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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 who 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, 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.
[Please support the upcoming CCICS Open House Wednesday, April 10th 4:00 p.m. - 7:00
p.m. and Thursday, April 11th 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.]
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