned, although there the large majority you may come in con­tact with may impress you as being moderate and patient and loving and long-suffering and all that kind of stuff, the minority who you consider to be Muslims or nationalists hap­pen to be made of the type of ingredient that can easily spark the black community. This should be understood. Because to me a powder keg is nothing without a fuse.

1964 will be America's hottest year; her hottest year yet; a year of much racial vio­lence and much racial bloodshed. But it won't be blood that's going to flow only on one side. The new generation of black people that have grown up in this country during recent years are already forming the opinion, and it's a just opinion, that if there is to be bleeding, it should be reciprocal-bleeding on both sides....

So today, when the black man starts reaching out for what America says are his rights, the black man feels that he is within his rights-when he becomes the victim of brutality by those who are depriving him of his rights-to do whatever is necessary to protect himself. An example of this was taking place last night at this same time in Cleveland, where the police were putting water hoses on our people there and also throwing tear gas at them and they met a hail of stone, a hail of rocks, a hail of bricks. [A] Couple weeks ago in Jacksonville, Florida, a young teenage Negro was throwing Molotov cocktails.

Well, Negroes didn't do these ten years ago. But what you should learn from this is that they are waking up. It was stones yesterday, Molotov cocktails today; it will be hand grenades tomorrow and whatever else is available the next day. The seriousness of this sit­uation must be faced up to. You should not feel that I am inciting someone to violence. I'm only warning of a powder-keg situation. You can take it or leave it. If you take the warn­ing perhaps you can still save yourself. But if you ignore it or ridicule it, well, death is already at your doorstep. There are 22,000,000 African Americans who are ready to fight for independence right here. When I say fight for independence right here, I don't mean any non-violent fight, or turn-the-other-cheek fight. Those days are gone. Those days are over.

If George Washington didn't get independence for this country non-violently, and if Patrick Henry didn't come up with a non-violent statement, and you taught me to look upon them as patriots and heroes, then it's time for you to realize that I have studied your books well....

This is a real revolution.... Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee. Revolutions are never fought by turning the other cheek.

Revolutions are never based upon love your enemy, and pray for those who spite­fully use you. And revolutions are never waged singing, "We Shall Overcome." Revolutions are based upon bloodshed. Revolutions are never compromising. Revolutions are never based upon negotiations. Revolutions are never based upon any kind of tokenism whatsoever. Revolutions are never even based upon that which is beg­ging a corrupt society or a corrupt system to accept us into it. Revolutions overturn sys­tems, and there is no system on this earth which has proven itself more corrupt, more criminal than this .system, that in 1964 still colonizes 22,000,000 African Americans.

 

Questions

 

  1. What is black nationalism according to Malcolm X?
  2. What is the political philosophy of black nationalism? How does this philosophy shape economic and social philosophies for the black community?
  3. What does Malcolm X mean by “whatever necessary to protect himself”?  How does this strategy compare with MLK’s strategy of nonviolent direct action?
  4. What are the actions of the “real revolution”?

 

Stokely Carmichael, Black Power Defined

In 1966 Stokely Carmichael (1942-1998), the new chairman of SNCC, gave the growing black nationalist sentiment among younger activists both a name and a slogan when he called for "Black Power." Born in the West Indies and raised in New York City, he became active in SNCC while a student at Howard University, then participated in Freedom Summer in Mississippi. In the following document, written in 1966, Carmichael defines and explains the need for Black Power. He later expanded this discussion in the volume, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967), which he coau­thored with a political scientist. Carmichael eventually adopted a Pan African perspective, changed his name to Kwame Ture, and moved to the African nation of Guinea.

 

We shall have to struggle for the right to create our own terms through which to define ourselves and our relationship to the society, and to have these terms recognized. This is the first necessity of a free people....

Negroes are defined by two forces, their blackness and their powerlessness. There have been traditionally two communities in America. The White community, which con­trolled and defined the forms that all institutions within the society would take; and the Negro community which has been excluded from participation in the power decisions that shaped the society, and has traditionally been dependent upon, and subservient to, the White community.

This has not been accidental. The history of every institution of this society indicates that a major concern in the ordering and structuring of the society has been the main­taining of the Negro community in its condition of dependence and oppression. This has not been on the level of individual acts of discrimination between individual whites against individual Negroes, but as total acts by the White community against the Negro community. This fact cannot be too strongly emphasized-that racist assumptions of white superiority have been so deeply ingrained in the structure of the society that it infuses its entire functioning, and is so much a part of the national subconscious that it is taken for granted and is frequently not even recognized .... The ghetto itself is a prod­uct of a combination of forces and special interests in the white community, and the groups that have access to the resources and power to change that situation benefit, polit­ically and economically, from the existence of that ghetto.

It is more than a figure of speech to say that the Negro community in America is a victim of white imperialism and colonial exploitation. This is in practical economic and political terms true. There are over twenty million black people comprising ten percent of this nation. They for the most part live in well-defined areas of the country-in the shanty-towns and rural black belt areas of the South, and increasingly in the slums of northern and western industrial cities. If one goes into any Negro community, whether it be Jackson, Miss., Cambridge, Md., or Harlem, N.Y., one will find the same combina­tion of political, economic, and social forces are at work. The people in the Negro com­munity do not control the resources of that community, its political decisions, its law enforcement, its housing standards; and even the physical ownership of the land, houses, and stores lie outside that community.

It is white power that makes the laws, and it is violent white power in the form of armed white cops that enforces those laws with guns and nightsticks. The vast majority of Negroes in this country live in these captive communities and must endure these con­ditions of oppression because, and only because, they are black and powerless....

SNCC proposes that it is now time for the black freedom movement to stop pander­ing to the fears and anxieties of the white middle class in the attempt to earn its "good­will," and to return to the ghetto to organize these communities to control themselves. This organization must be attempted in northern and southern urban areas as well as in the rural black belt counties of the South.... We must organize black community power to end these abuses, and to give the Negro community a chance to have its needs expressed.

 

Questions:

  1. Carmichael states that “Negroes are defined by two forces.”  What are these two forces? How do these relate to the “two communities in America”?
  2. Carmichael states that the “Negro community in America is a victim of white imperialism and colonial exploitation.”  What examples does he cite to support this statement?
  3. What does Carmichael propose that SNCC should do? How does this new plan of action different from nonviolent direct action?

 


[1] Roy E. Finkenbine, “Introducation The Civil Rights Movement. ”In Sources of the African America Past, Second Edition (Pearson Education, 2004)

[2] Saturday Review (3 April 1965)

[3]  "Testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer Before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention," 22 August 1964, Joseph Rauh Papers, Library of Congress.