Chapter 7

Embracing Black Power

In This Chapter

Marching across Alabama in protest for voting rights

Getting impatient and aggressive in the movement

Fighting for the down and out

Banding together and creating pride

Taking matters into their own hands: The Black Panthers

Seeing progress since the 1960s

In the mid- to late 1960s, in spite of the progress made, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there was still much left to be done. Despite the laws guaranteeing the right to vote (the 15th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964), enforcement was lax. There were still few black voters in the South, and the civil rights movement was largely unsuccessful in breaking through white resistance to black voter registration. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) decided to focus on the issue, and in January 1965, they began a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, which was the prelude to the historic Selma to Montgomery march that ultimately resulted in the Voter Registration Act.

But by 1965, some blacks were getting impatient and feeling dissatisfied with the civil rights movement. They were outraged by the fact that peaceful demonstrations were met with violence, and that, according to Dr. King and other leaders, they were still expected to remain nonviolent. Many people felt that, at the very least, they should be free to defend themselves. Others felt that more radical means to achieve their goals were justified. More militant blacks were also infuriated at what they saw as whites taking over their movement. Some even decided that integration wasn’t a worthwhile goal and that blacks should remain separate and take care of their own.

Marching from Selma to Montgomery

In early 1965 in Selma, Alabama, less than 1 percent of eligible black voters were registered. At the request of local leaders, King and the SCLC began to organize and lead voter registration drives. But they quickly found their efforts thwarted because the registrar’s office was only open twice a month, and it often had a reduced staff. In response, protesters marched, and King, along with several others, was arrested. Although the mayor, who was just elected by promising nonviolence, had asked Police Chief Jim Clark to peacefully control the protests, the police used clubs and cattle prods against the demonstrators.

Motivated by this response and the need to press for voting rights, as well as the recent killing of Jimmy Lee Jackson during a protest against the imprisonment of an SCLC leader in Marion, Alabama, the SCLC and the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC) joined together to organize a march from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery.

On March 7, 1965, protesters set out on a march from Selma to Montgomery, demanding voting rights across Alabama. Though Governor George Wallace had banned the march, the protesters went ahead with the plan. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River, leading out of Selma, they met 50 state troopers and dozens of Clark’s deputies, who were authorized by Wallace to block their path and order them to turn back. When the protesters refused, the mounted officers charged (and sometimes trampled) the marchers, whipping them with bullwhips, beating them with clubs, and driving them back across the bridge under a cloud of tear gas. Much of the event, called Bloody Sunday, was captured by the press and televised on the evening news.

In response to the police brutality, King called for another march two days later, and people from all over the country, motivated by televised scenes of Bloody Sunday, came to Selma to support the marchers. Before the protesters started out, they tried to get a court order to prevent police from blocking their path, but instead, the judge issued a restraining order prohibiting them from marching over the bridge. As a compromise, Dr. King altered the march to go as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they prayed and then turned around and returned to Selma.

Finally, a federal judge ruled that King’s planned march to Montgomery could go on, and on March 21, accompanied by the Alabama National Guard, marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Five days later, King and the rest of the group (including Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Whitney Young of the Urban League, Philip Randolph, Ralph Bunche, Bayard Rustin, and other leaders of the civil rights movement), which had grown from about 3,000 to 25,000 marchers, triumphantly reached Montgomery, ten years after the movement began there with the bus boycott.

Winning the Voting Rights Act

Prompted by the voting rights protests in Birmingham (see Chapter 6) and Selma and the violence that met this effort, President Johnson sent the Voting Rights Act to Congress two days after Bloody Sunday. Although voting rights were supposed to have been guaranteed by the 15th and 19th Amendments, legislation was needed to put teeth into the earlier laws. Because of public outrage after the violence in Selma, the Voting Rights Act quickly passed Congress, and on August 6, 1965, Johnson signed it into law.

The law had immediate and far-reaching effects. By the end of 1966, only four of the former Confederate states still had less than 50 percent of eligible black voters registered. By the 1968 election, black registration in the Deep South averaged 62 percent. (In fact, by 1968, voter registration had almost doubled in most southern states.) This change began to shift the political landscape, as southern politicians began to have to consider the impact of this strong new group of voters. As a result, a whole new generation of “enlightened politicians” emerged in the South.

Passing and repealing laws

Though perhaps not as far-reaching as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, all three branches of government acted to further racial equality.

Executive Order 11246: In 1965, LBJ signed this order that prohibited discrimination by federal contractors or subcontractors. But the more controversial portion of the order required some employers to take positive steps, “affirmative action,” to recruit minorities. In 1967, Executive Order 11246 was amended to include women.

Loving v. Virginia: In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that state laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional. At that time, 16 states banned interracial marriage, (and until 2000, Alabama still had a clause in its constitution that barred these marriages).

Civil Rights Act of 1968: This legislation is also known as the Fair Housing Act. It prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or familial status. Also, in response to urban unrest, the act contained an antiriot provision.

Rioting in the Cities

Looking at the violence against peaceful protesters in Birmingham, Selma, and other southern cities, many blacks were becoming disillusioned with the principles of passive resistance. In spite of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (see Chapter 6) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many felt that they were still the underclass in American society and that changes were needed, by whatever means were necessary.

Despite legislation and some changing attitudes in white America, blacks were well aware that they were economically and socially worse off than whites. They faced not only discrimination but also a lack of opportunity and unfair treatment at the hands of the police. It was only natural (if not necessarily justifiable) that in the mid- to late ’60s, this disillusionment and despair exploded into violent action in the form of urban riots.

The Watts Riots

As with many urban disturbances, the riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles began with a rather routine incident, a traffic stop. On August 11, 1965, a young black man named Marquette Frye, who’d had one too many drinks, was stopped by a Los Angeles police officer. At first, nothing out of the ordinary happened — the young man tried to talk his way out of a ticket and even joked with the officer. But as a small crowd gathered, Frye’s protests got louder and more insistent, and the officer called for backup.

Frye resisted arrest, shouting that they’d have to kill him before he went to jail. Frye’s anger spread to the growing crowd, and many began cursing and spitting at the policemen. In the end, the officers arrested Frye and a number of onlookers. Although the mob was angry, the whole incident might have ended there, until a young man broke a bottle. The sound of breaking glass inflamed the crowd, and within minutes, people gathered weapons — bottles, rocks, and so on. What began as a nonincident escalated into a riot.

The Watts Riots lasted for six days, during which homes and businesses were destroyed and looted. The rioters’ anger and violence were directed mainly at white businesses, as well as the Los Angeles police. When National Guardsmen and police came into the Watts district to contain the insurrection, some rioters used firearms against them. After the riots ended, 34 people were dead, more than 1,000 were injured, and approximately 4,000 had been arrested. No one knows exactly how much property damage resulted from the riots — the numbers vary from $50 million to $200 million.

Why did the riots happen? That was the question on everyone’s minds when all was said and done. Los Angeles wasn’t the Deep South with Jim Crow Laws, and the Ku Klux Klan wasn’t burning crosses on lawns. But communities were still segregated, and police often dealt far more harshly with African Americans than with others. Governor Pat Brown named a commission to study the riots, and its members identified several reasons for the spontaneous eruptions of violence:

The police often targeted blacks for no reason, such as walking through a white neighborhood.

Segregation and discrimination in black neighborhoods had created years of pent-up anger.

Los Angeles had inner-city problems, such as substandard housing, unemployment, and inferior schools.

Blacks had rising expectations (and subsequent disappointments) due to the civil rights movement.

Many people were becoming impatient with nonviolence as a way to solve problems in the black community.

The Watts Riots further divided Americans on racial issues. Militant blacks saw the riots as a way to improve their lot. Moderates, both black and white, felt that the riots destroyed more than they accomplished. Conservative whites thought that urban rioting was a sign that changes in race relations were happening too fast and thus causing the problems.

A week after the riots, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went to Watts to see the devastation. He addressed the crowd but was booed and heckled by people who felt that rioting accomplished more than passive resistance. Although King still condemned violence, he recognized the desperation and frustration that led to the destruction in Watts, and afterwards he went to Chicago to find out firsthand about urban poverty (see “The Chicago Freedom Movement” section, later in this chapter).

In a sense, the Watts Riots had a negative effect on California’s blacks, because the liberal governor, Pat Brown, was defeated in the next election by his conservative challenger, Ronald Reagan, who ran on a platform of law and order and blamed Brown for the riots.

The Detroit Riots

As in Watts, the 1967 Detroit Riots started with a relatively minor incident when police raided an after-hours club in a black neighborhood. Because it was an unlicensed bar, the police arrested everyone, while outside, a crowd gathered and started vandalizing and looting nearby businesses. Within two days, the rioting had spread over much of the city, and the National Guard, accompanied by airborne units, was called in. But the riots continued for five days, and in the end, 43 were dead, and more than 1,100 injured and 7,000 arrested. As in Watts, poor living conditions were part of the underlying cause, but Detroit also had several unique situations.

Housing: Urban renewal projects had been causing the destruction of thriving black neighborhoods, as areas were bulldozed to make way for freeways. Houses in black neighborhoods, though often more run-down than those in white neighborhoods, actually cost more, and blatant discrimination prevented blacks from moving into more desirable areas.

Auto-industry jobs: Although many blacks in Detroit were economically better off than blacks in other American cities, they made less than their white coworkers, many of whom were also employed in Detroit’s auto industry. In addition, increasing factory automation often led to more black workers being laid off than their white counterparts.

In addition to these inequalities, ongoing police harassment and brutality was a major reason for the riots. In Detroit, police targeted blacks, often stopping and arresting them for minor infractions. They were insulting and physically abusive, often out of proportion to the alleged offenses. At times, police beat their detainees so brutally that they died of their injuries, and in several instances police actually shot people in the back of police cars.

Fanning the flames of dissatisfaction were local militants who told their followers that whites would never share their power, that the civil rights movement was a failure, and that only self-determination and separatism would improve their lives.

When H. Rap Brown, national director of SNCC, visited Detroit in 1967, he told the crowd that if Motown didn’t come around, “we are going to burn you down.”

The Newark Riots

In 1967, rioting also erupted in Newark, New Jersey, for many of the same underlying reasons as it did in Detroit and Watts. However, unemployment in Newark was epidemic, as many industries had left the city for a variety of reasons. Just as in Detroit and two years earlier in Watts, the riots were sparked when several white policemen arrested a black man, and the situation began to escalate. One aggravating factor in Newark was that although blacks made up a large portion of Newark’s population, they were underrepresented on the police force and almost nonexistent in city government.

This time, the cause of arrest was so minor it was ridiculous, especially considering the violence that followed. John Smith, a cabdriver, was stopped, interrogated, and arrested for driving around a double-parked police car. En route to the precinct, the arresting officer gave him a severe beating. The story of the arrest spread through the community, and a crowd gathered outside the precinct, waiting for an update. Although Smith was taken out through a back door and sent to a hospital to treat his wounds, the rumor spread that he’d died.

Infuriated, the crowd threw rocks and bottles at the precinct, and police soon dispersed them. However, after the mob started running through the neighborhood, they began breaking into stores and looting them. The mayhem eventually spread from the neighborhood into downtown Newark. The New Jersey State Police and National Guard troops were mobilized to put down the riot, but their involvement actually worsened the situation. After six days of vandalism and violence, 23 people were dead, 725 were injured, and close to 1,500 had been arrested.

Investigating the riots

On July 28, 1967, President Johnson appointed a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in order to understand the causes and possible solutions to eliminate urban rioting. After seven months, they released the Kerner Report (named for the commission’s chairman, Illinois Governor Otto Kerner), which concluded that the nation was headed for two separate and unequal societies unless the government took action to end segregation and poverty in the cities and recommended legislation to create jobs and improve housing in predominantly black ghettos.

Reacting to King’s murder

After the murder of King on April 4, 1968 (see Chapter 6), riots erupted in more than 100 cities, with the most destructive ones in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. Local police, federal agents, and the National Guard were sent to deal with the insurrections. The looting and destruction actually hit black homes and businesses particularly hard, because the rioting took place in mostly black neighborhoods.

Pressing for Economic Empowerment

After viewing the destruction in Watts, King and the SCLC realized that in spite of the progress of the civil rights movement in the areas of desegregation and voting rights in the South, economic inequality throughout the country would continue to plague blacks. Although equal access to public facilities and the right to vote would spell progress, and improved educational opportunities would mean a better future, King believed that something had to be done to improve blacks’ lives right then and that nonviolent protest was still the correct way to create better lives for poor people of all races.

The Chicago Freedom Movement

Dr. King decided to begin the protest in Chicago, a city that had a large black population, an activist black clergy, the support of powerful leaders, including some strong labor unions, and a large liberal white community. In 1966, King launched the Chicago Freedom Movement, a coalition of civil rights organizations dedicated to ending discrimination and providing equal housing and full employment for blacks. Some white residents of Chicago, who feared that blacks would erode property values in their neighborhoods and compete for their jobs, put up fierce opposition to the movement.

Unfortunately, King and other leaders of the Chicago Freedom Movement soon realized that the methods they used in the South, such as marches, sit-ins, and boycotts, wouldn’t work in the North, where prejudice lay just below the surface but was often just as strong as it was in the South, and racial discrimination was rampant. The community met the protesters with violence, throwing rocks, overturning cars, and setting cars on fire. The explosive racism of some of Chicago’s whites was discouraging, and King began to believe that although equal employment, education, and housing were necessary to bring blacks fully into mainstream American society, these objectives might be just “a distant dream.”

The Chicago Freedom Movement forced some whites (many of whom had supported the civil rights movement in the South) to face an uncomfortable truth about themselves. Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia weren’t the only places where racism flourished — prejudice existed everywhere, perhaps even in their own minds.

Operation Breadbasket

Founded in 1962, Operation Breadbasket, an arm of the SCLC, was an organization dedicated to improving economic conditions in the black community. One of its missions was to distribute food in poor communities in 12 American cities. It also encouraged blacks to patronize black businesses and to boycott companies that discriminated against them. In 1966 Reverend Jesse Jackson, an up-and-coming civil rights leader, was head of the Chicago branch.

Dr. King considered Operation Breadbasket one of the outstanding successes of the SCLC. Through its efforts, more than 2,000 new jobs were created, and two black-run banks were established in order to serve the community.

A new leader emerges: Jesse Jackson

The leader of the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket (and the man who later rose to lead the national organization) was Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jackson was a charismatic and impassioned orator. However, his forceful personality and tendency to say whatever was on his mind also made him many enemies throughout his career.

After an impoverished childhood, Jackson attended the University of Illinois on an athletic scholarship and later graduated from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College, where he became involved in the civil rights movement. Jackson attended the Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968.

Jackson participated in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery and then became involved in the SCLC. In 1971, he left to form his own organization, Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity), which continued Operation Breadbasket’s goal of economic empowerment for blacks. Jackson ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1984 and 1988 but didn’t succeed, partly because of the racial divisions in the country but also because of his controversial positions, such as his support for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), his association with Louis Farrakhan (leader of the Harlem Mosque of the National of Islam from 1965 through 1975), and his anti-Semitic remark that referred to New York as “Hymietown.”

Jackson has been an activist and advocate for African Americans and other minorities. In 1984, he formed the National Rainbow Coalition, an organization dedicated to having all races work together, which, in 1986, merged with PUSH to form the National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition (RPC). Using the tools of demonstrations, as well as influencing legislation, the RPC supports affirmative action and equal rights, economic development and job opportunity, an end to discrimination in housing, and fair representation of minorities in the media.

The Poor People’s Campaign

In 1967, King and other leaders of the SCLC launched the Poor Peoples’ Campaign to apply the principles of nonviolence to the goals of educational and economic advancement of minorities. However, Dr. King also recognized that poor people of all races had issues and needs in common.

Although some people in the SCLC thought that King’s agenda was overly ambitious, he planned a march on Washington to press for economic equality, including funds dedicated to achieving full employment, a guaranteed annual income, and adequate low-income housing. As part of his commitment to economic equality, King went to Memphis to support and march with the black sanitation workers, who were striking for better pay and working conditions. Little did King know this event would be his last mission — on April 4, 1968, he fell victim to an assassin’s bullet and never saw his plans for a Poor People’s March come to fruition.

The last act of the Poor Peoples’ Campaign was Resurrection City, which lasted from May 14 through June 24, 1968, planned and organized by Rev. Ralph Abernathy. Designed to be an interracial protest against poverty (and a memorial to the work of Dr. King), the event hosted more than 2,000 poor people of all ages and races (including urban street gangs), who camped on the mall near the Lincoln Memorial in a collection of makeshift huts and tents. The protest started out hopefully as the protesters lived together in Resurrection City. However, tourists and many white residents avoided the area for fear of crime.

Hope faded when rain turned Resurrection City into a sea of mud, and optimism disappeared entirely when Robert F. Kennedy, one of the heroes of the civil rights movement, was assassinated on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles. The anger and despair devastated Resurrection City, and when violence erupted within the camp, police invaded and fired tear gas into the crowd.

Reacting to the amounts of tear gas fired into the camp, Abernathy said it was “worse than anything I ever saw in Mississippi or Alabama.”

In the rioting that ensued after the camp was shut down, a number of black businesses were destroyed, the city lost more than 2,500 jobs, and new businesses were reluctant to come into the area. The hope of the Poor People’s Campaign and Resurrection City was gone.

Being Black and Proud

Black pride and the need for blacks to control their own destiny didn’t start in the 1960s. Even before the Civil War, blacks were interested in their history and celebrated their culture. In the early 20th century, Marcus Garvey worked to make blacks aware of their history and instill a sense of pride in their accom- plishments, and beginning in the 1930s, the Nation of Islam, taught blacks that by joining together they could help their communities and have a voice in their own futures.

Joining the Nation of Islam

Although white America didn’t hear much about the Black Muslims until the 1960s, the Temple of Islam, later to be renamed the Nation of Islam and also known as the Black Muslims, was founded in 1930 in Detroit by W. D. Fard (also called Wali Farad). Fard believed that because Christianity was a white man’s religion used to enslave blacks and keep them in their place, blacks should become Muslims. Fard based the new movement on a mixture of Black Nationalism and the belief in Allah as God. He firmly believed that integration and assimilation with the white community wasn’t a worthwhile goal and that instead, blacks should work toward an effective, separate society. One of the main demands of the Nation of Islam was self-determination, which they believed would best be achieved by either an independent black state in America or a return to Africa.

By the 1960s, the Nation of Islam was actively looking for recruits to join their cause. They disagreed with the drive for integration, backed by the mainstream civil rights movement, because they believed that by banding together and working within their own communities, they could achieve their goals.

Finding community in faith

In one sense, finding blacks to adopt the new religion was easy, because it expressed all the anger and frustration of being treated as second-class citizens. Especially among black prisoners, who were outcasts on the margins of society, the Nation of Islam provided a sense of pride and the hope that by embracing its principles, blacks could have control over their own destiny.

Belonging to the Nation of Islam also gave members a feeling of community. By adhering to the strict codes of behavior, such as avoiding pork, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and extramarital sex, they also had the feeling of kinship with other Muslims and a pride in following a moral code. This bond was reinforced because they were discouraged from having much contact with whites.

Even among those who disagreed with the Black Muslim idea of separation of the races, the movement made African Americans aware of their strength and added to their empowerment.

Following the leadership of Malcolm X

A young ne’er-do-well who was imprisoned for burglary in 1946 and son of a minister who believed in black nationalism, Malcolm Little had lived with the injustices of white America since he was a small child. The Ku Klux Klan had threatened the Littles and burned down their home. After Rev. Little was murdered (reputedly by the Black Legion, a white racist group similar to yet more violent than the Klan), the Little family went on welfare, and the children often lived in institutions and foster homes.

Dressed for success

Although the Black Muslims were among the most radical of all black organizations, they were the most conservative looking. Men dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and ties, often wearing fedoras (hats with a crown and a brim), and women wore headscarves, long dresses, and no makeup. This appearance had the triple effect of instilling self-respect, commanding authority, and telling mainstream American society that they were serious about their goals.

This childhood left Malcolm ripe for transformation. In prison, he learned about the Nation of Islam and dedicated himself to learning about Muhammad and his teachings and to faithfully following Islam. When he was released from prison in 1952, he met Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, officially joined the movement, and adopted the name Malcolm X. (Black Muslims took the last name X because they wanted to get rid of their slave names, which were often the surnames of their owners.)

Malcolm X was a dedicated follower of the Nation of Islam and studied under Elijah Muhammad in Chicago, after which he organized a mosque in the Windy City and then went to New York City to head the mosque in Harlem, one of the largest black communities in the United States.

An outstanding orator, Malcolm X quickly became one of the leaders of the Black Muslim movement. Even as Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent protests were gaining headlines and white sympathizers, the separatist Black Muslim movement was gaining adherents among blacks who believed that integration wouldn’t improve their lives. Instead, Malcolm X advocated black self-sufficiency, including creating their own community projects and opening and supporting black businesses.

With Malcolm X as a spokesman, the Nation of Islam gained a lot of press, especially because he vocally disagreed with King’s methods of protest. He believed that violence was necessary for blacks to defend themselves. Mostly, Malcolm X and the Black Muslims advocated a separate black society, believing that whites were essentially evil, racist, and corrupt. Suddenly, whites who were reluctant (and in some case outright unwilling) to integrate with blacks were furious that some blacks were contemptuous of mainstream American society and had no desire to assimilate. Malcolm X didn’t even want blacks to vote — he believed that to do so would be to participate in a racist and decadent system.

Malcolm X’s appeal and leadership qualities were among his greatest assets, but they also were a problem, because they incited jealousy as well as conflict with his former mentor, Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm’s outspokenness was also a cause of conflict. His remark that President Kennedy’s assassination was only the “chickens coming home to roost” offended even some of his supporters; Elijah Muhammad suspended him and forbid him to speak in public for 90 days. Malcolm’s strict adherence to the religious prohibitions of Islam also made him overtly critical of Elijah Muhammad, who interpreted these laws rather loosely in his personal life.

Because of these differences, in 1964, Malcolm X split from the Nation of Islam and formed a new organization, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. He still believed that blacks should take an active voice in determining their own destiny, but after a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he met Muslims of all races, he backed off from the idea of a completely separate black society, realizing that a black nation or a return to Africa was an ideal, not an immediate possibility for most black Americans. He therefore thought that blacks should work within the system for better jobs and economic opportunity.

After addressing a crowd in Harlem on February 21, 1965, expressing his more moderate views, Malcolm X was assassinated. His killers, three members of the Nation of Islam who felt that he had betrayed the Black Muslims, were convicted of first-degree murder in 1966.

Asserting black power on campus

Because of the civil rights movement and the growing visibility of blacks in American society, many young African Americans discovered a new sense of racial awareness and pride. Although the Black Muslim movement appealed to poor blacks who were the most oppressed by white society, black college students experienced a new interest in their heritage and culture.

Establishing black student unions

In the 1960s, middle-class black students increasingly enrolled in mostly white universities. Despite the promise of academic freedom and the increasing liberalism in academia, many of these students soon realized that to fit in, they’d have to give up their black identities. Acknowledging that the only way to preserve their identity was to join with other black students, they formed black student unions on campuses across the country.

The objectives of the black student unions were to orient blacks into mainstream campus life and support them in preserving their heritage. Black student organizations worked to

Encourage blacks in academic success

Involve black students in mainstream campus activities

Help incoming black students adjust to campus life

Promote black concerns within the university

Maintain communication and interaction between all black organizations on campus

Black student unions also made sure that the black voice was heard on campus, which they accomplished by bringing their issues to the student body and faculty and also by inviting speakers that would raise awareness of black concerns on campus. Black student unions are still active at colleges and universities today, and many of these organizations also include other minorities of color. Some even sponsor and fund scholarships for high school students.

Black is beautiful

As African Americans became more aware of and connected with their culture and history, they became more appreciative of their own unique traits and were less concerned with following the white standards of beauty. One of the most obvious signs of this new pride was letting their hair go free with Afros instead of straightening it with chemicals, sometimes styling it into cornrows, or rows of braids that lay flat to the scalp. They also came to accept their dark skin and stopped valuing light skin within their own community. To celebrate their roots, blacks began wearing dashikis (loose, brightly colored African garments) and other African fashions.

Whites also adopted black fashions. Especially among the counterculture, white students permed their hair into Afros and began wearing dashikis. Even today, white women occasionally get their hair done in cornrows.

Changing the curriculum

One of the main accomplishments of the black student unions was the campaign for black studies programs at universities throughout the country. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, black students wanted a curriculum that addressed black contribution to culture. Instead of studying only European history and culture, they wanted to learn about black literature, art, music, and government and wanted to know more about their African roots. These programs emphasize African history and African American history, social and political life, culture, arts, and religion.

San Francisco State University had the first Black Studies Department at a four-year college.

The focus of black studies departments is to increase self-awareness among blacks. Most departments include courses on black art, literature, and dance; the structure, life, and psychology of the black family and community; and economics and politics. Students can major or minor in Black Studies, but they can also take classes for self-enrichment and knowledge.

Fighting with the Black Panthers

Perhaps the most revolutionary group of the array of black associations during the 1960s was the Black Panther Party. Impatient with the progress of the fight for civil rights, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and David Hilliard founded the Panthers in 1966 in Oakland, California. (Stokely Carmichael, one of the most militant leaders of SNCC, also found a home in the Black Panther Party, eventually becoming its Prime Minister in 1968.) The Panthers were inspired by the concepts of black power, irritated by the passivity of nonviolent protest, outraged by police brutality, and opposed to the Vietnam War. Unlike the mainstream drive for integration and voting rights, the Panthers didn’t much care about assimilating into white society — instead, their focus was black liberation and black power. They were largely dissatisfied with Martin Luther King Jr.’s belief in nonviolence and felt that more direct means would bring quicker results for the black community.

One of the Panthers’ main principles was that blacks had the absolute right to defend themselves against violence, even if that violence was inflicted by police officers. They demonstrated for the right to be armed and oppose police brutality. One of their missions was to observe the police to make sure that they didn’t harass or abuse African Americans. Black Panthers saw themselves as black urban revolutionaries.

Although the Panthers didn’t have much impact on a national level, they implemented some effective local programs to improve education and housing and fight police violence against the blacks of Oakland. But some of their radical proclamations and violent protest gave them publicity that was out of proportion to their accomplishments in achieving equality for blacks.

Devising and implementing programs

The new party immediately created a ten-point program, designed to improve life in the community. Although the Panthers were able to improve conditions within the black community, many of the ten points were actually a list of far-reaching goals that weren’t within their control:

1. Freedom to determine and pursue their own destiny

2. Full employment

3. Reparations for economic oppression by white America

4. Adequate, affordable housing

5. Decent education that emphasized black culture and exposed oppression by white society

6. Free healthcare

7. End to police brutality

8. End to American wars of aggression

9. Freedom for blacks and others unjustly imprisoned

10. The basic elements of human life, including land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace, and community control of modern technology

To help people in the black community, the Panthers formed survival programs, designed to provide necessary services to the poor. One of their first efforts was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which began in Oakland in 1969 and was later expanded to every city where the Black Panthers had a chapter (they had chapters in 48 states). Later survival programs included free clinics, grocery giveaways, free shoes, school and education programs, senior transport and service programs, legal aid programs, and prisoner support.

However, the FBI saw these programs as Communism, and from there, they determined that the Black Panthers were subversives whose goal was to overthrow the government.

Another important issue for the Panthers was the large number of blacks fighting in Vietnam, in far greater proportion than their numbers in the population. This disproportionate number also struck a chord with the Berkeley student activists, who wanted to ally with the Panthers and fight against U.S. involvement in Vietnam (see Chapter 9 for more on the student movement in Berkeley).

To raise funds to buy guns and protest police violence, the Black Panthers resorted to grass-roots capitalism (although their party was definitely based on Marxist principles). They bought copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book at local bookstores and then sold them at a profit.

Resisting the law with violence

Public fear, as well as the FBI goal of exterminating the Panther party, prompted police and FBI surveillance and violence against Panther chapters across the country. In Chicago, after four raids on Panther headquarters, a shootout resulted in the slaying of Chicago party leader Fred Hampton and party member Mark Clark. Along with these direct attacks, the FBI used its counterintelligence program to conduct covert missions against the party.

In 1968, J. Edgar Hoover said that the Black Panther Party was “the greatest threat to the internal security of the U.S.”

On October 28, 1967, Huey Newton, one of the leaders of the Black Panther Party, was arrested for killing a white police officer in an interchange that also left Newton injured. For the most part, the incident confirmed the whites’ worst fears that the Panthers were truly dangerous, but for many blacks, the incident only reinforced their belief in police brutality, which, they were certain, started the gunfight. His arrest also confused some whites of the Left who didn’t know quite how to react to the incident because they were still committed to nonviolent protest.

Newton was convicted of manslaughter for the death of Officer John Frey and was sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. Though Newton’s conviction was overturned 22 months later, agitation and a “Free Huey” movement united and mobilized the Black Panthers and other militants, as well as their white supporters. The party leader became a symbol of oppression and police brutality, and “Free Huey” became the rallying cry of the militants (see Figure 7-1).

How and why the incident that landed Newton in jail even started is somewhat veiled in mystery — no one has a definitive answer. We do know that Frey stopped Newton’s van and ordered him and his passenger out of the car. Another officer, Cliff Heanes, arrived as backup, and from there on, the only known fact was that a shootout ensued, killing Frey and wounding Heanes.

After he was released from prison, Newton had a dramatic shift in his ideas about the black power movement. He announced in 1971 that the party would embrace a nonviolent approach and focus on providing social services to the black community. In 1974 Newton was again accused of murder and fled to Cuba to live in exile for three years. When he returned and faced trial he was acquitted because two separate trials both resulted in hung juries.

Figure 7-1: Black Panthers outside the Alameda County courthouse calling for the release of Huey Newton.

©Bettmann/CORBIS

Newton went on to earn a PhD in social philosophy at UC Santa Cruz in 1980 and continued to work within the black community and write about the oppres- sion of blacks. In 1989 he was given a six-month jail term for misappropriating public funds, and in August of that year Newton was found shot to death on a street in Oakland.

Meanwhile, Eldridge Cleaver, a Black Panther living in exile in Algeria, proposed a radical, terrorist program in place of the ten-point program and was eventually ousted from the party. But Cleaver’s ideas began a rift among the Black Panthers, whom Newton had been trying to shift to nonviolent methods. Soon afterward, the leadership fell apart, as many Black Panthers were exiled, expelled, imprisoned, or killed. By the close of the 1970s, the Black Panther Party was all but extinct.

Black Empowerment: The Legacy of the ’60s

The lives of most African Americans have greatly improved since the days before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but blacks have yet to achieve the full social, economic, and political equality for which they fought in the 1960s and subsequent decades. The reasons for this inequality are many and are hotly debated, even today. Some conservatives argue that the social programs begun in the ’60s, such as welfare, aid to dependent children, and affirmative action, sapped the motivation of blacks to take advantage of their opportunities. However, many other people believe that racism is still a powerful force keeping blacks from full participation in American society, and that the growing gap between the rich and poor makes it more difficult to achieve the American dream.

Within the black community itself, however, the events of the ’60s have had a profound affect. No longer are blacks content to “stay in their place” and defer to whites. Instead, when faced with injustices, they take it to the courts, to the media, and to the streets. They also work to honor their heritage with holidays such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday; Kwanzaa, a December holiday established in 1966 that honors the African roots of African American culture; and Juneteenth, which celebrates the announcement of the end of slavery.

The civil rights movement also served as an inspiration for and changed the lives of many other minorities in America (see Chapter 13), as well as those of white Americans, who can now understand and appreciate the contributions of African Americans in society.