One
of the biggest challenges African people face in America is to rejuvenate Black Nationalist thinking
as struggle to determine for ourselves as a people what
is in our best collective interests.
There
are far too many African people in this country who think
what is good for other people should be good for us. Nothing
could be further from the truth. We can only determine
what is good for us by reestablishing Black Nationalist
thinking and developing a Black Nationalist program of
action. This is the missing link to the liberation of
African people in America.
Let us briefly review the development and impact of Black
Nationalism in America.
Black
Nationalism is a tradition that emerged in the early nineteenth-century
among those Black leaders who understood the need for
African people in America to develop a national entity as the only
solution for Black people in North America,
Latin America, or the Caribbean.
These
nineteenth-century Black Nationalist leaders such as Denmark
Vessey, Nat Turner, David Walker,
Henry Highland Garnet, James T. Holly, Martin R. Delany,
Pap Singleton, Edwin McCabe, and Henry McNeal Turner understood that African people in America
were a �nation within a nation� and should organize to
collectively struggle for the liberation of Black people
in this country and throughout the world.
During
this era, there were some Black Nationalist leaders, before
and after the Civil War, who led movements for people
of African ancestry to leave this country and establish
a homeland somewhere else. These proposals included Africa,
Canada
and the Caribbean.
Other
Black Nationalist leaders led movements for Black people
to control the towns where they lived and others led movements
to the western region of this country to establish all
Black towns in Kansas and Oklahoma.
The
core of this Black Nationalist tradition has been to defeat
and overthrow the system of white supremacy,
seize control of land (somewhere) and to achieve self
determination for the oppressed Black masses.
The
Black Nationalist tradition has always been opposed to
integrations, assimilation, and accommodation as a solution to the problems of people of African
ancestry in America.
In this regard, Black Nationalist
tradition has rejected the strategy and tactics of appealing
to the morality of white people and their white supremacy
system.
Black
Nationalists have been historically clear that people
in power don�t teach powerless people how to get power.
And they certainly don�t give power away,
even though, when challenged,
they may give up some concessions.
As
Black Nationalism emerged in the twentieth-century,
the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the establishment
of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
and the African Communicates League (ACL) became the leading
spokesman for Black Nationalist ideas and organizing.
Garvey
used his varied skills to become on of our true twentieth-century
freedom fighters. Garvey arrived in Harlem, New York on March 16,
1916. By 1919, Garvey was well established as the President General of the UNIA/ACL
that had membership of over three million people with
more than three hundred branches in the United States.
Perhaps
Garvey�s greatest contribution to the upliftment of our
people, through Black Nationalism, was his ability
to find a formula for organizing African people around
the African principle: the greatest good for the greatest
number.
This
was reflected in the First International Convention of
the Negro Peoples of the World, in Madison Square
Garden, in 1920. Over twenty thousand Black people from all over the world
witnessed the choosing of Red,
Black, and Green as the colors of the Provisional Government.
In
this context, Garvey and the UNIA/ACL had established an economic arm,
the Negro Factories Corporation,
with cooperative stores, restaurants, steam laundry ships,
tailor shops, dressmaking shops, millinery stores,
a doll factory to manufacture Black dolls and a publishing
house. Also, Garvey formed a
Steamship Corporation.
The
Black Nationalist tradition was continued in the twentieth-century
through the Nation of Islam and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,
who utilized many of the Garvey and UNIA/ACL organizing
tactics and strategies.
It
was during the 1960s Black Power explosion that the Black
Nationalist tradition reemerged through the influence
of Malcolm X, who adopted Black Nationalism as the political
philosophy, economic and social
philosophy of the organization of Afro American Unity
in 1964 after he left the Nation of Islam.
Finally, the Black Nationalist tradition, today, is spearheaded through the African
Centered Education Movement. The mass acceptance of Kwanzaa,
African Liberation Day, Buy
Black Campaigns, the Reparations Movement, and Controlling
Our Own Communities Campaigns are all part of the ongoing
Black Nationalist tradition.
Without
vigorous Black Nationalist thinking and an aggressive
Black Nationalist program of action, we will continue to chase false dreams created by our oppressors.
We must put an end to this!
Once
Black Nationalism is understood by all Black people,
it will be the foundation upon which the true liberation
of people of African ancestry in America
will take place.
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman Emeritus
of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click
here
to contact Dr. Worrill.
