The Black Power Movement
The Black Power Movementof the 60s and 70s ushered a new generation of educated African-Americans. Their message  urgent and powerful made a rallying call for black pride and social change. No longer content with the change through nonviolence method of Dr. Martin Luther King, many would rise in leadership in the wake of  Malcom X's death. Malcom's ideology as well others before him would be seen in the slogans, speeches, and literature of the era. The fight for civil rights through aggressive rhetorical means would create a political and cultural arena that would impact the world and leave its place in African American literature and history.


1952 Writer Ralph Ellison publishes Invisible Man.

Excerpt from Ralph Ellison "Invisible Man" Prologue

“I am an invisible man… When they approach me they see only my surroundings,
themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me.”


1965 Malcolm X  delivers Ford Auditorium Speech


“... it is a duty, it's your and my duty as men, as human beings, it is our duty to our people, to organize ourselves and let the government know that if they don't stop that Klan, we'll stop it ourselves. And then you'll see the government start doing something about it. ... So I don't believe in violence -- that's why I want to stop it. So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defense, and that vigorous action we feel we're justified in initiating by any means necessary.”


1966 The first time Black Power was used as a slogan

Excerpt from Amiri Baraka's poem  A poem for Black hearts
"For all of him, and all of yourself, look up, black man, quit stuttering and shuffling, look up"


1966  Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

1967 Black Power published by Stokely Carmichael

Excerpt from Stokely Carmichael book "Black Power"

“It is far better to speak forcefully and truthfully. Only when one’s true self -White or Black- is exposed, can society proceed to deal with the problems from a position of clarity and not from one of misunderstanding.”


In 1968, Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver publishes  Soul on Ice.

Excerpt from Eldridge Cleaver Memoir Soul on Ice-

"And as the spirit of revolt crept across the continent from the wayward bus in Montgomery Alabama, seeping like new life into the cracks and nooks of the northern ghettos ... the hip lobe of the national ear, began to hear"


1968  Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing

Excerpt from Sonia Sanchez  poem  "To All Sisters" Black Fire Anthology

"What a white woman got
cept her white pussy
always sucking after blk/ness
what a white woman got
cept money trying to buy up
a blk/man
yeah.
what a white woman got?

1968 Dr. Martin Luther King is assassinated

Excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King  "I Have a Dream"

|"When we allow freedom to ring-when we let it ring
from every city and every hamlet, from every state and
every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all
of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and
Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join
hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
"Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, "We are
free at last."