The Black Power movement through the

1959s and 1960s

The Black Power movement grew out of the CIVIL

RIGHTS MOVEMENT that had steadily gained
momentum through the 1950s and 1960s. Although not a
formal movement, the Black Power movement marked a
turning point in black-white relations in the United States
and also in how blacks saw themselves. The movement was
hailed by some as a positive and proactive force aimed at
helping blacks achieve full equality with whites, but it was
reviled by others as a militant, sometimes violent faction
whose primary goal was to drive a wedge between whites and
blacks. In truth, the Black Power movement was a complex
event that took place at a time when society and culture was
being transformed throughout the United States, and its
legacy reflects that complexity.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, groups such as the National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) and the SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN
LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE (SCLC) worked with
blacks and whites to create a desegregated society and
eliminate RACIAL DISCRIMINATION. Their efforts
generated positive responses from a broad spectrum of
people across the country. Rev. MARTIN LUTHER KING
JR., who headed the SCLC, made significant headway with
his adherence to nonviolent tactics. In 1964, President
LYNDON B. JOHNSON signed the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT
and a year later he signed the VOTING RIGHTS ACT.

CIVIL RIGHTS legislation was an earnest and effective

step toward eliminating inequality between blacks and
whites. Even with the obvious progress, however, the reality
was that prejudice could not be legislated away. Blacks still
faced lower wages than whites, higher crime rates in their
neighborhoods, and unspoken but palpable racial
discrimination. Young blacks in particular saw the civil
rights movement as too mainstream to generate real social
change. What they wanted was something that would
accelerate the process and give blacks the same opportunities
as whites, not just socially but also economically and
politically. Perhaps more important, they felt that the civil
rights movement was based more on white perceptions of
civil rights than black perceptions.

Not all blacks had been equally impressed with the civil
rights movement. MALCOLM X and the NATION OF
ISLAM, for example, felt that racial self-determination was
a critical and neglected element of true equality. By the mid-
1960s, dissatisfaction with the pace of change was growing
among blacks. The term "black power" had been around
since the 1950s, but it was STOKELY CARMICHAEL,
head of the STUDENT NONVIOLENT
COORDINATING COMMITTEE (SNCC), who
popularized the term in 1966.

Carmichael led a push to transform SNCC from a multiracial

community activist organization into an all-black social
change organization. Late in 1966, two young men, HUEY
NEWTON and BOBBY SEALE, formed the BLACK
PANTHER PARTY FOR SELF-DEFENSE (BPP),
initially as a group to track incidents of police violence.
Within a short time groups such as SNCC and BPP gained
momentum, and by the late 1960s the Black Power
movement had made a definite mark on American culture
and society.
The Black Power movement instilled a sense of racial pride
and self-esteem in blacks. Blacks were told that it was up to
them to improve their lives. Black Power advocates
encouraged blacks to form or join all-black political parties
that could provide a formidable power base and offer a
foundation for real socioeconomic progress. For years, the
movement's leaders said, blacks had been trying to aspire to
white ideals of what they should be. Now it was time for
blacks to set their own agenda, putting their needs and
aspirations first. An early step, in fact, was the replacement
of the word "Negro" (a word associated with the years of
SLAVERY) with "black."

The movement generated a number of positive

developments. Probably the most noteworthy of these was its
influence on black culture. For the first time, blacks in the
United States were encouraged to acknowledge their African
heritage. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES established
black studies programs and black studies departments.
Blacks who had grown up believing that they were descended
from a backwards people now found out that African culture
was as rich and diverse as any other, and they were
encouraged to take pride in that heritage. The Black Arts
movement, seen by some as connected to the Black Power
movement flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. Young black
poets, authors, and visual artists found their voices and
shared those voices with others. Unlike earlier black arts
movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, the new
movement primarily sought out a black audience.

The same spirit of racial unity and pride that made the Black
Power movement so dynamic also made it problematic—and
to some, dangerous. Many whites, and a number of blacks,
saw the movement as a black separatist organization bent on
segregating blacks and whites and undoing the important
work of the civil rights movement. There is no question that
Black Power advocates had valid and pressing concerns.
Blacks were still victims of racism, whether they were being
charged a higher rate for a mortgage, getting paid less than a
white coworker doing the same work, or facing violence at
the hands of white racists. But the solutions that some Black
Power leaders advocated seemed only to create new
problems. Some, for example, suggested that blacks receive
paramilitary training and carry guns to protect themselves.
Though these individuals insisted this device was solely a
means of SELF-DEFENSE and not a call to violence, it was
still unnerving to think of armed civilians walking the
streets.

Also, because the Black Power movement was never a

formally organized movement, it had no central leadership,
which meant that different organizations with divergent
agendas often could not agree on the best course of action.
The more radical groups accused the more mainstream
groups of capitulating to whites, and the more mainstream
accused the more radical of becoming too ready to use
violence. By the 1970s, most of the formal organizations that
had come into prominence with the Black Power movement,
such as the SNCC and the Black Panthers, had all but
disappeared.

The Black Power movement did not succeed in getting blacks

to break away from white society and create a separate
society. Nor did it help end discrimination or racism. It did,
however, help provide some of the elements that were
ultimately necessary for blacks and whites to gain a fuller
understanding of each other.

FURTHER READINGS
Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton. 1967. Black
Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York:
Vintage Books.

Cross, Theorore. 1984. The Black Power Imperative. New

York: Faulkner.

Van Deburg, William, L. 1992. New Day in Babylon: The

Black Power Movement and American Culture. Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press.

CROSS-REFERENCES

Black Panther Party; Carmichael, Stokely; Civil Rights Acts;

Malcolm X; Nation of Islam; NAACP; Southern Christian
Leadership Conference; Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Read more: Black Power Movement - Blacks, Rights, Whites,

Civil, White, and Racial
http://law.jrank.org/pages/4776/Black-Power-
Movement.html#ixzz17OkpT4A7

BLACK PANTHER PARTY

No group better dramatized the anger that fueled the 1960s

BLACK POWER MOVEMENT than the Black Panther
Party for Self-Defense (BPP). For five tumultuous years, the
Panthers brought a fierce cry for justice and equality to the
streets of the largest U.S. cities. Its members flashed across
TV screens in black berets and leather coats, shotguns and
law books in hand, confronting the police or storming the
California Legislature. Political demands issued from the
party's newspaper; loudspeakers boomed at rallies for jailed
Panther leaders. Behind the scenes, the FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) spent millions of
dollars in a secret counterintelligence program aimed at
destroying the group. By the time a 1976 congressional
report revealed the extent of the FBI's efforts, it was too late.
Shoot-outs with police officers, conflicts with other groups,
murder, prison sentences, and internal dissent had
destroyed the Black Panthers. The details surrounding the
1969 shooting deaths of two party leaders by Chicago police
remain unclear. The other party leaders split in 1972 and one
of them, BOBBY SEALE, ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973,
losing in a runoff. By 1975, the last of the group, a splinter
faction under ELDRIDGE CLEAVER, had disappeared.

Before the advent of the Panthers, the mid-1960s saw

gradual progress in the struggle for CIVIL RIGHTS. This
progress was too slow for many Blacks. Traditional civil
rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr's SOUTHERN
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE (SCLC)
were focusing their efforts on ending SEGREGATION in
the South, but conditions in urban areas were reaching a
boiling point. Younger activists increasingly turned away
from these older groups and toward leaders such as
STOKELY CARMICHAEL, whose STUDENT
NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE
(SNCC) demanded not merely INTEGRATION but
economic and social liberation for Blacks. Black power was
Carmichael's message, and in Mississippi, he had organized
an all-black political party that took as its symbol a snarling
black panther. The ethos of black power spread quickly to
urban areas in the North, East, and West, where integration
alone had not soothed the problems of racism, poverty, and
violence.
Police violence against Blacks was a common complaint in
impoverished Oakland, California. By 1966, two young men
had had enough. One was HUEY P. NEWTON, age 23, a
first-year law student. With his friend Bobby Seale, age 30,
Newton founded the BPP, with the intent of monitoring
police officers when they made arrests. This bold tactic—
already being employed in Minneapolis by the nascent
AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (AIM)—was entirely
legal. Also legal under California state law was the practice of
carrying a loaded weapon, as long as it was visible. But legal
or not, the sight of Newton and Seale bearing shotguns as
they rushed to the scene of an arrest had enormous shock
value. To police officers and citizens alike, this represented a
huge change from the previously nonviolent demonstrations
of civil rights activists. Although they did not use the guns
and maintained the legally required eight to ten feet from
officers, the Panthers inspired fear. They also quickly won
respect from neighbors who saw them as standing up to the
predominantly white police force. The law books they carried
—and from which they read criminal suspects their rights—
appeared to many in the community to give the Panthers a
kind of legitimacy.

Attracting new members through their high visibility, the

Panthers sprang to national attention in 1967. Antagonism
toward the party by law enforcement officials had prompted
California lawmakers to consider GUN CONTROL. In May
1967, legislators met in Sacramento, the state capital, to
discuss a bill that would criminalize the carrying of loaded
weapons within city limits. To Seale and Newton, chairman
and minister of defense of the BPP, respectively, the
proposed law was unjust. Governor RONALD REAGAN
was on the lawn of the state legislature as 30 armed Black
Panthers arrived and entered
On May 2, 1967, armed members of the Black Panther Party
enter the California state capital to protest a bill restricting
the carrying of arms in public.
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

the building. TV cameras followed the group's progress to

the legislative chambers, where they were stopped by police
officers, Seale shouting, "Is this the way the racist
government works—[you] won't let a man exercise his
constitutional rights?" He then read a prepared statement:

The Black Panther Party calls upon American people in

general and black people in particular to take full note of the
racist California legislature which is now considering
legislation aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and
powerless, at the very same time that racist police agencies
throughout the country are intensifying the terror, brutality,
murder and repression of black people.

The Panthers kept their guns, left the building, and were
subsequently disarmed by the police.

No sooner had the demonstration ended than the national

media denounced the Panthers as antiwhite radicals. For
many white U.S. citizens, the Panthers symbolized terror.
The party denied being antiwhite, but a new political focus
now superseded its original goal of SELF-DEFENSE. In a
ten-point program, the Panthers called for full employment,
better housing and education, and juries composed of
Blacks. It denounced the war in Vietnam and the military
draft. Some of its demands went further. Point 3 said the
group wanted an end to the robbing of the black community
by the whites. Another point called for the release of all Black
men from prison. The group's major political objective was
self-determination. It demanded United Nations–supervised
elections in the black community, which it dubbed the black
colony, for blacks only, so that "black colonials" could
determine their own national destiny.

To advance its cause, the party published the Black Panther

newspaper. Its articles, cartoons, and imagery reflected a
hardening stance. The police were caricatured as pigs—
introducing a term of condemnation that would enter the
national vernacular—and a recurring image was that of a
Black Panther holding a gun to the head of a pig in a police
uniform. However extreme such rhetoric may sound today, it
galvanized young Blacks coming of age in the Vietnam era.
BPP chapters sprang up nationwide, and by 1968 as many as
five thousand members worked from BPP offices in 25 major
U.S. cities. Prominent activists, including Stokely Carmichael
and Eldridge Cleaver, joined the party. Cleaver had achieved
national prominence for his 1967 essay collection Soul on
Ice. As the BPP's minister of information, he had a voice that
struck exactly the tone the Panthers wanted, a blend of
determination, outrage, and threat. "These racist Gestapo
pigs," Cleaver told reporters,"have to stop brutalizing our
community or we are going to take up arms and we are going
to drive them out."

On another front, the Panthers proceeded with charitable

services to Black communities, called Serve the People
programs. They organized health clinics and schools.
Holding food drives, they rounded up groceries and
distributed them for free. Morning breakfast programs for
Black children served food and spirituals, as kids sang "Black
Is Beautiful." White liberals supported the Panthers, writing
supportive articles in intellectual journals such as the New
York Review of Books; writing books that showed
admiration for their style, like Norman Mailer's The White
Negro; and inviting them to fashionable fund-raising
parties, as did composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.
But this support was far from unanimous; the author
Thomas C. Wolfe coined the phrase radical chic to satirize it.

The successes achieved by the Panthers in Oakland and

beyond were soon overshadowed by violence as tense
confrontations between the police and Panther members
erupted in gunfire. In October 1967, after a gun battle left
one officer wounded and another dead, Newton was
arrested. "Free Huey!" became a cry at protests across the
United States while Newton remained in jail. From his cell,
he told national TV audiences that the plight of Blacks was
similar to that of the Vietnamese. "The police occupy our
community," he said, "as a foreign troop occupies territory."
Convicted of murder, he remained in prison until August
1970. An appeals court later threw out the conviction.

The violence continued, as the police began raiding BPP

offices. In 1968, a confrontation in West Oakland left three
officers and two Panther members wounded. A 17-year-old
Panther was killed. Seale announced on television that black
people should organize so that they could retaliate against
racist police brutality and attacks.

In 1969, Seale too was in court. The police had arrested him
at an antiwar demonstration outside the 1968 Democratic
National Convention in Chicago. He was charged with
rioting. During the trial of Seale and other demonstrators—
dubbed the Chicago Eight—federal district

Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party's (BPP) minister

of information, outside of BPP headquarters in Oakland in
September 1968 after two of the city's police officers fired
shots into the building.
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
court judge Julius J. Hoffman ordered the vociferous Seale
handcuffed to a chair and gagged, a move that inspired such
public revulsion that a mistrial was declared.

However, in 1970, Seale and several other Panthers were

back in court, in New Haven, Connecticut. The charge was
the 1969 alleged murder of suspected Panther police
informant Alex Rackley. Seale and fellow Panther Erica
Huggins were ultimately acquitted, but two other Panthers,
including Warren Kimbro (who plea-bargained), were
sentenced to prison. Seale's controversial trial inspired a
"May Day" riot at Yale University in New Haven, prompting
the federal government to send in 2,500 NATIONAL
GUARD members after a substantial amount of mercury (a
bomb-making ingredient) was taken from a Yale chemistry
lab and several rifles were discovered missing.

The Panthers affected the highest circles of federal law

enforcement. J. EDGAR HOOVER, director of the FBI,
considered them a black nationalist hate group. In
November 1968, he ordered FBI field agents to begin
destabilizing the group by exploiting dissension within its
ranks. This end was to be achieved through the FBI's
Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), a
surveillance and misinformation program widely used in the
late 1960s against civil rights, black power, and various
leftist groups. The FBI infiltrated the Panther membership
with informants, wiretapped telephones, mailed fake letters
to leaders, and spread innuendo both inside and outside the
party. Documentation of the counterintelligence campaign
would emerge in a report issued in 1976 by the U.S. Senate
Select Committee to Study Government Operations, titled
The FBI's Covert Program to Destroy the Black Panther
Party. The report revealed that the FBI had gone to great
lengths, some of them illegal, to pit the Panthers against
themselves and other groups.
The destabilization worked. The FBI managed to exacerbate
a bloody feud between the Panthers and another California-
based group, United Slaves (US). It poured resources into
making leaders suspicious of each other, notably aggravating
a rift between Newton and Cleaver. Perhaps its most
egregious involvement came during a 1969 operation against
Fred Hampton, the Chicago-based chairman of the Illinois
BPP. In late 1967, the FBI launched a disinformation
campaign against the 19-year-old, and his file in the FBI's
Racial Matters Squad soon swelled to over four thousand
pages. When Hampton fell under suspicion in the murder of
two Chicago police officers, an FBI informant provided
authorities with a detailed floor plan of his apartment. On
December 4, 1969, police officers raided the apartment.
Hampton and another Panther member were killed; four
others were wounded. The Panthers alleged that the incident
was an assassination.

Several official and private inquiries were conducted,

including one led by ROY WILKINS, executive director of
the NAACP, and RAMSEY CLARK, former U.S. attorney
general. Lawsuits brought against the FBI by the victims'
survivors dragged through the courts until 1983, when the
federal government agreed to pay them a $1.85 million
settlement. U.S. district court judge John F. Grady imposed
sanctions on the FBI for having covered up facts in the case.
For the Illinois Panther chapter, however, the raid in 1969
had signaled the beginning of the end.

In disarray in 1972, the Panthers soon collapsed. Its

leadership feuded, police and FBI harassment took a heavy
toll, and the black power movement had nearly expired.
Charged with murder, Cleaver had fled to Cuba and Algeria,
where he continued to urge Blacks on to revolution. Cleaver
maintained his Black Panther faction in exile until 1975.
Seale and Newton preferred nonviolent solutions. After the
Panthers disbanded, Seale ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973,
winning a third of the vote. He later became a public speaker
and a community liaison on behalf of Temple University's
Black studies program. Newton earned a doctor's degree
from the University of California, Santa Cruz, but his legal
problems continued. In March 1987, he was convicted for
being a felon in possession of a firearm—despite the
overturning of his original murder conviction—and
sentenced to three years' imprisonment. In 1989, he was
again in prison, serving time for a PAROLE violation for
possessing cocaine. He died in August 1989, after being shot
during a drug deal in the neighborhood where he began the
Panthers.

Conversely, fellow Panther Kimbro was accepted into a

graduate program at Harvard while still in prison, and was
released after serving little more than four years of his
sentence. He became an assistant dean at a local university
and later served as director of Project More, a halfway house
and prison-alternative program in New Haven. He was
quoted in a 2000 issue of the Christian Science Monitor as
wanting to be known as "a guy who made some mistakes,
turned his life around, and learned to help other people."

The legacy of Newton and Seale's party is debatable. Its

alliance with international revolutionary leaders—Mao Tse-
tung, Fidel Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, to name a few—cost it
credibility in the eyes of mainstream U.S. citizens. An
organization devoted originally to the aim of self-defense for
beleaguered urban Blacks, it nose-dived into violence and
terror. For this reason, the BPP is customarily dismissed as
an extremist, self-destructive exponent of the black power
movement. But this transformation owed something to the
harassment of the Panthers by law enforcement agencies. In
turn, the calculated federal and local campaigns against the
Panthers initiated the group's most tangible effect on U.S.
law: highlighting FBI counterintelligence against U.S.
citizens was a noteworthy gain. In the years following the
death of FBI director Hoover, pressure for reforms
dismantled the apparatus he single-handedly used against
his political enemies.

Drawing attention to the issue of urban police brutality was

another major Panther contribution, one that grew as a
concern in subsequent years. In addition, the group's focus
on the questionable number of Black men fighting the U.S.
war in Vietnam inspired black intellectuals to criticize the
role of race in the U.S. military. Moreover, in the party's
passionate ten-point program were the seeds of ideas that
eventually took root in the U.S. legal system: by the 1990s,
juries increasingly reflected the racial composition of the
communities in which defendants lived. As the history of the
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT demonstrates, such change
came slowly, begrudgingly, and often at great personal cost
to the men and women who fought for it.

The original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is not to be

confused with an entity that emerged in the late 1990s,
calling itself the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
and adopting the original STALKING panther logo. The
newer group allegedly violated a 1997 Texas state court order
prohibiting them from "referring to themselves … by any
name containing the words Panther, Black Panthers, or
Black Panther Party." In 2003, lawyers representing some of
the original Panthers, e.g., The Black Panther Party, Inc.
(which brought the Texas action) and the Huey P. Newton
Foundation, contemplated filing a federal TRADEMARK
infringement suit after an August 2002 cease and desist
letter apparently went unheeded.

CROSS-REFERENCES
Black Power Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam
War.

Read more: Black Panther Party - Further Readings -

Panthers, Police, Fbi, Seale, and African
http://law.jrank.org/pages/4775/Black-Panther-
Party.html#ixzz17Omjn0kR

Malcolm X.

Malcolm X was a NATION OF ISLAM minister and a black

nationalist leader in the United States during the 1950s and
1960s. Since his assassination in 1965, his status as a
political figure has grown considerably, and he has now
become an internationally recognized political and cultural
icon. The changes in Malcolm X's personal beliefs can be
followed somewhat by the changes in his name, from
Malcolm Little when he was a young man to Malcolm X
when he was a member of the Nation of Islam to El-Hajj
Malik El-Shabazz-Al-Sabann after he returned to the United
States from a spiritual pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964. He was a
ward of the state, a shoe shine boy in Boston, a street hustler
and pimp in New York, and a convicted felon at the age of
20. After embracing Islam in prison and directing his
grassroots leadership and speaking skills to recruit members
to the Nation of Islam, he ultimately became an influential
black nationalist during the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
of the 1960s.

The fifth child in a family of eight children, Malcolm was

born May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Earl
Little, was a Baptist minister and a local organizer for the
Universal Negro Improvement Association, a black
nationalist organization founded by Marcus M. Garvey in the
early twentieth century. His mother, Louise Little, was of
West Indian heritage. Malcom's father was killed under
suspicious circumstances in 1931 and his mother had a
breakdown in 1937.

After his father's death and his mother's commitment to a

mental hospital, Malcolm was

Malcolm X.
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

first placed with family friends, but the state WELFARE

agency ultimately situated him in a juvenile home in Mason,
Michigan, where he did well. Malcolm was an excellent
student in junior high school, earning high grades as well as
praise from his teachers. Despite his obvious talent, his
status as an Black in the 1930s prompted his English teacher
to discourage Malcolm from pursuing a professional career.
The teacher instead encouraged him to work with his hands,
perhaps as a carpenter.

In 1941, shortly after finishing eighth grade, Malcolm moved

to Roxbury, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Boston.
From 1941 to 1943, he lived in Roxbury with his half-sister
ELLA LEE LITTLE-COLLINS. He worked at several jobs,
including one as the shoe shine boy at the Roseland State
Ballroom. He became what he later described as a Roxbury
hipster, wearing outrageous zoot suits and dancing at local
ballrooms.

Malcolm moved to Harlem in 1943, at the age of 18. Here, he

earned the nickname Detroit Red, because of his Michigan
background and the reddish hue to his skin and hair. In his
early Harlem experience, Malcolm was a hustler, dope
dealer, gambler, pimp, and numbers runner for mobsters.
In 1945, when his life was threatened by a Harlem mob
figure named West Indian Archie, Malcolm returned to
Boston, where he became involved in a BURGLARY ring
with an old Roxbury acquaintance. In 1946 he was caught
attempting to reclaim a stolen watch he had left for repairs,
and the police raided his apartment and arrested him and his
accomplices, including two white women. He was charged
with LARCENY and breaking and entering, to which he
pleaded guilty at trial. On February 27, 1946, he entered
Charlestown State Prison to begin an eight- to ten-year
sentence; he was 20 years old.

Malcolm was transferred in 1948 to an experimental and

progressive prison program in Norfolk, Massachusetts. The
Norfolk Prison Colony gave greater freedom to its inmates. It
also had an excellent library, and Malcolm began to read
voraciously. Prompted by his brother, Reginald Little,
Malcolm converted to Islam while in prison and became a
follower of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of
Islam. The Nation of Islam, founded by Wallace D. Fard in
the 1930s, advocated racial separatism and enforced a strict
moral code for its followers, all of whom were Black.

Malcolm was paroled from prison in 1952. He immediately

moved to Detroit, where he worked in a furniture store and
attended the Nation of Islam Detroit temple. Malcolm soon
abandoned the surname Little in favor of X, which
represented the African surname he had never known. With
his oratory skill, Malcolm X quickly became a national
minister for the Nation of Islam. As a devout follower of
Elijah Muhammad, he helped to establish numerous temples
across the United States. He became the minister for temples
in Boston and Philadelphia, and in 1954, he became minister
of the New York temple. In 1958 he married Sister Betty X,
who had earlier joined the Nation of Islam as Betty Sanders.
Together, they had six children, including twins who were
born after Malcolm's assassination.

During his early years with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm's

primary role was as spokesman for Elijah Muhammad. He
was a highly effective grassroots activist and successfully
recruited thousands of urban blacks to join the organization.
In 1959 a television program entitled The Hate That Hate
Produced resulted in a focused public scrutiny of the Nation
of Islam and its followers, who became known to many U.S.
citizens as Black Muslims. Increasingly, Malcolm was seen as
the national spokesman for the Black Muslims, and he was
often sought out for his opinion on public issues. In vitriolic
public speeches on behalf of the Nation of Islam, he
described whites in the United States as devils and called for
Blacks to reject any attempt to integrate them into a white
racist society. As a Nation of Islam minister, he denounced
Jews and criticized the more cautious mainstream CIVIL
RIGHTS leaders as traitors who had been brainwashed by a
white society. He further challenged the so-called
integrationist principles of recognized civil rights leaders
such as MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Elijah Muhammad took a somewhat less rash approach and

favored a general nonengagement policy in place of more
confrontational tactics. Malcolm's increasing popularity—as
well as his caustic public remarks—began to create tension
between him and Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm became
frustrated at having to restrain his comments.

When President JOHN F. KENNEDY was assassinated on

November 22, 1963, Malcolm exclaimed that Kennedy "never
foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so
soon." Malcolm later regretted his comment and explained
that he meant that the government's involvement in and
tolerance of violence against Blacks and others had created
an atmosphere that contributed to the death of the president.
Nevertheless, his comments and his increasing public
notoriety prompted Elijah Muhammad to "silence" Malcolm
and suspend him as a minister on December 1, 1963.
Members of the Nation of Islam were instructed not to speak
to him.

However, by 1963, Malcolm had become disillusioned by the

Nation of Islam, particularly with rumors that Elijah
Muhammad had been unfaithful to his wife and had fathered
several illegitimate children. On March 8, 1964—while still
under suspension from the Nation of Islam—Malcolm
formally announced his separation from the organization. He
soon announced the creation of his own organization,
Moslem Mosque, Incorporated (MMI), which would be
based in New York. MMI, Malcolm stated, would be a broad-
based black nationalist organization intended to advance the
spiritual, economic, and political interests of Blacks. On
March 26, Malcolm met for the first and only time with
Martin Luther King, in Washington, D.C. King at the time
was scheduled to testify on the pending CIVIL RIGHTS
ACT OF 1964.

In April 1964, Malcolm made a spiritual pilgrimage to

Mecca, the holy site of Islam and the birthplace of the
prophet Muhammad. He was profoundly moved by the
pilgrimage, and said later that it was the start of a radical
alteration in his outlook about race relations.

"WE ARE NOT FIGHTING FOR INTEGRATION, NOR ARE

WE FIGHTING FOR SEPARATION. WE ARE FIGHTING
FOR RECOGNITION AS HUMAN BEINGS. WE ARE
FIGHTING FOR … HUMAN RIGHTS."
—MALCOLM X
Upon his return to the United States, Malcolm began to use
the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Al-Sabann. He also
exhibited a profound shift in political and social thinking.
Whereas in the past he had advocated against cooperation
with other civil rights leaders and organizations, his new
philosophy was to work with existing organizations and
individuals, including whites, so long as they were sincere in
their efforts to secure basic civil rights and freedoms for
Blacks. In June 1964, he founded the secular Organization of
Afro-American Unity (OAAU), which espoused a pan-
Africanist approach to basic HUMAN RIGHTS,
particularly the rights of Blacks. He traveled and spoke
extensively in Africa to gain support for his pan-Africanist
views. He pledged to bring the condition of Blacks before the
General Assembly of the UNITED NATIONS and thereby
"internationalize" the civil rights movement in the United
States. He further pledged to do whatever was necessary to
bring the black struggle from the level of civil rights to the
level of human rights. When he advocated for the right of
Blacks to use arms to defend themselves against violence, he
not only laid the groundwork for a subsequent growth of the
BLACK POWER MOVEMENT, but also led many U.S.
citizens to believe that he advocated violence. However, in
his autobiography, Malcolm said that he was not advocating
wanton violence but calling for the right of individuals to use
arms in SELF-DEFENSE when the law failed to protect
them from violent assaults.

In 1965 Malcolm's increasing public criticism of Elijah

Muhammad and the Nation of Islam prompted anonymous
threats against his life. In his attempts to forge relationships
with established civil rights organizations such as the
STUDENT NON-VIOLENT COORDINATING
COMMITTEE, Malcolm was criticized severely in the
Nation of Islam's official publications. In a December 1964
article in Muhammad Speaks— the official newspaper of the
Nation of Islam— Louis X (now known as Louis Farrakhan)
said, "[S]uch a man as Malcolm is worthy of death, and
would have met with death if it had not been for
Muhammad's confidence in Allah for victory over the
enemies."

On February 14, 1965, Malcolm's home in Queens, New York

—which was still owned by the Nation of Islam—was
firebombed while he and his family were asleep. Malcolm
attributed the bombing to Nation of Islam supporters but no
one was ever charged with the crime. One week later, when
Malcolm stepped to the podium at the Audubon Ballroom in
New York to present a speech on behalf of the OAAU, he was
assassinated. The gunmen, later identified as former or
current members of the Nation of Islam, were convicted and
sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1966.

Malcolm left a complex political and social legacy. Although

he was primarily a black nationalist in perspective, his
changing philosophy and politics toward the end of his life
demonstrate the unfinished development of an influential
figure. Although some people point to his identification with
the Nation of Islam and dismiss him as a racial extremist and
anti-Semite, his later thinking reveals profound changes in
his perspective and a more universal understanding of the
problems of Blacks. In his eulogy of Malcolm, the U.S. actor
Ossie Davis said,

However we may have differed with him—or with each other

about him and his value as a man—let his going from us
serve only to bring us together, now. Consigning these
mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in
the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more
now a man—but a seed—which, after the winter of our
discontent, will come forth again to meet us.
Read more: Malcolm X - Further Readings - Nation, Islam,
Rights, African, Muhammad, and Black
http://law.jrank.org/pages/8397/Malcolm-
X.html#ixzz17OnkIV00

Nation of Islam

The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political

organization whose origins are somewhat mysterious.
Wallace D. Fard, later known as Master Wallace Fard
Muhammad, established the NOI in Detroit during the
1930s. Fard Muhammad, a traveling salesman who sold
African silks and advocated self-sufficiency and
independence for Blacks, taught Elijah Poole the history of
what Fard Muhammad called the Lost-Found Nation of
Islam—descendants of the tribe of Shabazz from the Lost
Nation in Asia. Fard Muhammad taught Poole in part that
Mr.Yacub, a black mad scientist, created what was called the
devil race—the white race—approximately six thousand years
ago, and that the devil race would rule the world for the next
six thousand years.

Elijah Poole was born in Sandersville, Georgia in 1897. His

father, who was a Baptist preacher, had been a slave. At the
age of twenty-six, Poole moved to Detroit with his family. In
1930 in Detroit, he met W. D. Fard, the founder of the Lost-
Found Nation of Islam. When Fard disappeared in 1934,
Poole—then known as Elijah Muhammad—moved to
Chicago, where he organized his own following and
established the headquarters of the Nation of Islam. Elijah
Muhammad remained the spiritual and organizational leader
of the NOI from 1934 until his death in 1975. During that
time, the NOI became recognized as a black nationalist
religious organization that advocated racial separatism and
self-sufficiency for Blacks. Often called Black Muslims, the
NOI's members are required to adhere to a strict moral and
disciplinary code. Men members typically wear suits and
ties, and women members are required to wear modest
clothing, typically white gowns or saris. The NOI's teachings
forbid the eating of pork and the consumption of alcohol or
tobacco.

In the early 1950s and 1960s, the NOI called for racial
separatism in the United States, and at times protested
against police brutality and filed suit against various police
departments in response to alleged police brutality. It also
frequently recruited members in large cities and prisons. In
1947, Malcolm Little—who later became Malcolm X—
converted to Islam and joined the NOI while incarcerated in
a Massachusetts prison. As a national minister and
spokesman for the NOI, MALCOLM X was a fiery speaker
and proponent of the organization's concerns. However,
during the early 1960s, ideological differences developed
between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, and in 1964,
Malcolm X formally left the NOI.

Muhammad's death in 1975, his son Warith Deen

Muhammad renounced black separatism and the origins of
Black Muslims and established the World Community of Al-
Islam in the West, later called the American Muslim Mission.
NOI minister Louis X, who later became Louis Farrakhan,
initially supported Warith Muhammad but soon
reestablished the NOI. Other organizations and factions also
split off from the original NOI, including the more militant
Lost-Found Nation of Islam, which publishes the weekly
newspaper Muhammad Speaks. In the mid-1990s,
Farrakhan's organization was generally known as the NOI.
Like Malcolm X, Farrakhan is a fiery orator and skilled
leader. Yet, he and the NOI have been criticized for anti-
Semitic and antiwhite statements as well as conspiracy
theories concerning Jewish American business leaders.
Khalid Muhammad, a former NOI spokesman, was especially
known for the excoriating statements and speeches he gave
at many U.S. colleges in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Although the NOI later expelled Khalid Muhammad, his
speeches contributed to a continuing debate as to whether
so-called hate speech should be punished or regulated by
U.S. universities.

During the early and mid-1990s, Farrakhan and the NOI

appeared to be shifting their political focus away from black
separatism and toward a more universalist or mainstream
approach. The NOI also has begun to develop various major
business ventures, including the operation of a restaurant in
a poor neighbor-hood on Chicago's South Side. Its security
arm—the Fruit of Islam—has been involved in providing
security for housing projects in Baltimore, Chicago, and
Washington, D.C., under contracts with public agencies such
as the Chicago Housing Authority. In October 1995, the NOI
and Farrakhan were instrumental in organizing the Million
Man March, bringing together hundreds of thousands of
Black men in Washington, D.C.

Read more: Nation of Islam - Further Readings - Noi,

Muhammad, Fard, Malcolm, Black, and Called
http://law.jrank.org/pages/8711/Nation-
Islam.html#ixzz17OomULEw

Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement was a struggle by Blacks in the
mid-1950s to late 1960s to achieve CIVIL RIGHTS equal to
those of whites, including equal opportunity in employment,
housing, and education, as well as the right to vote, the right
of equal access to public facilities, and the right to be free of
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION. No social or political
movement of the twentieth century has had as profound an
effect on the legal and political institutions of the United
States. This movement sought to restore to Blacks the rights
of citizenship guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments, which had been eroded by segregationist JIM
CROW LAWS in the South. It fundamentally altered
relations between the federal government and the states, as
the federal government was forced many times to enforce its
laws and protect the rights of Black citizens. The civil rights
movement also spurred the reemergence of the judiciary,
including the Supreme Court, in its role as protector of
individual liberties against majority power. In addition, as
the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, and other leaders of the
movement predicted, the movement prompted gains not
only for Blacks but also for women, persons with disabilities,
and many others.

The civil rights movement has been called the Second

Reconstruction, in reference to the Reconstruction imposed
upon the South following the Civil War. During this period,
the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT (1868)—granting
EQUAL PROTECTION of the laws—and FIFTEENTH
AMENDMENT (1870)—giving the right to vote to all males
regardless of race—were ratified, and troops from the North
occupied the South from 1865 to 1877 to enforce the
ABOLITION of SLAVERY. However, with the end of
Reconstruction in 1877, southern whites again took control
of the South, passing a variety of laws that discriminated on
the basis of race. These were called Jim Crow laws, or the
BLACK CODES. They segregated whites and blacks in
education, housing, and the use of public and private
facilities such as restaurants, trains, and rest rooms; they
also denied blacks the right to vote, to move freely, and to
marry whites. Myriad other prejudicial and discriminatory
practices were committed as well, from routine denial of the
right to a fair trial to outright murder by LYNCHING.
These laws and practices were a reality of U.S. life well into
the twentieth century.

Organized efforts by Blacks to gain their civil rights began

well before the official civil rights movement got under way.
By 1909, blacks and whites together had formed the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), which became a leading ing organization in the
cause of civil rights for Blacks. From its beginning, the
NAACP and its attorneys challenged many discriminatory
laws in court, but it was not until after WORLD WAR II
that a widespread movement for civil rights gathered force.

The war itself contributed to the origins of the movement. When

Blacks who had fought for their country returned home, they more
openly resisted being treated as second-class citizens. The
movement's first major legal victory came in 1954, when the
NAACP won BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF
TOPEKA, KANSAS, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873,
in which the Supreme Court struck down laws segregating white
and black children into different public elementary schools. With
Brown, it became apparent that Blacks had important allies in the
highest federal court and its chief justice, EARL WARREN.

Read more: Civil Rights Movement - The Birth Of The Civil

Rights Movement, Million Man March, Further Readings,
Cross-references http://law.jrank.org/pages/5254/Civil-
Rights-Movement.html#ixzz17OpKi4CB
On December 1, 1955, ROSA PARKS was arrested in
Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a
city bus to a white man. News of Parks's arrest quickly
spread through the Black community. Parks had worked as a
secretary for the local branch of the NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
COLORED PEOPLE. Because she was a well-respected
and dignified figure in the community, her arrest was finally
enough to persuade Blacks that they could no longer tolerate
racially discriminatory laws.

After exchanging phone calls, a group of Black women, the

Women's Political Council, decided to call for a boycott of the
city buses as a response to this outrage. This suggestion was
greeted with enthusiasm by local Black leaders, including the
influential black clergy.

On December 5, members of the Black community rallied at

the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery and decided
to carry out the boycott. Their resolve was inspired by the
words of the Reverend MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

"We are here this evening," King declared to the packed

church, "to say to those who have mistreated us so long that
we are tired—tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired
of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression." He
went on to make a case for peace and nonviolence.
Contrasting the methods of nonviolence that he envisioned
for a civil rights movement, to the methods of violence used
by the racist and terrorist KU KLUX KLAN, King declared,
in our protest there will be no cross burnings…. We will be
guided by the highest principles of law and order. Our
method will be that of persuasion, not coercion. We will only
say to the people, "Let conscience be your guide" … [O]ur
actions must be guided by the deepest principles of our
Christian faith. Love must be our regulating ideal. Once
again we must hear the words of Jesus echoing across the
centuries: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
and pray for them that despitefully use you."

With these words and these events, the long, difficult

struggle of the CIVIL RIGHTS movement began.

Another catalyzing event occurred on December 1, 1955,

when ROSA PARKS, a Black woman, was arrested after she
refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery,
Alabama, bus. The law required Blacks to sit in the back of
city buses and to give up their seats to whites should the
white section of the bus become full. The city's black
residents, long tired of the indignities of SEGREGATION,
began a boycott of city buses. They recruited King, a 27-year-
old preacher, to head the Montgomery Improvement
Association, the group which organized the boycott. The
Blacks of Montgomery held out for nearly a year despite
violence—including the bombing of King's home—directed at
them by angry whites. This violence was repugnant to many
whites and actually increased support for the civil rights
movement among them. The boycott finally achieved its goal
on November 13, 1956, when the Supreme Court, in Gayle v.

Read more: Civil Rights Movement - The Birth Of The Civil

Rights Movement - African, King, Boycott, American, City,
and Montgomery http://law.jrank.org/pages/5250/Civil-
Rights-Movement-Birth-Civil-Rights-
Movement.html#ixzz17OrENgsR