History of the The Black Power Movement, f. RBGz New Video, HD Power Point, Poster Packets

This is not political control in the sense presented by the mayoralty election of Stokes in Cleveland or Hatcher in Gary. These were nominal matters with little relationship to real power, and it is real power rather than the ornaments or the appearance of power that black people interested in. In Cleveland, perhaps even more than in Gary, there was no real power evidenced in the election except perhaps the power represented by the cohesion of a black community that voted approximately 96 per cent for a black candidate - a bloc vote that up to now blacks would have considered unthinkable as a deviation from the American ideals of democracy.

I know this to have been true because for the last five or six years I have been campaigning to get the black people of Detroit to support a black slate, to vote a black bloc. The idea that I would advocate a racist approach to a solution of the black man's problems seemed unthinkable to many respectable, responsible black leaders. But this feeling has grown less and less as the years have gone and in Cleveland, which is much less organized and much less militant and much less black-conscious than Detroit, all but 4 per cent of the black community did support a black candidate without any feeling that they were in any way negating the basic principles of American good government.

This indicates to me that something basically important is happening to the black community throughout America: black people have tended to sever their identification with the white community and to become alienated from America. They no longer want to be part of the white man's society; they have ceased to accept the white man's standards of what is good or bad. This is a total rejection of integration as an ideal or an objective. Instead, the black man is trying to recapture a sense of identification with his own cultural heritage. This involves the rediscovery of Africa, the development of black consciousness, black pride, black unity, and at least the beginning of the development of black power.

Politically, this means that black people want to control the center city. In Detroit, certainly, we aspire to complete control of the city government. We realize we are in a race with the Federal government and the white Establishment because the government is trying to make it impossible for the center cities to become black communities. It is allocating funds with the prerequisite that the centers become a part of a metropolitan combination or area. In Detroit, for example, they are trying to build a six-county metropolitan area which will receive full support from the Federal government and from the white Establishment. To be sure, this plan is not completely supported by white suburbanites because they do not want to become part of a metropolitan government that has a large minority of black people in it. Nevertheless, the Establishment in general, the mass-communication media, the Federal government, and the Democratic Party all seem determined to bring it about as fast as possible.

As a result, the timetable of the black community in Detroit has to be stepped up. Normally, if we followed the gradual evolution of our power in the city we could wait for, not the next election in 1969, but the one after that. However, it now seems almost a necessity for us to elect a black mayor in 1969 unless we are willing to see all the power assumed by a metropolitan government and a mayor elected who would be merely a functionary, a greeter of distinguished visitors. The black community in Detroit now represents at least 40 per cent of the population, and with white people fleeing and black people still coming in the mathematical point of control is near.

Politics is only one aspect, however. It is also necessary for blacks to have economic control of their community. This is more difficult and complex than a political take-over. How do people who are powerless and don't have much money take over the economics of a community? In Detroit we are trying to invent strategies for this, such as the development of co-op retail stores, co-op buying clubs, co-op light manufacturing, co-op education, and similar undertakings that can become possible when large numbers of people with a sense of unity and a sense of cause can put together small individual amounts of money to create enough total capital to establish businesses with some degree of security and possibility of success. These ventures will give black people a sense of their economic possibilities and a realization of their need for economic training. They could also serve as a measuring stick for the white merchants who now prey upon the black ghetto. They will find it less easy to exploit their customers when clean stores run by blacks, with decent produce and decent prices, exist in the area.

We realize we cannot take over the economics of the black ghetto simply by the bootstrap method of setting up small co-ops. We will have to use other methods as well, such as selective patronage or boycott or picketing. We must get the white man who is doing business in the black ghetto to recognize that if 85 per cent of his business is with black people, he will have to hire 85 per cent of his employees from the black community. This means from top to bottom, not just the lower levels of employment.

As one illustration, we are now concerned in Detroit with Sears Roebuck, which does a tremendous business in the black ghetto through three large inner-city stores. We are also concerned, of course, because Sears does a large business in every black ghetto across the country. If we can make some inroads in changing their way of doing business in Detroit it will be significant everywhere else. We have a token picket now and then, and we have conversations with the management. By next summer we will have a massive picket around all three stores unless they are converted in the meantime.

This kind of action will have to be taken on every street in every black ghetto everywhere. We must make sure that no white businessman can succeed in a black ghetto without proper hiring policies and without providing decent service and decent products to black people. This has to be accomplished through selective patronage. The use of Molotov cocktails and bricks is a crude way of putting a white merchant out of business. We think it can be done just as effectively merely by refusing to buy in those stores which do not deal fairly with black people.

It is also necessary to acquire more control of large businesses that want to come into the ghetto for urban redevelopment or for other sorts of economic development. White industry, white investment companies, white banks, must accept the same principles when they invest in the ghetto that they accept when they invest in any other nation - and we think of the black ghettos across the country as being a black nation, a nation within a nation, separate, with a common culture, common aspirations, a common oppressor. When white investors go into a foreign country, they recognize that it is legitimate for that country to insist on some local control of the enterprise and also on an agreement for the transfer of ownership to local interests over a reasonable period of time. The black nation will insist on these principles in their ghettos.

In addition, the Federal government is going to have to recognize that when it guarantees funds for an investment in a black community it will have to do it for a black corporation rather than a white corporation. If we can organize enough political strength to have some say in who is going to be President in 1968, 1 think the government will be inclined to pay some attention to our insistence that this money be channeled through black corporations or black co-ops rather than through exploitative white businesses.

Besides the transfer of political power and of economic power we are looking for the control of education, the transfer of power from white educators to black educators, the power of the black community to educate its own children. White people have failed miserably over the past 400 years, the past hundred years, the past ten years, to educate black children. We think it is reasonable now to assume that white people are never going to educate black children properly, that they have no real stake in educating black children, that they are going to keep on a second-rate level all the schools that are designed primarily for the education of black children. Black children in inner-city ghetto schools throughout the country are three to four grades behind in achievement and in reading. Black teachers, administrators, and principals have never had an opportunity to test the possibility of changing the motivation of black children by creating a school situation in which the black community has some say about the curriculum, the textbooks, the teachers, and all the other factors that can make a school an instrument either for education or for debasement.

We feel that most ghetto schools today destroy children rather than educate them. The teachers and administrators serve as power symbols and kill a black child's self-image. Their influence, their lack of concern, and in many instances their contempt make it impossible for a black child to learn. So, we are insisting more and more that a school for black children have black teachers, black principals, and black administrators; that its curriculum be reoriented to cover the culture of black people; that the present textbooks, which are essentially lies, particularly in the area of social science and history, be thrown out and that textbooks explaining the history and cultural background of black people be substituted. We are not insisting that white schools teach the truth, but we do insist that schools in black ghettos teach the truth. Most of the textbooks we have examined that are now used in teaching black children do not teach the truth. So, we now say that the control of the schools must be transferred to black people.

All of this is a far cry from the day when black people wanted to be integrated into white society, and it has happened in a relatively short period of time. It has happened because white people have more and more unmasked themselves. Black people had not fully realized the white attitudes. To see a white mob trying to stop one little black child from going to school was a revelation to black people. Television played a tremendous part in making this revelation possible.

I think that very few black people, after watching this day after day, week after week, year after year, could end up with any feeling that integration was either possible or desirable. Certainly this was true when we watched the sit-in demonstrations, the freedom rides, Martin Luther King's massive demonstrations; we watched the march on the Selma Road, we watched the Meredith march; and when Dr. King moved into Chicago we lost the last vestige of hope that there were different kinds of white people. We saw that white people in Illinois were the same as those in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama, that there was really no difference between Cicero, Illinois, and the mobs of white bigots throughout the South.

White people did this themselves. They killed the myth and the dream of integration, about which Dr. King spoke so eloquently. Black people listened, but then the dream died, because it was not based on reality. Now their dream is to recapture their own past, their own culture, their own history, and to put the race issue on the basis of a power struggle pure and simple.

We will take in this country what we have power enough to take, and what we do not have power enough to take we will stop dreaming about. We will try to build power to take the things we have to have. This is the only kind of equality there is an equality based on power. We are concerned primarily with our own black community. We are not trying to invade white communities, or take over white communities. But we do insist that white people cannot enjoy the luxury of separating us into black ghettos and also enjoy the privilege of exploiting us in these ghettos they have forced us into.

From here on in, we will take the black ghetto and make it a garden spot for ourselves. We will make it something we are proud of. And we will control it. White people will not live in the suburbs and come in each morning to exploit us and go home each night. We will run our own businesses. We will run our own schools. We will run our own government. We do not want the whites to give us anything; we want to take whatever our power allows us to take, because this is the only way it will become ours.

This is where black people are today in Detroit. Black people throughout the country are concerned about whether we will be able to do it in Detroit. We have the organizational structure, we have the leadership, we have all of the things that should make it possible - provided the white man is reasonable.

Ibis may not be a possibility. It may be that Rap Brown is correct in his analysis. He says -and I paraphrase: "I look at the white man everywhere in America and I believe he is headed for one thing, and that is genocide. I do not believe he will rationally approach the problem of transferring power or permitting black people to take control of their own communities. The only answer is to get ready for the final solution that the white man in America is now preparing, so that when it is under way the blacks can make it the most expensive final solution the white man has ever undertaken in any country in the world."

Rap Brown may be 100 per cent right. In Detroit we are trying to see whether the white man has the necessary intelligence to make a transfer of power before the final destruction of America. We are not sure, but we are trying. We do not have too long to see whether or not it can be done.

Founder & First Holy Patriarch

Rev. Albert B. Cleage (Jaramogi Abebe AgyEman)

	Rev. Albert B. Cleage (Jaramogi Abebe Ageyman)

Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman , the first of seven children, was born Albert Buford Cleage, Jr., on June 13, 1911 to Albert Sr., and Pearl Reed Cleage in Indianapolis, Indiana. His parents, who were trailblazers in their own right, moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where his father (a physician), was the first African American to practice medicine in that city. The growing family relocated to Detroit, Michigan, where his father became the first black to be appointed by the city government. It was, however, young Albert’s mother who nurtured his natural curiosity, cultivated his gift of communication, and encouraged his need to be analytical:

As a theologian, Rev. Cleage gained national and international prominence. In the early 1950s, he coined the phrase “Black theology,” making him the founder of a new field of religious studies. He provided his thoughts on the subject in The Black Messiah, a book of sermons published in 1968. A national bestseller, it was eventually translated into fourteen languages. His theological views and opinions were further developed and published in his 1972 work, Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church. These works are still required reading in seminaries and schools of religion throughout the world. Subsequently, he wrote many essays and articles that appeared in a wide variety of publications, which stripped the mystical distortions of Christianity and made it relevant to the lives of black people.

In 1957, Rev. Cleage waged a battle to save the 13th Congressional District from being redistricted, which would have denied area African Americans their first black representative. In 1964, Rev. Cleage, along with a formidable group of supporters that included James Boggs, his wife, Dr. Grace Lee Boggs, attorney Milton Henry, and his brother Richard Henry, joined forces with the Harlem, New York-based Freedom Now Party (FNP). Rev. Cleage ran for governor on the Michigan FNP ticket, considered the first all-black political party in U.S. history. The Michigan campaign, which ran candidates for city, county, and state offices, was the most successful FNP effort in the nation. In 1965, Rev. Cleage ran for the Detroit Common [now City] Council and, two years later, he ran for the U. S. Congress.  Though he did not win any of these races, these pioneering political efforts bore fruit a decade later with the formation of the powerful Black Slate, Inc.

Rev. Cleage was inextricably connected to the needs of his congregation and community. Together they attacked injustice, racism, and inequality in local businesses, city schools, and state politics. He co-founded the Freedom Now Party and ran for governor of Michigan, becoming the first black man to do so since the Reconstruction era. He shared platforms with Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and provided Shrine #1 as a forum for many who spoke out against the oppression of black people.

In his lifetime, Rev. Cleage would see the expansion of the Shrine of the Black Madonna™ on multiple levels.  The church expanded to different states and developed a core group of members in cities such as: Flint, MI, Kalamazoo, MI, Houston, TX, Atlanta, GA, New York, NY, & Philadelphia, PA.  Last but not least was the most recent expansion into South Carolina.  In 1999, the Shrine™ expanded to Calhoun Falls, South Carolina and established Shrine #20 with the purchase of Beulah Land Farms.

The struggle of Rev. Cleage later to be known as our beloved founder and first Holy Patriarch, the Honorable Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman was not simply a social one it was also a theological and religious one. Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman suggested that Jesus’ mission was more complex than a journey to the cross in which his human sacrifice would allow people to experience a chimerical kingdom in after death, he explained that his life was a personal example which when emulated could lead people to the experience of God in their present reality. Jaramogi founded a Black Christian Nationalist Movement, which called for black churches to understand the truth of Jesus' teachings and their African heritage. The Pan African Orthodox Christian Church became answer to the question of how God works in the world, a community of faith where you can experience the blessings of Covenant faith with God and his people.

In February 2000, our founder and 1st Holy Patriarch, Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman made his transition on Beulah Land Farm.

• Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman
• Albert Cleage
• http://www.daahp.wayne.edu/biographiesDisplay.php?id=50
• http://eblackstudies.org/intro/chapter10.htm
• http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/cleage-albert-jr-jaramogi-abebe-agyeman-1911-2000

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Position Paper: The Basis of Black Power

The myth that the Negro is somehow incapable of liberating himself, is lazy, etc., came out of the American experience. In the books that children read, whites are always "good" (good symbols are white), blacks are "evil" or seen as savages in movies, their language is referred to as a "dialect," and black people in this country are supposedly descended from savages.

Any white person who comes into the movement has the concepts in his mind about black people, if only subconsciously. He cannot escape them because the whole society has geared his subconscious in that direction.

Miss America coming from Mississippi has a chance to represent all of America, but a black person from either Mississippi or New York will never represent America. Thus the white people coming into the movement cannot relate to the black experience, cannot relate to the word "black," cannot relate to the "nitty gritty," cannot relate to the experience that brought such a word into existence, cannot relate to chitterlings, hog's head cheese, pig feet, ham hocks, and cannot relate to slavery, because these things are not a part of their experience. They also cannot relate to the black religious experience, nor to the black church, unless, of course, this church has taken on white manifestations.

White Power Negroes in this country have never been allowed to organize themselves because of white interference. As a result of this, the stereotype has been reinforced that blacks cannot organize themselves. The white psychology that blacks have to be watched, also reinforces this stereotype. Blacks, in fact, feel intimidated by the presence of whites, because of their knowledge of the power that whites have over their lives. One white person can come into a meeting of black people and change the complexion of that meeting, where a meeting unless he was an obvious Uncle Tom. People would immediately start talking about "brotherhood," "love," etc.; race would not be discussed.

If people must express themselves freely, there has to be a climate in which they can do this. If blacks feel intimidated by whites, then they are not liable to vent the rage that they feel about whites in the presence of whites--especially not the black people whom we are trying to organize, i.e., the broad masses of black people. A climate has to be created whereby blacks can express themselves. The reasons that whites must be excluded is not that one is anti-white, but because the effects that one is trying to achieve cannot succeed because whites have an intimidating effect. Ofttimes, the intimidating effect is in direct proportion to the amount of degradation that black people have suffered at the hands of white people.

Roles of Whites and Blacks It must be offered that white people who desire change in this country should go where that problem (racism) is most manifest. The problem is not in the black community. The white people should go into white communities where the whites have created power for the express purpose of denying blacks human dignity and self-determination. Whites who come into the black community with ideas of change seem to want to absolve the power structure of its responsibility for what it is doing, and saying that change can only come through black unity, which is the worst kind of paternalism. This is not to say that whites have not had an important role in the movement. In the case of Mississippi, their role was very key in that they helped give blacks the right to organize, but that role is now over, and it should be.

People now have the right to picket, the right to give out leaflets, the right to vote, the right to demonstrate, the right to print.

These things which revolve around the right to organize have been accomplished mainly because of the entrance of white people into Mississippi, in the summer of 1964. Since these goals have now been accomplished, whites' role in the movement has now ended. What does it mean if black people, once having the right to organize, are not allowed to organize themselves? It means that blacks' ideas about inferiority are being reinforced. Shouldn't people be able to organize themselves? Blacks should be given this right. Further, white participation means in the eyes of the black community that whites are the "brains" behind the movement, and that blacks cannot function without whites. This only serves to perpetuate existing attitudes within the existing society, i.e., blacks are "dumb," "unable to take care of business," etc. Whites are "smart," the "brains" behind the whole thing.

How do blacks relate to other blacks as such? How do we react to Willie Mays as against Mickey Mantle? What is our response to Mays hitting a home run against Mantel performing the same deed? One has to come to the conclusion that it is because of black participation in baseball. Negroes still identify with the Dodgers because of Jackie Robinson's efforts with the Dodgers. Negroes would instinctively champion all-black teams if they opposed all white or predominantly white teams. The same principle operates for the movement as it does for baseball: a mystique must be created whereby Negroes can identify with the movement.

Thus an all-black project is needed in order for the people to free themselves. This has to exist from the beginning. This relates to what can be called "coalition politics." There is no doubt in our minds that some whites are just as disgusted with this system as we are. But it is meaningless to talk about coalition if there is no one to align ourselves with, because of the lack of organization in the white communities. There can be no talk of "hooking up" unless black people organize blacks and white people organize whites. If these conditions are met, then perhaps at some later date--and if we are going in the same direction--talks about exchange of personnel, coalition, and other meaningful alliances can be discussed.

In the beginning of the movement, we had fallen into a trap whereby we thought that our problems revolved around the right to eat at certain lunch counters or the right to vote, or to organize our communities. We have seen, however, that the problem is much deeper. The problem of this country, as we had seen it, concerned all blacks and all whites and therefore if decisions were left to the young people, then solutions would be arrived at. But this negates the history of black people and whites. We have dealt stringently with the problem of "Uncle Tom," but we have not yet gotten around to Simon Legree. We must ask ourselves, who is the real villain--Uncle Tom or Simon Legree? Everybody knows Uncle Tom, but who knows Simon Legree? So what we have now in SNCC is a closed society, a clique. Black people cannot relate to SNCC because of its unrealistic, nonracial atmosphere; denying their experience of America as a racist society. In contrast, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Martin Luther King, Jr., has a staff that at least maintains a black facade. The front office is virtually all black, but nobody accuses SCLC of being racist.

If we are to proceed toward true liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people. We must form our own institutions, credit unions, co-ops, political parties, write our own histories.

To proceed further, let us make some comparisons between the Black Movement of the early 1900s and the movement of the 1960s--i.e., compare the National Association for the advancement of Colored People with SNCC. Whites subverted the Niagara movement (the forerunner of the NAACP) which, at the outset, was an all-black movement. The name of the new organization was also very revealing, in that it presupposed blacks have to advanced to the level of whites. We are now aware that the NAACP has grown reactionary, is controlled by the black power structure itself, and stands as one of the main roadblocks to black freedom. SNCC, by allowing the whites to remain in the organization, can have its efforts subverted in much the same manner, i.e., through having them play important roles such as community organizers, etc. Indigenous leadership cannot be built with whites in the positions they now hold.

These facts do not mean that whites cannot help. They can participate on a voluntary basis. We can contract work out to them, but in no way can they participate on a policy-making level.

Black Self-Determination The charge may be made that we are "racists," but whites who are sensitive to our problems will realize that we must determine our own destiny.

In an attempt to find a solution to our dilemma, we propose that our organization (SNCC) should be black-staffed, black-controlled, and black-financed. We do not want to fall into a similar dilemma that other civil rights organizations have fallen into. If we continue to rely upon white financial support we will find ourselves entwined in the tentacles of the white power complex that controls this country. It is also important that a black organization (devoid of cultism) be projected to our people so that it can be demonstrated that such organizations are viable.

More and more we see black people in this country being used as a tool of the white liberal establishment. Liberal whites have not begun to address themselves to the real problem of black people in this country--witness their bewilderment, fear, and anxiety when nationalism is mentioned concerning black people. An analysis of the white liberal's reaction to the word "nationalism" alone reveals a very meaningful attitude of whites of an ideological persuasion toward blacks in this country. It means previous solutions to black problems in this country have been made in the interests of those whites dealing with these problems and not in the best interests of black people in the country. Whites can only subvert our true search and struggles for self-determination, self-identification, and liberation in this country. Reevaluation of the white and black roles must now take place so that white no longer designate roles that black people play but rather black people define white people's roles.

Too long have we allowed white people to interpret the importance and meaning of the cultural aspects of our society. We have allowed them to tell us what was good about our Afro-American music, art, and literature. How many black critics do we have on the "jazz" scene? How can a white person who is not part of the black psyche (except in the oppressor's role) interpret the meaning of the blues to us who are manifestations of the song themselves?

It must be pointed out that on whatever level of contact blacks and whites come together, that meeting or confrontation is not on the level of the blacks but always on the level of the whites. This only means that our everyday contact with whites is a reinforcement of the myth of white supremacy. Whites are the ones who must try to raise themselves to our humanistic level. We are not, after all, the ones who are responsible for a genocidal war in Vietnam; we are not the ones who are responsible for neocolonialism in Africa and Latin America; we are not the ones who held a people in animalistic bondage over 400 years. We reject the American dream as defined by white people and must work to construct an American reality defined by Afro-Americans.

White Radicals One of the criticisms of white militants and radicals is that when we view the masses of white people we view the overall reality of America, we view the racism, the bigotry, and the distortion of personality, we view man's inhumanity to man; we view in reality 180 million racists. The sensitive white intellectual and radical who is fighting to bring about change is conscious of this fact, but does not have the courage to admit this. When he admits this reality, then he must also admit his involvement because he is a part of the collective white America. It is only to the extent that he recognizes this that he will be able to change this reality.

Another common concern is, how does the white radical view the black community, and how does he view the poor white community, in terms of organizing? So far, we have found that most white radicals have sought to escape the horrible reality of America by going into the black community and attempting to organize black people while neglecting the organization of their own people's racist communities. How can one clean up someone else's yard when one's own yard is untidy? Again we feel that SNCC and the civil rights movement in general is in many aspects similar to the anticolonial situations in the African and Asian countries. We have the whites in the movement corresponding to the white civil servants and missionaries in the colonial countries who have worked with the colonial people for a long period of time and have developed a paternalistic attitude toward them. The reality of the colonial people taking over their own lives and controlling their own destiny must be faced. Having to move aside and letting the natural process of growth and development take place must be faced.

These views should not be equated with outside influence or outside agitation but should be viewed as the natural process of growth and development within a movement; so that the move by the black militants and SNCC in this direction should be viewed as a turn toward self-determination.

It is very ironic and curious that aware whites in the country can champion anticolonialism in other countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but when black people move toward similar goals of self-determination in this country they are viewed as racists and anti-white by these same progressive whites. In proceeding further, it can be said that this attitude derives from the overall point of view of the white psyche as it concerns the black people. This attitude stems from the era of the slave revolts when every white man was a potential deputy or sheriff or guardian of the state. Because when black people get together among themselves to workout their problems, it becomes a threat to white people, because such meetings were potential slave revolts.

It can be maintained that this attitude or way of thinking has perpetuated itself to this current period and that it is part of the psyche of white people in this country whatever their political persuasion might be. It is part of the white fear-guilt complex resulting from the slave revolts. There have been examples of whites who stated that they can deal with black fellows on an individual basis but become threatened or menaced by the presence of groups of blacks. It can be maintained that this attitude is held by the majority of progressive whites in this country.

Black Identity A thorough re-examination must be made by black people concerning the contributions that we have made in shaping this country. If this re-examination and re-evaluation is not made, and black people are not given their proper due and respect, then the antagonisms and contradictions are going to become more and more glaring, more and more intense, until a national explosion may result.

When people attempt to move from these conclusions it would be faulty reasoning to say they are ordered by racism, because, in this country and in the West, racism has functioned as a type of white nationalism when dealing with black people. We all know the habit that this has created throughout the world and particularly among nonwhite people in this country.

Therefore any re-evaluation that we must make will, for the most part, deal with identification. Who are black people, what are black people, what is their relationship to America and the world?