Black nationalism

Significance: Black nationalism is an identity movement that emphasizes the distinctiveness of black heritage and culture and a revitalization movement that seeks to empower black communities to direct their own futures and have more control over their relations with other racial and ethnic groups.

Black nationalism, a historical movement that dates back to the sixteenth century, first appeared in the form of protests by enslaved Africans who were being transported to the Americas and continued in the form of organized slave revolts that continued until the Emancipation Proclamation. These protests could be termed nationalistic because the participants attempted to reclaim historic identities and rejected the power that the white slave owners had over them.

One of the earliest, best-organized black nationalist movements was started by Paul Cuffe between 1811 and 1815. Cuffe was a black sea captain who transported several dozen black Americans to Africa in an attempt to establish a colony in Sierra Leone. Although black nationalism has taken various forms throughout the history of the United States, the fundamental drive to emphasize black identity and power has always been present.

The International Aspect

Black nationalism has been most explicitly expressed and most broadly studied in the United States, but the movement is not limited to one nation. Black nationalists have asserted their distinctiveness and attempted to achieve self-empowerment in many postcolonial countries in the world, including Caribbean basin nations such as Jamaica, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and, earlier in history, Haiti. Nationalistic feelings not only helped black people in these nations rid themselves of the European powers that had colonized them but also continue to affirm their distinctiveness. Black nationalist organizations have been active in Brazil, South Africa, and western Europe, particularly Great Britain. Many of the movements outside the United States have influenced African American groups, and American black nationalists have in turn had an effect on black people in other countries, especially during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Black Nationalist Leaders

Throughout US history, leaders of the black nationalist movement have often been members of the clergy. In slave eras, some religious leaders would sing black spirituals that often had a political and social meaning in addition to their theological intent. Some of these songs, such as “Steal Away to Jesus,” were used to gather plantation slaves who would escape to freedom. In the post-slavery era, African American ministers often became the major organizers of nationalistic movements because they were the primary leaders in black communities. In their sermons, ministers often drew analogies between the enslaved people of Israel in the Old Testament and disfranchised African Americans.

Some black theologians, such as Joseph Washington, have suggested that black churches functioned as political organizations whose main goal was freedom from white oppression. In the early twentieth century, African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois advocated a dual consciousness for black people that emphasized their distinctiveness while recognizing them as Americans. Eventually Du Bois became disenchanted with the limitations on black status in the United States and explicitly promoted a pan-African movement that would coordinate freedom movements between black people in the United States and Africa. Toward the end of his life, he considered Africa the national homeland for all black people and encouraged them to migrate there.

Milestones for Black Nationalist Movements

Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born political and community leader who had immigrated to the United States, was the creator of the largest mass movement of black nationalism in the history of the nation. Under the auspices of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), millions of black Americans were recruited to the institutions and businesses that he set up as alternatives to white-dominated facilities. These included black capitalist enterprises such as restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, and entertainment centers and a steamship line that served to transport black Americans wishing to migrate to Africa. Garvey also established the African Orthodox Church, a religious denomination that symbolized the highest values of a people seeking freedom and empowerment. White hostility and organizational mismanagement diminished the UNIA’s influence, but Garvey had demonstrated how separate institutions could help African Americans maintain their group identity and be empowered to express it.

Contemporary Black Nationalism

Many black movements followed in Garvey’s footsteps, but one in particular has been successful in continuing parts of his legacy while rejecting any notion of moving back to Africa. The Nation of Islam, whose members are sometimes called Black Muslims, flourished under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad from the 1930s to the 1960s, reaching a peak membership of more than one hundred thousand. The group’s membership, however, does not reflect the many African Americans who did not join the organization but admired its tenets. The Nation of Islam shared Garvey’s insistence that African Americans have their own separate organizations in a white-dominated nation and claimed that the black nation in the United States had a right to be an independent nation with its own land. The Nation of Islam claimed that black people were the original people of creation and, therefore, the pure race. Black people were to remain separate from nonblack people because interacting with them could only make black people less pure. The Nation of Islam emphasizes the central role of the man in the family; the importance of economic self-sufficiency; abstention from alcohol, drugs, and casual sex; and the worship of Allah, the creator. Their institutions are primarily mosques and religious houses of teaching and worship, but they also have agricultural areas in the South, small businesses in the North, and some educational facilities, including elementary schools, in their headquarters, Chicago, Illinois.

The death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975 and the splintering of his organization into several groups did not diminish the influence of some of his followers. Louis Farrakhan, who revived the Nation of Islam under his own leadership in 1981, went on to expand the group's membership, accepting some Latinos and other minorities, and to correlate its agenda with non-Muslim organizations such as black Christian churches and black community-based political groups.

The Impact of Black Nationalism

The two major debates among black nationalists in the United States have centered on two main questions: whether African Americans should return to Africa, or at least live separately from nonblack Americans, and what kind of alliances they should form with other organizations and people. Many people question whether a black nationalist group can be truly nationalistic without returning to Africa or establishing a separate territory within a previously white-dominated country. Malcolm X, who had been Elijah Muhammad’s primary spokesperson in the Nation of Islam, first believed in setting up a separate nation within United States boundaries but later perceived nationalism as a commitment and act that did not require geographical separation. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, cofounders of the nationalistic Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, interpreted existing African American communities as unofficial black “places” that should be allowed self-determination and the expression of racial pride. Farrakhan has played down the notion of a separate land and instead emphasized the idea of separate thought. Regarding the second question, Malcolm X’s post–Nation of Islam organization, Newton’s Black Panther Party, and even Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam have worked with nonblack groups, and all three have interacted with African American Christian clergy, who remain important black community spokespersons and organizers.

In the 1960s, when the US Congress passed a series of desegregation laws, some people believed it would result in the demise of black nationalism. However, because the legal changes did not substantially affect discriminatory customs and attitudes and African Americans remained the object of subtler forms of racism in their economic, political, and social lives, nationalism survived and grew. As long as the United States still harbors discriminatory attitudes and institutions, it is likely that black nationalist movements will continue in one form or another. Black communal pride and self-determination, the marks of identity and revitalization movements, remain relevant as long as the social implications of black “inferiority” persist.

Bibliography

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