Black Power in Maya Angelou\u27s “Still I Rise”, “Phenomenal Woman”, and “Weekend Glory”

This article discusses the Black Power\u27s ideas inside the three poems of Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”, “Phenomenal Woman”, and “Weekend Glory”. Maya Angelou was highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. The struggle of the author as a powerless Black woman can be seen from Angelou\u27s poems. This article tries to find out in what ways Black power is revealed in Maya Angelou\u27s three poems mentioned above. Moreover, Black power movement concept and figurative language are needed to reveal the idea of Black power in each poem. The analysis shows that there are differences of ideas of Black power in each poem. The Black power idea is the way to survive in the society, the way to express someone\u27s thought, and the ability to accept one\u27s identity as a Black woman. In the end, it can be concluded that the author is a powerful Black woman

Black Power At Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry

{Excerpt} As the contributors to this book show, confrontations with the building trades unions became a critical axis for the rise of Black Power and community control politics, and provide a means for us to rethink the history of Black Power through the fusion by the movement of community control and labor organizing. By tracing the evolution of these activists\u27 organizing methods and analysis, we show that African American grassroots struggles to desegregate the construction industry provided a major, and in some cities the, means through which Black Power movements became ascendant in African American urban politics. Only through close attention to local politics are these profound cultural and political shifts visible. Because of their decentralized quality, the movements for community control of the construction industry varied by city, based on the idiosyncratic nature of the specific African American communities and political networks from which they emerged. These differences were accentuated by weak federal enforcement of affirmative action plans, which relied on a strategy of localism that placed the origin, evolution, and fate of construction industry affirmative action plans primarily in the hands of local actors and courts

Black power print

This photographic essay focuses on the cover art of a wave of black radical periodicals which emerged in the United States during the 1960s to shed light on the intersections between Black Power, graphic design and black print culture. By examining the graphic design and artwork employed by ‘little black magazines’ such as Liberator, Soulbook and Black America, we can see the origins of a Black Power visual aesthetic which was most memorably rendered through the work of Emory Douglas and the Black Panther community newspaper during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In turn, I argue that such cover art can be understood as just one example of the visual intersections which emerged between black radical activism and black print culture in the United States during the years following World War II

International Connection, Domestic Radicalization: The Connection Between East Asia and Black Radicals

Utilizing newspapers, journals and pamphlets, this thesis examines the ways that the Black Power movement, primarily in the 1960’s connected with East Asian countries. Differentiating between the Black Power and the Civil Rights groups, this thesis will show why and how the Black Power movement needed international allies such as China and Vietnam. Showing that the connection between the East Asia and Black Power groups was due to racism, imperialism, and Maoism, I argue that Black Power individuals/groups were influenced by East Asia and saw these countries as a blueprint for revolution in America. This thesis also analyzes the significance of this connection amidst the Cold War and the Soviet-Sino split. Furthermore, this thesis will prove that without the connection to East Asia, the Black Power movement would not have been as successful as it was

We want what people generally refer to as Black Power : Youth and Student Activism and the Impact of the Black Power Movement in Memphis, Tennessee, 1965-1975

This study examines the impact and influence of the modern, or classical Black Power Movement (1966-1975) on African American youth and student activism in Memphis, Tennessee from 1965-1975. This period represented a political reawakening of sorts for African American youth and students in the city after the desegregation campaign of the early 1960s. After being so integral in the campaign to abolish segregation in the city’s public facilities and venues in the early 1960s, a lull in overt youth and student activism developed. However, by the mid-to-late 1960s a new, indigenous youth and student movement developed in the community and on the city’s college campuses. This movement emerged simultaneously as the Black Power Movement began to command the nation’s attention.Influenced by the national Black Power Movement, but informed by local politics and local circumstances, some of Memphis’s African American youth and students evoked the tenets of the Black Power Movement. The Black Power Movement promoted racial and cultural pride, self-determination, racial autonomy, and independent economic, political, and cultural institutions in black communities. Both challenging and embracing the conventional understanding of Black Power and the Black Power Movement, youth and students agitated in the community and campuses, presenting an alternative political voice to Memphis’s more moderate African American political outlets, such as the Memphis branch of the National Association for the Advance of Colored People (NAACP). However, civil rights and Black Power were not mutually exclusive ideologies. On the contrary, youth and students were informed by both movements, and on many levels, their political organizing reflected that idea.This study is also an example of how Black Power operated on the local level. Histories of the Black Power Movement have tended to focus more on the Movement’s more fiery and outspoken proponents, ignoring its impact on organizing in local communities. Recent historiography has shifted its focus from simply documenting the Movement on a national scale. Black Power studies now include more works that examine Black Power organizing over a sustained period of time in areas not considered hotbeds of the Movement. This study provides a glimpse into the ways that youth and students in Memphis, Tennessee who came of age during the height of the modern Black Power Movement localized the Movement by both explicitly and implicitly using Black Power in their struggle to alter the city’s racial dynamics

The Making of the Classic Period of the Long Black Power Movement in Los Angeles, California

It is often believed that the Black Power Movement started after civil rights/black power activist Stokely Carmichael declared, “We want Black Power” in Greenwood, Mississippi on June 16, 1966 and ended in the 1970s. Similar to the Civil Rights Movement the Black Power Movement is often examined through a dominant narrative short movement view. Some scholars suggests that “Black Power” stood for a change in direction away from the nonviolent civil rights approach. But Black Power is an enigma and it means different things to different people. It is just one element of the Black Freedom Struggle. Black Power uses many methods to liberate Black people from oppression. It shares some of the same methods and goals with the Civil Rights Movement. However, there is one major difference. Unlike the nonviolent struggle for civil rights, participants of Black Power are not opposed to meeting state sanctioned violence with violence. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, this dissertation challenges the idea of a dominant narrative short Black Power Movement in Los Angeles, California. Although Black Power and the Black Power Movement are experienced in cities across the nation this study is being undertaken because African American participation in Black Power in Los Angeles is often overlooked. Rebellions in many cities outside of the South during the 1960s may have appeared to come out of nowhere to people outside of the Black communities. However, to people in the Black community those storms were a long time in the making. In the first half of the twentieth-century the United States government created policies that limited where Black people could participate in home ownership. Those policies maintained grading systems based on a government created myth that Black people lowered property values, which added more value to white neighborhoods. Those lower-ratings also promoted the idea that Black neighborhoods had more crime, which resulted in over policing. In Los Angeles that over policing involved the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the Sheriffs Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The use of Black Power and the development of the Black Power Movement in Los Angeles, California during the twentieth-century are examined in chapter one through governmental housing policies that imposed spatial restrictions on the movement of Black people. In the second chapter I examine the importance of pre1960s incidents of state approved brutality that occurred within the walls of Black communities both locally and nationally. In chapter three I examine the growing popularity and power of the Nation of Islam in Los Angeles and its history of resistance and how that impacted the Black community. In this chapter I also address the importance of the years between 1955 and 1960 in establishing the classic period of Black Power Movement in Los Angeles. Chapter four examines significant events in the early stages of the “classic” period 1961-1971 of the Black Power Movement in Los Angeles. Incidents involving the Nation of Islam and the LAPD play a major role in this examination because of the organization’s resistance or appearance of resistance to police brutality. Chapter five investigates what led up to the Watts Rebellion and what happened to the Movement in its aftermath. I address why Watts is not the beginning of the Movement and suggest it is the second part of the “classic” period of the Black Power Movement in Los Angeles. Chapter six exposes the continuing abuses committed by local law enforcement agencies and the federal government’s covert operations directed against the Black community, Black Power organizations, and Black students in academia. This chapter reveals some of the factors that led to the demise of the “classic” period of the Black Power Movement in Los Angeles

INSTRUMENTS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS: THE INTERSECTIONS OF BLACK POWER AND ANTI-VIETNAM WAR ACTIVISM IN THE UNITED STATES, 1964-1972

Instruments of Righteousness investigates the class-, race-, and gender-based identities and intersections of women and men in the Black Power movement and their various organizing activities to gain certain and defined concessions from federal, state, and local governments. It argues that the intersections of Black Power and anti-Vietnam War activism created changing definitions of black masculinity and femininity, expressed through anti-draft and anti-war work. Black Power and anti-war activism cannot and should not be investigated separate from one another. The experiences of Black Power soldiers, antiwar members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the Third World Women’s Alliance, and exiled black Americans highlight the ways the anti-Vietnam War and Black Power activism depended on each other for rhetorical, theoretical, and personnel needs. Additionally, it explores the ways that Black Power organizations articulated “Third World” mentalities in their anti-war battles. By espousing a shared identity with people of color throughout the world, Black Power organizations placed themselves in a transnational conversation among radical, decolonizing nation-states. Black Power’s advocates’ roles as non-governmental actors in the Third World strengthened ties with and presented new images of United States citizens throughout the decolonizing world