Abstract
At the outset of the Black Power Movement (BPM), Malcolm X called for both a black political and cultural revolution; however, he never developed his thesis on the latter and did not adequately explain the relationship between the two. Like many BPM revolutionists, he drew on cases of revolutions from abroad which were ill-fitted to the peculiar history and contemporary challenges of black America. W.E.B. Du Bois (1935) historicized a black political revolution in the USA in his Black Reconstruction, and Alain Locke theorized cultural revolution in the USA a decade later; thus, prior to the BPM, theses on black political and cultural revolution in the USA were available to BPM revolutionists, but they were ignored. They suggested the salience of the Slave Revolution in the Civil War as an exemplar of subsequent black revolutions in the USA. In this essay, I examine Du Bois’ and Locke’s arguments and their relevance to the BPM, focusing less on the revolutionary theory the BPM adopted and more on this one it neglected.
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Notes
Marx’s, Weber’s, and Polanyi’s are the most popular articulations of economic revolution.
In his last days, Malcolm did not distance himself from black nationalism but revised and reconciled his black nationalism with his revolutionary thesis that drew from it (Henderson 2012).
On this point, Moses converges with Stuckey (1987) and Franklin (1992), but there are important divergences, as well. Most notably, Stuckey viewed black nationalism arising from “slave culture”—a pan-Africanist amalgam of African cultures whose remnants were manifest in folk customs and retentions that ultimately were given African American institutional forms, and these customs provided the bedrock of African American culture, which provided the foundation of black national consciousness. Franklin insists that black national consciousness was reinforced by the commonality of racial oppression and resistance to it, eventuating in a syncretic “Aframerican” culture, which provided a sense of national identity for African Americans. Stuckey’s and Franklin’s perspectives are in contrast with Moses’ view that African American culture derived less from “slave culture” of the South and more from the “high culture” of free black intellectuals in the North situated in prominent black institutions such as the AME Church.
Approximately 186,000 black troops served in the Union Army, and about 10,000 served in the Union Navy. They fought in more than 400 engagements including 40 major battles, and even in the racist context of the time, 16 blacks received the Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military honor.
Cruse’s thesis targeted the cultural apparatus—primarily the mass communications media—of the USA, but it inadequately focused on the cultural apparatus of the black community, itself, as a precursor to—or concomitant of—the cultural revolution. This is evident in its inattention to the major black cultural institution, the Black Church, and its ignoring of the major cultural contradiction in black communities, sexism, as a key aspect of the cultural revolution it envisioned. It was also inattentive to substantive cultural demands of black America, such as reparations, which would ramify into the political and economic sphere to augur cultural revolution.
The evolutionary approach focused on developing parallel black institutions (i.e., Afrocentric colleges, churches, businesses/cooperatives) to provide for black national development.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks Clovis Semmes, Wilson Moses, Robert Smith, Muhammad Ahmad, Cruz Caridad Bueno, Robert Packer, Akua Njeri, Frank Reid, Marian Kramer, James Taylor, Scott Brown, and Mack Jones for their comments and/or suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. Special thanks to Rev. Frank Reid and the congregants of Bethel AME Church in Baltimore, Rev. Wendell Anthony and the congregants of Fellowship Chapel in Detroit for providing venues to present this work and continuous inspiration to carry it out. This essay is dedicated to the student organizers and activists of the Penn State University Black Caucus to encourage both their scholarship and activism; and to my former professor at the University of Michigan who encouraged me as a student to engage W.E.B. Du Bois’ and Alain Locke's research: Professor Harold Cruse.
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Henderson, E.A. Missing the Revolution Beneath Their Feet: The Significance of the Slave Revolution of the Civil War to the Black Power Movement in the USA. J Afr Am St 22, 174–190 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-018-9400-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-018-9400-1