Reading Response #6

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EYES ON THE PRIZE: BLACK POWER, PROGRESS & POVERTY

AFAM B201 – Intro to African American Studies

Najmah Thomas, Ph.D.

Admin / Module To-Do List

  • Updated Schedule
  • Reading - Eyes on The Prize Study Guide:
  • Week 1a Reading – Episode 7-8
  • Week 1b Reading – Episode 9-10
  • Reading Response Assignments
  • Quiz due EOD 11/20
  • Reading Response due EOD 11/27

Black Power, Progress & Poverty – Lecture Topics

  • RECAP: EOTP Episode 6
  • Timeline of events
  • Antecedents of the Black Power Movement
  • EOTP Episode 7:
  • Black Power
  • Malcolm X
  • EOTP Episode 8: A Tale of Two Societies:
  • Watts, Chicago & Detroit Riots
  • The Kerner Commission Report

RECAP: EOTP Episode 6

    • Shall Overcome - The Voting Rights Act of 1965:
    • Literacy tests banned
    • Federal oversight of voter registration in certain areas
    • attorney general authorized to investigate poll taxes in state/local elections
    • Section 4* – Identifies states & localities with history of racial discrimination (AL, AK, AZ, GA, LA, MS, SC, TX, VA & counties in CA, FL, NY, NC, SD, MI, others)…*Shelby v Holder
    • Section 5 – ‘preclearance’ process requires states & localities with history of racial discrimination to get federal permission to change voting laws
      • Selma to Montgomery
      • Marches I, II & III
      • King’s 4 point plan:
      • Nonviolent demonstrators confront injustice…
      • Racists react with violence
      • Americans of conscience demand federal legislation
      • Under pressure, the administration intervenes
      civil rights movement: “We march with Selma!”

      Opening Discussion

      Black Power, Black Progress, Black Poverty

      • Timeline of events:
      • Feb. 21, 1965, NY – Malcom X is assassinated
      • Aug. 6, 1965, DC – President Johnson signs the landmark Voting Rights Act
      • Aug. 11, 1965, CA – Black neighborhood of Watts (Los Angeles) experiences widespread riots, 34 residents killed during the rioting
      • January 1966 - King and SCLC begin shift to northern urban city centers, join Chicago Freedom Movement
      • May 1966 – Stokely Carmichael elected SNCC national chairman
      • June 1966 – James Meredith shot during ‘Walk Against Fear’ from Nashville, TN to Jackson, MS
      • August 1966 – Escalation of Vietnam War
      • November 1966 (St. Helena Is., SC) – Dr. King & SCLC meet at Penn Center
      • April 28, 1967 - Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the U.S. Army, is immediately stripped of his heavyweight title
        • July 1967, Detroit, MI – Rioting, 43 residents killed, Kerner Commission established
        • February 1968, Washington, DC – Kerner Commission report on economic disparities and racial discrimination, ‘separate & unequal societies’
        • February 8, 1968, Orangeburg, SC – 3 students killed, 27 wounded by police on SCSU campus
        • February 12, 1968, Memphis, TN – Union of Black sanitation workers strike begins
        • April 4, 1968, Memphis, TN – Dr. King is assassinated
        • May 14, 1968, Washington, DC – The Poor People’s Campaign begins
        • June 5, 1968, Los Angeles, CA – Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated
        • March 1969, Charleston, SC – hospital workers strike begins
        6

        Black Power

        • Demanding cultural, political and economic self-determination
        • Stokely Carmichael / Kwame Ture – coined term Black Power – self-worth, self-love, self-respect
        • Symbols , salutations, celebrations, education, hair/clothing, media
        • Revolutionary/Cultural Nationalism
        • Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam (NOI), US
        • Black Studies/African American Studies at HBCUs & PWIs

        Black Power’s Antecedents

        • Black nationalism:
        • Martin R. Delaney, 1843 The Mystery, black-controlled newspaper, emigration commission
        • Black-controlled educational and religious institutions (A.M.E. Church, etc.)
        • Pan-Africanism:
        • Marcus Garvey & the UNIA, 1920s
        • Principles of self-determination and self-reliance
        • Labor civil-rights:
        1. March on Washington proposed by A. Phillip Randolph
        • Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
        • Black-led, independent protest for wartime jobs and desegregation of the armed forces
        • Examples of self-defense in the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement:
        https://www.blackpast.org/wp-content/uploads/prodimages/files/blackpast_images/Martin_Robison_Delany.jpg
        Gloria Richardson — Women In Peace

        “A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom. A first-class citizen does not plead to the white power-structure to give him something that the whites have no power to give or take away. Human rights are human rights, not white rights.”

        EOTP: Episode 7 – The Time Has Come

        • Growing frustration with the slow pace of change
        • Leaders and organizations respond
        • Malcolm X (Malcolm Little):
        • Born 5.19.1925, Omaha, Nebraska; mother was national recording secretary for UNIA; father was a Baptist minister and UNIA chapter president; Littles were terrorized for activism, home burned in Lansing, MI; 1931, father murdered; mother institutionalized, children split up among foster homes and orphanages; Malcolm follows path of many at-risk youth.
        • Nation of Islam (NOI) leader, then defector
        • About hating Africa; “ The hate that hate produced” 1959 broadcast
        • Mecca and assassination (39 years old)
        301 Moved Permanently

        Black Power & Womanism

        • Black power & intersectionality:
        • Black Power = male-centered response to emasculation
        • Black women provided support AND leadership
        • few key figures:
        Image result for chaka khan black panther
        Gloria Richardson — Women In Peace

        EOTP Episode 8: Two Societies

        • Racial Inequality in the City:
        • Watts – riot in response to ‘routine’ police brutality, 600 buildings destroyed over 6 days of rioting;
        • Chicago – de facto discrimination, high unemployment, ghettos, poverty, crime
        • Detroit – de facto housing discrimination, police brutality (‘tac squads’); tac squad response to reception for Black Vietnam Vets resulted in rioting; 43 dead, 600 injured, 682 buildings damaged
        • “Why don’t all the Negroes in the South just move North? They do not escape Jim Crow: they merely encounter another, not-less-deadly variety. They do not move to Chicago, they move to the Southside; they do not move to New York, they move to Harlem.” –James Baldwin
        Scars Still Run Deep In Motor City 50 Years After Detroit Riots : NPR

        EOTP Episode 8: Two societies

        • The Kerner Report:
        • Commission headed by Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner – researchers, social scientists, and commissioners
        • Purpose: investigate the Detroit Riots – what happened, why did it happen, what can be done to prevent it from happening again?
        • Findings:
        • One common denominator among those most likely to riot: they had experienced or witnessed an act of police brutality.
        • “Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American.”
        • Without drastic and costly remedies, there will be “continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values.”
        • Report urged the nation to remove racial barriers in education, employment, housing, policing and all other areas of public services
        • Initial report ( Harvest of American Racism ) destroyed, all but1social scientist dismissed; watered down report still rejected by LBJ
        Our recommendations embrace three basic principles:
        1. To mount programs on a scale equal to the dimensions of the problems
        2. To aim these programs for high impact in the immediate future to close the gap between promise and performance
        3. To undertake new initiatives and experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration that now dominates the ghetto and weakens our society.

        EOTP Episodes 9-10 – POWER! & PROMISED LAND:

        • Read Eyes on the Prize – Episode 9-10 before next session
        • Watch Eyes on the Prize – Episodes 9-10 before next session

        Next Session: Thursday, November 17th @4:30pm

        Discussion Questions

        • How did Malcolm X’s vision challenge practitioners of nonviolent direct action? Why do you think his ideas resonated with Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and so many of the SNCC activists?
        • According to Coretta Scott King, how did Malcom X’s view of the struggle against discrimination and exploitation differ from that of her husband? What did the two have in common?
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        Discussion Questions

        • What were some characteristics of discrimination in Northern cities?
        • What is the distinction between a protest and a riot? Why did the conflicts in Los Angeles and Detroit escalate into riots?
        • What actions did the Kerner Commission recommend in order for America to address the “unfinished business of this nation”?
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