The episodes of violence that accompanied Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder were the latest in a string of urban riots that began in the mid-1960s. Between 1964 and 1968, there were 329 riots in 257 cities across the nation, including the 1965 riots in Watts, an African American neighborhood in Los Angeles. Thousands of businesses were destroyed, and by the time the violence ended, thirty-four people were dead, most of them African Americans killed by the Los Angeles police and the National Guard. More riots took place during the tense, hot summers of 1966 and 1967.

Frustration and anger lay at the heart of these disruptions. Despite the programs of Johnson’s Great Society (which implemented programs to help alleviate poverty in America), good healthcare, job opportunities, and safe housing were abysmally lacking in urban African American neighborhoods throughout the country, including in the North and West, where discrimination was less overt but just as harmful. In the eyes of many rioters, the federal government either could not or would not address their suffering, and most existing civil rights groups and their leaders had been unable to achieve significant results toward racial justice and equality. Disillusioned, many African Americans turned to those with more radical ideas about how best to obtain equality and justice.

Malcolm X

Many embraced the more militant message of the burgeoning Black Power Movement as a result of Malcolm X’s compelling expressions of Black pride. Malcolm X was a minister in the Nation of Islam (NOI), a Muslim religious organization and Black nationalist group that promoted Black economic independence, affirmed the use of self-defense against White violence, and sought the end of White supremacy. In a radical departure from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s emphasis on nonviolence, Malcolm X advocated armed resistance in defense of the safety and well-being of Black Americans, stating, “I don’t call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence.” Malcolm X encouraged African Americans to pursue freedom, equality, and justice by “any means necessary.”

Prior to his assassination in 1965, Malcolm X and the NOI emerged as the radical alternative to the racially integrated, largely Protestant approach of Martin Luther King Jr. For much of his life, Malcolm X advocated for Black separatism, a Black power philosophy that rejected the pursuit of racial integration and argued that Black communities could best solve their own problems if they remained separate from White society.

Figure 2. Stokely Carmichael (a), one of the most famous and outspoken advocates of Black Power, is surrounded by members of the media after speaking at Michigan State University in 1967. Malcolm X (b) was raised in a family influenced by Marcus Garvey and persecuted for its outspoken support of civil rights. While serving a stint in prison for armed robbery, he was introduced to and committed himself to the Nation of Islam. (credit b: modification of work by Library of Congress)

Stokely Carmichael

Malcolm X’s organization may have disbanded, but his words and ideas continued to thrive in the Black Power movement. Later Black Power leaders, including Stokely Carmichael and leaders of the Black Panther Party, credited Malcolm X with providing an intellectual basis for Black Nationalism and legitimizing violence as a strategy to achieve the goals of Black Power.

Malcolm X’s perspective became increasingly appealing following President Johnson’s refusal to take up the cause of the Black delegates in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. SNCC activists became frustrated with institutional tactics and turned away from the organization’s founding principle of nonviolence and pursuit of integration. In the late 1960s, Stokely Carmichael, influenced by the ideology of Black separatism, expelled SNCC’s White members and rejected interracial efforts in the rural South.

Carmichael’s actions were representative of an evolving movement that called for Black Americans to play a dominant role in cultivating Black institutions and articulating Black interests rather than relying on interracial, moderate approaches. At a June 1966 civil rights march, Carmichael debuted an alternate understanding of freedom for Black Americans. Frustrated by the endurance of discrimination, he told the crowd, “We been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start saying now is black power!” ^[1] The slogan not only resonated with audiences, it also stood in direct contrast to King’s “Freedom Now!” campaign. The political slogan of Black Power could encompass many meanings, but at its core, it stood for the self-determination of Black people in political, economic, and social organizations.

The Black Panthers

Malcolm X and Carmichael’s expressions of Black Power inspired the formation of a number of new organizations. Among the most well-known was the Black Panther Party, founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California. The Black Panthers became the standard-bearers for direct action and self-defense, expanding and localizing the concept of decolonization in their drive to liberate Black communities from White power structures. The revolutionary organization also sought reparations and exemptions for Black men from the military draft.

Citing police brutality and racist governmental policies, the Black Panthers aligned themselves with the “other people of color in the world” against whom America was fighting abroad. Although the Black Panthers were perhaps most well known for their open display of weapons, military-style dress, sometimes violent tactics, and Black nationalist beliefs, the party’s 10-Point Plan also included employment, housing, and education. The Black Panthers worked in local communities to run “survival programs” that provided food, clothing, medical treatment, and drug rehabilitation. They focused on modes of resistance that empowered Black activists on their own terms.

Women of the Black Panther Party

Figure 3. Women played an essential and significant role in the Black Panther movement.

As social movements continued to accelerate in the 1960s, they were generally dominated by male leadership, with women being identified in the narrative only as secondary counterparts. The Black Panther Party (BPP) is often reduced to the “politics of manhood”^[2], or as a caricature of hypermasculine men who wear black leather jackets and tote guns for self-defense.

However, Black women were at the epicenter of this movement no matter the role or avenue they chose. Some women of the BPP organized and rallied, some handled administrative duties, and some worked armed security. By the end of the 1960s, the majority of the rank-and-file members were women. Some Panther women helped to refine the group’s philosophy, and contributed to the organization’s newspaper, The Black Panther, illustrated by male artist and member Emory Douglas. “There was no one way to be a Black Panther Party woman. They came from all walks of life, and they entered and exited the party at different times,” says scholar and filmmaker Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest.^[3]

Black women remained vital to the infrastructure of the BPP and were not relegated to the margins, despite a longstanding lack of acknowledgment in most historical narratives. Their contributions were many, and they were able to advance interpretations of the Party’s founding principles regarding gender roles both within the organization and in the larger society. They complicated internal assumptions that women in the organization could only fulfill roles that generally aligned with the dominant culture’s unexamined sexism. For example, one of the initiatives of the BPP was the Free Breakfast for School Children Program which provided meals to needy children in the community. While preparing and serving food might seem a traditionally feminine undertaking, both the men and women of the BPP served the food and set a public example for responsive community engagement.

Black women of the BPP even spearheaded the “Free Huey!” movement that led to three years of rallies and protests to release Panther leader Huey Newton from prison after he was charged with 1st-degree murder, assault, and kidnapping in October 1967. These charges were eventually overturned and Newton was released on August 5, 1970.

From its founding to the BPP’s dissolution the women of the organization fought for a more inclusive understanding of Black Power and a more nuanced approach to social justice as it related to gender roles.^[4] To quote former BPP member Ericka Huggins, “when I say that women ran the Black Panther Party, I’m not bragging. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t cute. It was dangerous and it was scary. The work that women did held the Black Panther Party together. If Huey were alive, he would say that. Bobby Seale is still alive and he says that all the time. There’s nobody that would refute it. It was a fact.”^[5]

Black Pride

Black Power was part of a larger process of cultural change. The 1960s composed a decade not only of Black Power but also of Black Pride. African American abolitionist John S. Rock had coined the phrase “Black Is Beautiful” in 1858, but in the 1960s it was revitalized as an important slogan among activists who sought to raise self-esteem and encourage pride in African ancestry. Black Pride urged African Americans to reclaim their African heritage and promote group solidarity by substituting African and African-inspired cultural practices, such as handshakes, hairstyles, and dress, for more assimilative White cultural practices.

No individual did more to further African-American interest in African culture than Maulana Karenga. Born Ronald Everrett, his studies in the history and anthropology of Africa gave him a framework for how Black Americans might celebrate and take pride in their own heritage. He formed the US Organization (That’s “us” and not U.S.) in 1965 to promote a more Afro-centric frame of mind. Karenga urged Black Americans to learn Swahili, and practice what he saw as traditional African values. These values, such as umoja (unity) and ujamaa (collective economics) markedly contrasted with the individualism and capitalism that Karenga perceived as foundational to Western civilization. Perhaps most importantly, US popularized the celebration of Kwanzaa as an authentically African alternative to Christmas. Although Karenga was arrested for assault and US declined in his absence, its validation of African culture as worthy of praise and emulation has become a key element of Black Pride.

This pride in a uniquely African-American lifestyle slowly permeated into mainstream culture. One of the many cultural products of this movement was the popular television music program Soul Train, created by Don Cornelius in 1969, which celebrated Black culture and aesthetics. Even the proliferation of afro hairstyles in the late 1960s and 1970s suggested a sea change in how many Black Americans saw themselves. While earlier generations endured painful “conking” to straighten their hair in imitation of White styles, African-Americans of the late 1960s and 1970s began to see their hair’s natural texture as beautiful in its own right.

Figure 4. When the Jackson Five appeared on Soul Train, each of the five brothers sported a large afro, a symbol of Black Pride in the 1960s and 70s.