Section 1: Identification and Evaluation of Sources
The question of this investigation is: “To what extent did Black Power Movements contribute to the development of Black Americans in comparison to the Civil Rights Movement?
The Black Power movement was a political movement to attain some form of power or influence as described by philosophies and theories that the movement followed. The movement had many forms of activism with some being violent and others being peaceful, all with a goal of empowering black people in America. It was also considered a socialist movement due to the intense focus it had on black people within our society and improving their lives in any way possible. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was where the movement got its inspiration but there were many people who doubted the philosophies behind the movement. Many thought there ought to be more radical and bold actions taken to get the message and movement across, similar to those actions that Malcolm X took. As a result, the movement gradually bled into the 1970s where it became increasingly violent. However, the most influential and well-known part of this movement was the Black Panther Party, a black power socialist sub-group of the movement that used violence as a tactic to create social change.
Source 1:
This source is a book entitled “The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era” written and compiled by Peniel E. Joseph who is an American historian and founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University. He is the founder of the "Black Power Studies" subfield of American History and American Civil Rights History. The book served to educate and investigate the Black Power Movements that unfolded in this time as well as look at different perspectives on the period. The book looks at how The Black Power Movement remains an enigma – often misunderstood and ill-defined, this radical movement is now beginning to receive sustained and serious scholarly attention. The book also provides a critical and much needed historical overview of the Black Power era. Offering important examples of undocumented histories of black liberation, this volume offers both powerful and poignant examples of 'Black Power Studies' scholarship. However, the source’s limitation is that it includes scholarly representations of from different historians within the the 21st century not from that time period. It also does not give a governmental opinion on the topic, only civilian perspectives and mostly from African-Americans, not a diverse ethnic or racial group. Overall, it provides a significant analysis of social perspectives.
Source 2:
The origin of the source is a book entitled “Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity” written by Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar who is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut where his research focuses on the 20th century United States with a focus in African American history. More specifically, Ogbar studies black nationalism and radical social protest. He has developed courses, lectured and published articles on subjects as varied as Pan-Africanism, African American Catholics, civil rights struggles, black nationalism and hip-hop. Thus, the book seeks educate and culminate Ogbar’s research through his career on Black Power Movements and their effects thereafter. He concludes that Black Power had more lasting cultural consequences among African Americans and others than did the civil rights movement, engendering minority pride and influencing the political, cultural, and religious spheres of mainstream African American life for the next three decades. However, the source’s limitations are that they look more from modern perspectives of the movements and focuses mainly on the most popular ones including the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers.
Section 2: Investigation
The Black Power Movement was a racially powered social movement that some argue was a turning point in the status of African-American people and others of African descent within America. It is important to remember that the Black Power Movement and the Civil Rights Movement were two very different social movements that had similar causes with different approaches. The cause being the empowerment of black people within American society. The approach of the Black Power Movement was described by Professor Peniel E. Joseph in an interview with NPR as, “considered an angry movement that practiced politics without portfolio and really is remembered by the images of gun-toting black urban militants.” While he went on to say “the civil rights movement offered a kind of racial rapprochement.” These two contrasting approaches to empowerment came at a cost to the both movements when one called for peace the other was calling for action at no expense. They became two opposing movements that in retrospect could have made better moves toward their goal had they been joined together for the cause.
The Black Power Movement seemed radical for many at the time because of the visuals of powerful, militant, people of color that spearheaded the movement. One of the most notable was Malcolm X who, according to Biography.com used his platform to motivate black people at in the 60’s and 70’s “to cast off the shackles of racism” in any conceivable way including violence. Calls to action as such would contribute to his ideals of race pride and black nationalism in America. How ever notable Malcolm X was, it was Stokely Carmichael, the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that can be given credit for coining the term “Black Power” in 1966, as stated by Lakisha Odlum on the Digital Public Library of America website. Carmichael and the SNCC were participants of both the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movements but as time passed, little change was made with these nonviolent tactics so they felt it necessary to escalate their actions to fight the systemic racism they were faced with in American society. Black Power was seen as the fuel to the fire in the streets of urban communities because it fed into the resentment and anger that the average black person felt toward the society that had found ways to hold them down for so long. It seemed as if the phrase “Black Power” was their saving grace, if they believed in it and stood behind it, they would eventually find their way to the racial pride and true back identity that people like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael so advocated for.
The Civil Rights Movement focused on the general change in legislation toward people of color but the Black Power movement didn’t see this as enough. It was clear to see that although change happened legislatively there was little to be seen in general society and on the street of the south. In fact