Black History Month
RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Purpose: This Educational Program and Research Project is Dedicated to Further Building the Hip Hop--Black Liberation Movement Connection by Integrating Conscious Digital Edutainment with A Scholarly... [more]
RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Purpose:
This Educational Program and Research Project is Dedicated to Further Building the Hip Hop--Black Liberation Movement Connection by Integrating Conscious Digital Edutainment with A Scholarly Self Directed Learning Environment.
"BLACK HISTORY MONTH IS 24/7/365": 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.
Of All the Disciplines of Study History Is Best Qualified To Reward All Research.
There is no true separation between the past, the present and the future. Those who don't change change will be change by change. Help us continue to write our history in real time by making a contribution.
Please be sure to follow the curriculum format in your contributions.
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By Daryl Michael Scott
for ASALH at www.asalh.org
The story of Black History Month begins a decade after the founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. When he conceived of the ASALH in 1915, Carter G. Woodson believed that publishing scientific history about the black race would produce facts that would prove to the world that Africa and its people had played a crucial role in the development of civilization. As a Harvard-trained historian, Woodson, like W. E. B. Du Bois before him, believed that the truth could not be denied and that reason would prevail over prejudice. He thus established a scholarly journal, The Journal of Negro History, a year after he formed the Association. Scientific history, he believed, would counter racial falsehoods, and the community of white scholars would alter its view of the black race. Eventually the truth would trickle down to the public, and the race problem would gradually disappear.
A decade into his labors, Woodson began to think differently about the inherent power of scholarship, the importance of the scholarly community in promoting the truth, and the place of the community in the Association's mission. Scholarship had not transformed race relations, and most white historians had not come to recognize the truth when it was placed before them.
As early as 1920, Woodson had urged black civic organizations to promote the achievements that researchers were uncovering. That year he prodded his fraternity brothers at Omega Psi Phi to take up the work.
In 1924 they responded with the creation of Negro History and Literature Week, which they renamed Negro Achievement Week. By 1925, Woodson decided that the Association had to expand its program. Henforth it would be an organization dedicated to discovering and popularizing the truth. The Association had to re~educate blacks as well as whites, and its doors had to be opened to all interested in history, not just historians and other scholars.
When the Association announced Negro History Week for 1926, Woodson was overwhelmed by the response. Black history clubs sprang up, teachers demanded materials to instruct their pupils, and progressive whites, not simply white scholars and philanthropists, stepped forward to endorse the effort. Woodson and the Association scrambled
to meet the demands of public history. For teachers, the Association published photographs and portraits of important black people. It published plays to dramatize black history. To serve the desire of history buffs to participate in the re~education of black folks, ASNLH formed branches to bring them into the organization.
Woodson selected the week of February that encompassed the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two giants in the history of African Americans. Lincoln, of course, had issued the Emancipation Proclamation that moved the nation away from slavery, and Frederick Douglass had been the greatest leader of African Americans. Symbolically, the selection of Lincoln's and Douglass' birthdays as the week to study Black history reflected Woodson's belief that the history of African Americans was American history.
When Woodson passed in 1950, the Association continued the celebration of Negro History Week. By the time of his death, Negro History Week had become a central part of African American life and substantial progress had been made in bringing more Americans to appreciate the celebration. At mid~century, in cities across the country, mayors issued proclamations noting Negro History Week.
The Black Awakening of the 1960s dramatically expanded the consciousness of African Americans about the importance of black history. The Freedom Schools established during the civil rights era all included the study of Black history. As African Americans entered into mainstream colleges, they demanded Black Studies and Black history became a central feature. Increasingly there were cries for more than a week to study Black history.
The Association, the center of the study of Black life and history, underwent its own changes, including a recognition of the need to devote more time to Black History. In 1976, fifty years after the first celebration, the Association held the first Black History Month. By this time, the entire nation had come to recognize the importance of Black history in the drama of the American
story. Since then all American presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike have issued Black History Month proclamations.
In keeping with tradition, the Association, now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, believes that Black history, like American history, should be studied 365 days a year. Yet as the Founders of Black History Month, ASALH continues to view February as the critical month for carrying forth the mission.
By Daryl Michael Scott
for ASALH at www.asalh.org
The Evolution of a Revolution: "From Jim Crow to Civil Rights to Black Liberation ?"
LESSON ICEBREAKER VIDEO
From Jim Crow to Civil Rights
The 1950s was a very politically unstable time for Afrikan in American. Our rights were constantly under attack. All the efforts made during the Forties to integrate the Armed Forces were abolished during the Korean War. A new era of racist assassinations began to occur and we as a people started to take a stand against the system and business of white supremacy and its blatant racism. The NAACP argued cases in Southern
states against the discriminatory practices in public schools.In May of 1954, the Brown vs. Board of Education occurred. This case ruled racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. The African American
non-violent
movement began taking the form of boycotts, sit-ins, and peaceful
protests. The African American authors during this decade were writing about love, discrimination, the prison system, protest, black sexuality, and black life in Harlem. (also see
The Black Arts Movement
)
In addition, the decade of the 1950s in the United States is known for the dramatic rise of repressive U.S. government politics, especially the virulent anti-communism of the McCarthy era. Amidst and against this backdrop emerged the civil rights struggle, initially spearheaded in the southern United States where Black repression was greatest.
The Two Tendencies of Black Struggle
The Montgomery bus boycott inspired Black students in Greensboro, North Carolina to organize sit-ins in segregated spaces. After centuries of enslavement and decades of Jim Crow inequality, the Black community seized upon the first opportunity to fight the system, throw off the yoke of legal segregation and finally achieve formal democratic rights. Consequently, great numbers of Black people entered into the civil rights movement.
Malcolm X came to embody this second current of the Black liberation movement, which emphasized our
common heritage, identity and destiny as a people. The Nation of Islam encouraged the Black community to take control of its own institutions, to support Black businesses and to disengage from the cultural and socio-political happenings of the white man.
Over time, Malcolm X’s frustration with this overall policy of disengagement of the NOI and his silencing over the "chicken coming home to roost" comment; Minister Malcolm made his official break with the Nation of Islam in 1964. Critical of the non-violent principles of mainstream civil rights groups, Malcolm organized the secular Organization of Afro-American Unity to take the political, social and economic demands of the growing Black and liberation movement into an international arena.For those forces increasingly frustrated with mainstream civil rights leadership and the overall project of integration into a white supremacist / racist society, Malcolm philosophy offered an uncompromising, internationalist vision and a no-nonsense paradigm that linked the struggle of Black people in Amerikkka with anti-colonial struggles in Afrika. As such, Malcolm—along with revolutionary leaders like the Hornorable Robert F. Williams —served as a bridge to a new stage in the movement from civil rights to Black liberation. As the civil rights struggle moved into a movement for Black national liberation and self determination, many activists began looking for political strategies that went beyond the humanist-integrationist inbetweenity of mainstream civil rights groups. Influenced by the liberation movements sweeping the oppressed countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, more and more Black militants began to study socialist ideas. (please see Lets Grow Up and Move On By Junious Ricardo Stanton in ChickenBones Journal).
The two tendencies of civil rights verses human rights, therefore,
cannot be fully understood in the tactical
framework of self-defense versus non-violence—what is often referred to as the “Malcolm-versus-Martin” debate . The revolutionary wing of the Black liberation movement set its sights beyond the democratic / integrationist goals of freedom, justice and equality that the mainstream civil rights groups aimed for. More higher, it aimed for social equality, based first and foremost on the Black community’s control of its own social, political, economic and educational organizations and institutions.
Dozens of national groups and hundreds of local organizations took part in what became a full-scale Black liberation movement within the United States. The Black Panther Party was perhaps the most developed and highest expression of this movement, but there were a variety of groups with varying political programs that comprised the revolutionary wing of the Black liberation movement.The Revolutionary Action Movement
In 1963, young activists led by Max Stanford
( Muhammad Ahmad)—a close associate of Malcolm X and Queen Mother Audley Moore —created the Revolutionary Action Movement . A semi-clandestine organization and paramilitary wing of the OAAU, the RAM articulated a revolutionary program for African Americans that fused Black nationalism with Marxism-Leninism. Its goal was to develop revolutionary cadre in the northern cities and connect with more militant students in the south involved with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of Racial Equality .RAM supported the movement by SNCC and others for armed self-defense for southern Blacks terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan—the extra-legal army enforcing the racist Jim Crow segregation system. RAM also provided security for Malcolm X after his break from the Nation of Islam and members of RAM actively participated in the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
RAM had an extremely active branch in Detroit, which had become a center of revolutionary activism. During the 1967 Detroit Rebellion , RAM formed the Black Guards, a youth group that hoped to channel the spontaneous rebellion into coordinated revolutionary action. Despite their limited success in this regard, RAM was one of the first groups that not only recognized the legitimacy of urban rebellions, but also aimed to formulate a concrete plan of action around those rebellions.
Consequently, RAM became one of the first casualties of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) . Max Stanford and other RAM leaders were charged with plotting to assassinate mainstream political leaders Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young. At this point, Stanford dissolved the formal structure of the organization. As individuals, many RAM members gained influence in groups like the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee
SNCC had pioneered the “sit-in” movement that desegregated lunch counters all
over the country. Just a few years earlier, it was considered a cornerstone of the mainstream civil rights movement. SNCC led the student section of the civil rights struggle, helping to register African Americans in the most racist and dangerous areas of the south, including the Mississippi delta and Lowndes County, Alabama.
SNCC was influential in creating the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party , perhaps the most famous working-class organizing effort to have ever taken place in the south. Mirrored in other places throughout the South, the MFDP was a state-wide political party that challenged Dixiecrat control of the Democratic Party and the white supremacy embedded in the electoral system as a whole. Concerned about preserving the “Solid South,” liberals in the Democratic Party permitted an all-white slate from Mississippi and denied the MFDP its place at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.'
SNCC turned dramatically away from the pacifist mainstream civil rights movement, cutting ties with
many white liberal organizations. Influenced by Malcolm X and the Watts rebellion of 1965 , SNCC leaders like Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Toure),H. Rap Brown , Jim Forman and others began to articulate views based on Marxism and revolutionary Black nationalism.
( please see Lets Grow Up and Move On By Junious Ricardo Stanton in ChickenBones Journal).
SNCC became a breeding ground for young revolutionaries. One of the first civil rights and student organizations to denounce the Vietnam War , SNCC elaborated an anti-imperialist analysis that distinguished itself from the issue-oriented and often near-sighted outlook of other organizations of that era.
Despite the problems of sexism that plagued all movements o
f the period,someof the most dynamic women of color leaders, including Kathleen
Cleaver of the Black Panthers, came to prominence as SNCC leaders. Kathleen Cleaver became the BPP's National Communications Secretary and helped to organize the campaign to get Huey Newton released from prison.
In 1966, SNCC activist Willie Mukasa Ricks proclaimed the slogan of Black liberation movements to come: “Black Power.” SNCC leaders like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown became widely known premier revolutionary leaders, with Carmichael’s book, “Black Power,” emerging as one of the first manifestos of the rapidly expanding revolutionary movement.
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers
By 1968, growing numbers of young Black workers and students, including Vietnam war veterans, came to the conclusion that only revolution and self-determination could do away with the systemic oppression and destitution of the Black community. Two strong, disciplined organizations emerged, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Black Panther Party , embodying this spirit.
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers had its roots in the struggle of Detroit’s Black autoworkers, who in 1968 launched a series of wildcat strikes to protest the unfair treatment and racism of the Chrysler Corporation and the United Auto Workers union. These actions led to the formation of an organization known as DRUM (originally, Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, later the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement).
The efforts of DRUM radicalized workers and led to the formation of an explicitly Marxist organization, with the goal of galvanizing the Black working class with a revolutionary consciousness and ultimately leading a socialist-type revolution.
The LRBW put out a regular paper, created a publishing house and was also able to tap into a large portion of the Black community, as well as the student movement in colleges and high schools in and around Detroit. The League was one of the only Black groups to argue explicitly for the organization of the working class and to mobilize thousands of Black union members into militant action. The actions of the LRBW led to an improvement in working conditions, and a greater leadership role for Blacks in the United Auto Workers union.The Black Panther Party
Perhaps the best-known Black liberation group in the United States is the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Organized in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panthers began as an organization dedicated to the protection of Oakland’s Black community from racist police violence. In 1967, however, when Black Panther Party members staged a dramatic demonstration by walking into the California State House with shotguns—it was legal in California to carry such weapons—to bring attention to their Ten-Point Program, they were catapulted into the national spotlight. In the next two years, the Black Panthers developed into a major national organization with thousands of members. By 1970, they had 35 chapters. The Black Panthers were best known for their “Survival Programs,” which provided much needed aid to the Black community. At its peak, their breakfast program fed 200,000 school children a day. They initiated and operated free health screening clinics, food drives, sickle cell disease awareness programs and, in Oklahoma City, a free ambulance service. But, the Black Panther Party was not simply a Black community service organization. They considered the Survival Programs a step towards self-determination and a way to raise the political consciousness of Black people. They spoke about the necessity for revolutionary change inside the United States. The Party’s political education stressed the principals of Marxism and the Party elaborated anti-imperialist politics, which included cultivating relationships with revolutionaries from Africa to China.
The destruction of the Black Panther Party is in many ways a case study for state repression. Threatened by the revolutionary potential of socio-politically conscious Black people, the U.S. government carried out a series of subversive activities, including the outright assassination of Panther leaders like Fred Hampton and many others. Although the organization was destroyed, it has left a powerful legacy that still influences us today.
Aluta Continua / The Struggle Continues
The RAM the SNCC, the DRUM and the BPP are only four of a host of socio-political organizations which in the late 1960s and 1970s composed an entire movement oriented towards Black National Liberation and Self Determination. It is important for the Hip Hop generation and their childern to draw lessons from and reaffirm these movements' place in the history of the Black civil and human rights struggle and to continue our struggle for National Liberation and Self Determination as Nu Afrikan People.
In the wake and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, revealing for the whole world to see the systematic racism / white supremacy that the Black nation in the United States still suffer, it is clear that "the more things have changed, the more things have stayed the same". The objective basis for the Black liberation movement remains as pressing today as ever. Political oppression, social degradation and economic exploitation of people Afrikan descent is as alive and well today as it was fifty years ago.
The historical passion for freedom and the socio-political vision of the revolutionary organizations that grew up in the Black communities of the 60s continues to inspire thousands of Black civil rights activists and revolutionaries to date looking for a way move forward in the struggle against white supremacy/racism.
This brief essay has been intended to charge the Hip Hop generation to take the torch of our ongoing struggle for National Liberation ans Self Determination as "New Afrikan Peoples"; based on drawing lessons from the those that have preceded us.
Author RBG Street Scholar 2007/08
COMPANION LESSON
RBG Street Scholars Think Tank "State of Black America"
 | Katrina and Racism-A RBG View"They died from abject neglect," retorted community activist Leah Hodges. "We left body bags behind." Angry evacuees described being trapped in temporary shelters where one New Orleans resident said she was "one sunrise from being consumed by maggots and flies." Another woman said military troops focused machine gun laser targets on her granddaughter's forehead. Others said their families were called racial epithets by police. "No one is going to tell me it wasn't a race issue," said New Orleans evacuee Patricia Thompson, 53, who is now living in College Station, Texas. "Yes, it was an issue of race. Because of one thing: when the city had pretty much been evacuated, the people that were left there mostly was black." |
A People's History of the United States is a 1980 nonfiction book by American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn seeks to present American history through the eyes of those rarely heard in mainstream histories. A People's History, though originally a dissident work, has become a major success and was a runner-up in 1980 for the National Book Award. It has been adopted for reading in some high schools and colleges across the United States and has been frequently revised, with the most recent edition covering events through 2003. In 2003, Zinn was awarded the Prix des Amis du Monde Diplomatique for the French version of this book, Une histoire populaire des Etats-Unis. Over one million copies have been sold.
A reviewer for the The New York Times suggested the book should be "required reading" for students. In a 1998 interview prior to a speaking engagement at the University of Georgia, Zinn told Catherine Parayre he had set "quiet revolution" as his goal for writing A People's History. "Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives."
In 2004, Zinn published a companion volume with Anthony Arnove, titled Voices of a People's History of the United States. The book parallels A People's History in structure, supplementing it with material from frequently overlooked primary sources.
RBGz MP3 Collection of the book/click and play (sequenced)
Interests: pit bull breeding, educational scholarship that is grassroots can le, educational scholarship that is accessible and us
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