Black Power - University of Florida



Black Power

KEY THEMES & ISSUES

1. Civil & Voting Rights Acts

Limits of reform

2. The Northern Situation

3. Roots of Black Power

Civil Rights Act 1964

Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigns and (belated) federal response…

1963: Birmingham

March on Washington

1964: Lyndon Johnson & Civil Rights Act

Voting Rights

Voter Education Projects, 1962-

Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Atlantic City Convention

Fannie Lou Hamer

Liberal/LBJ “betrayal”

Selma, 1965

LBJ & the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Voting Rights, 2

Transitional Years, 1965-68

The North

Watts Riot, August 1965

The limits of reform and white liberalism exposed

Statuary Equality vs Equality of Opportunity

Northern Situation, 1

Health

Economics

Black unemployment rate = 2 X white rate in 1965

Black median incomes declined relative to white incomes, 1960-5

Blacks = c.29% of long term unemployed

Education

Boston, 1963: 21% less spent on black pupils than white

The Northern Situation, 2

Housing Discrimination

Shelley vs Kramer, 1947

MLK’s Chicago Campaign, 1966

Housing issue exposed limits of white racial liberalism

LBJ’s “War on Poverty”

Office of Economic Opportunity

1966 Fair Housing bill fails

Roots of Black Power, 1

Malcolm X

Marcus Garvey

Black Muslims (Nation of Islam)

Black separatism

armed self-defense

Organization of Afro-American Unity, 1965

Accepts white radical support

class vs race

Assassination

Roots of Black Power, 2

Meredith March, Miss, June 1966 (James Meredith)

MLK (SCLC)

Stokely Carmichael (SNCC)

Floyd McKissick (CORE)

Tensions:

frustration with rate of change

persistence of black disadvantage

disputes over tactics

Roots of Black Power, 3

Vietnam

MLK & Malcolm: Both stress links between race, poverty, & imperialism

Roots of Black Power, 4

SCLC Poor People’s Campaign

Memphis, 1968

Sanitation Workers Strike

class & race…

MLK killed, April 4, 1968

National riots & radicalization of protest…

Govt. (FBI) repression of radicals

COINTELPRO

Conclusions

1. The CR Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were the result of mass activism in the South and federal action.

2. With the passage of these Acts many whites assumed that black protest would end.

3. However, raised black pride, expectations & frustration at the continuing gap between egalitarian laws & discriminatory practices, encouraged more militant protests.

4. Black power ideas reflected both rising black frustrations and an insightful critique of the systemic inequities of American political, social, and economic structures

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