With vast numbers of new African-American citizens having come from the racist south, the area was ripe with social, political, and cultural concepts that come with new found freedom. In such a charged atmosphere, leaders such as Garvey had an audience ready to listen, and motivated for change. As their empowerment became reality, the view of those individuals altered, and with assistance from groups such as the UNIA, their ideas became reality, creating a new social order and an entirely new cultural center.
Black power as a movement rose from the freedom movement of the 1960s. A political movement, black power strove to express a racial consciousness throughout the world, although the movement was centralized in the United States.
This paper discusses the black power movement, and will discuss the impact of the movement on African-American history.
The term "black power" was first used by Robert Williams, one of the founders of the North Carolina NAACP, in the late 1950s. The movement stemmed from previous civil rights movements, but meant different things to different individuals. To some, black power represented racial dignity and self-reliance, or freedom from white authority in economics and politics. To others, however, it was solely an economic principle (U of Mich., 2007).
While Malcom X did not specifically support the black power movement, his rhetoric, style, and attitude provided much of the basis for it. The movement primarily encouraged African-Americans to improve their communities rather than fight for their integration into white society. The leaders of the movement, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, along with other leaders such as Robert Williams and Stokely Carmichael, pushed the movement to the forefront of society. Carmichael, in particular, used the term profusely during his organization of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, which sought to ensure whites would no longer hold all leadership responsibilities (U of Mich., 2007).
Some African-Americans combined the black power movement with a search for cultural heritage and historical roots. Their search was believed to be the consciousness of the movement as those individuals attempted to find the true roots of black identity. Musicians such as Funkadelic and James Brown incorporated such concepts into their music through lyrics such as "free your mind" and "say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud." Such concepts created ideas of standards of beauty and self-esteem (U of Mich., 2007).
Still other individuals saw black power as a cultural-nationalist concept and related it to the artistic movement of the Harlem Renaissance. Like others, however, these individuals stressed the "black consciousness" of African-Americans. Further, they believed in the importance of self-representation and autonomy in terms of the white-black relations (U of Mich., 2007).
While the exact concepts of black power were different, one main point in all schools of thought was the necessity for African-Americans to define the world in their own terms, as opposed to integrating the concepts of others. This, at times, meant a call for revolutionary political struggles to reject concepts of racism, imperialism, and segregation. As black power grew, resistance from white power groups began to build, as did criticism from other African-American organizations. The NAACP, in particular, criticized the black power movement for its anti-white messages, noting...
Furthermore, as a result of these conditions there was a general failure of black business and entrepreneurships. "Black businesses failed, crushing the entrepreneurial spirit that had been an essential element of the Negro Renaissance." (the Great Depression: A History in the Key of Jazz) However this did not crush the general spirit of the African-American people and there was a resurgence of black culture and enterprise in area such as
Thus, the New Negro Movement refers to the new way of thinking, and encompasses all the elements of the Negro Renaissance, artistically, socially and politically (New). The Harlem Renaissance changed the dynamics of African-American culture in the United States forever, for it was proof that whites did not have a monopoly on literature, arts and culture (Harlem). The many personalities of the era, such as composer Duke Ellington, dancer Josephine
American History, 1820-1920 Five positive events that influenced the history of the United States between 1820 and 1920. One of the most important processes that influenced the development of the United States is the process of industrialization that took place after the end of the Civil War. The United States had to undergo an increased process of modernization after the Civil War largely due to the fact that the country was divided
At the same time, however, the ghettoes resulted from the people's desire to form a united community to which they could relate and that could offer comfort from a society that, despite its more opened views, still viewed blacks from the point-of-view of the segregation policy. The ghettoes however represented an environment that would later offer one of the most important and relevant elements of the American culture: the music
Hispanics and 40,375,000 African-Americans live in the United States and the respective percentages of these population groups are projected to continue to increase well into the foreseeable future. The purpose of this study was to provide descriptions of these two cultures and why they are of interest as well as a comparison of similarities and differences related to time orientation, communication, physical and mental health, group relationships, and perceptions
American Ethnic Culture What is an American? It is clear that Progressive era Americans from different backgrounds differentially defined precisely what being an American actually meant. Stephen Meyer wrote in the work entitled "Efforts at Americanization in the Industrial Workplace 1914-1921 that Americanization "…involved the social and cultural assimilation of immigrants into the mainstream of American life…" but that the process was of the nature that was comprised of "a unique and distinctly
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