Black Power, Black Consciousness, and the Black Panthers

David Goldberg, Trevor Grifey, eds. Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. x + 265 pp. $24.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-8014-7431-6. Daniel R. Magaziner. The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010. 298 pp. $26.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-8214-1918-2. Yohuru Williams, Jama Yazerow, eds. In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. x + 390 pp. $23.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-8223-3890-1. Reviewed by Derek Catsam (University of Texas of the Permian Basin) Published on H-1960s (January, 2013) Commissioned by Zachary J. Lechner (Centenary College of Louisiana) Reconsidering Black Nationalisms: Black Power, Black Consciousness, and the Black Panthers On a highway in Mississippi Stokely thers. And in South Africa Steve Biko rose to fill the Carmichael called for Black Power. In Northern space of a quiescent anti-Apartheid movement by California Bobby Seale and Huey Newton raised calling for Black Consciousness. their fists and wielded their guns as Black Pan‐ H-Net Reviews These images are not inaccurate as represen‐ (2007), a wide-reaching and expansive exploration tations of their respective movements. But they of black nationalist alternatives to the prevailing fall woefully short of providing a full picture of the nonviolent civil rights movement. Unwilling to ac‐ struggles against white supremacy in the United cept narrow labels or to limit views of Black Power States and South Africa that emerged in the late to its most visible adherents, and certainly seeing 1960s. And the passage of time has allowed for the beyond the Black Panthers, Joseph manages to emergence of mythology in the place of history. convey the richness of Black Power: the call for This mythology has in turn flattened and cultural and intellectual autonomy derived from warped the past. Thus, in the United States, “Black within the black community; the demand for more Power” and the Black Panthers have come to rep‐ than simply overcoming the worst of Jim Crow in resent a shameful rejection of the nonviolent path the South but rather demands for a better life in embodied by Martin Luther King Jr. In South northern cities as well; calls for Black Power, yes, Africa, Black Consciousness has too often been but also for black pride; and an insistence that seen as representing the ineffectual and star- black was indeed beautiful. Joseph both built on crossed aftermath of the crushing of the African and wrote in the midst of a surge of works empha‐ National Congress (ANC) in the wake of the 1960 sizing that in many circles in the South as well as Sharpeville Massacre. If in the United States, Black the North self-defense was considered fully legiti‐ Power and the Black Panthers represent a rejec‐ mate, revealing how the use of violence for protec‐ tion of the integrationism of King and his follow‐ tion was far more common than the King-centered ers, Black Consciousness is usually seen as a natu‐ narrative of civil rights recognizes. Furthermore, ral, but ill-fated, outcropping of the suppression of Joseph reminds us of the holistic nature of Black legitimate protest embodied in the ANC. To be sure, Power, which encouraged artists, provided meals the image of Black Power, the Black Panthers, and and books for children, and pursued community similar movements carry a negative stigma in the organizing far from the media’s glare. American popular consciousness more than does Providing evidence both that Joseph was not Black Consciousness in South Africa. But in both alone in his pursuit of a richer understanding of the American and South African examples, various these trends and that Black Power was about more strains of black nationalism inevitably emerge as than simply the rhetoric and images that journal‐ being subservient to (and even destructive of) a ists frequently used to capitalize on the fears of larger and perhaps more palatable movement. If white America are the essays in David Goldberg’s King casts a heavy shadow in the United States, a and Trevor Griffey’s Black Power at Work. Their ti‐ shadow deepened by his martyrdom, Nelson Man‐ tle is to be taken literally, for Black Power was of‐ dela and other members of the struggle generation ten about economic opportunity and providing tend at least to shroud the popular understanding jobs, especially for the urban working class and of Black Consciousness and its main adherents. working poor. The authors who contribute to this In the last few years, historians have granted collection investigate a wide array of case studies Black Power, in its myriad forms, a good deal of at‐ showing how employment, unionism, affirmative tention. Always a current in the historiography of action, and Black Power melded to try to provide race, civil rights, and African American history, the economic opportunity for construction workers. trickle in recent years has become a flood. Much of Initially, many readers might think this focus the credit for this wave is the result of Peniel E. on construction jobs to be narrow, even parochial, Joseph’s fine book, Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: but instead the book’s contributors demonstrate A Narrative History of Black Power in America how in just this one area Black Power proves far 2 H-Net Reviews more complex and varied than traditional histori‐ Bay Area out West. The authors emphasize labor ography, never mind the popular perception, has and affirmative action, but also the often inter‐ understood. These case studies “unsettle assump‐ twined roles of class and masculinity. If traditional tions,” as the editors assert, and feed long civil histories of civil rights place Dwight Eisenhower, rights movement concepts through their emphasis John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson at the cen‐ on local politics in the North, Midwest, and West, ter of national fights, these essayists, looking as emphasizing how local actors often wanted to they do at the late 1960s and the 1970s, tend to lo‐ work within existing systems (p. 5). Far from de‐ cate their national political center of gravity in manding separatism, these activists actually want‐ Richard Nixon. Additionally, they highlight the ed to work within existing labor frameworks and complexities of affirmative action while, in the to be integrated into existing (and white-dominat‐ end, busting a range of myths on this front too. ed) labor unions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the They show how white workers and the politicians white unions became part of the problem for advo‐ who have over the years found black workers use‐ cates of jobs for black construction workers. ful as political props have blamed affirmative ac‐ These demands were not easily met, and when tion for various difficulties with virtually no evi‐ Black Power adherents ran into intransigence, dence. protests and sometimes riots (or at least “riots”) None of this analysis is as sexy as dashikis and emerged, especially in the summer and fall of 1969, raised fists, perhaps. But it may well be more repre‐ when demands for access, often in the form of af‐ sentative of what Black Power meant to many of firmative action, resulted in large-scale protests at those individuals in the middle of the movement. least in part because organizers wanted to “capi‐ The theater of struggle was great. Jobs, subsistence, talize on white people’s fears in the wake of urban and opportunity, however, lay at the heart of Black rebellions” (p. 10). In linking Black Power with la‐ Power for the many people whose blackness kept bor, economic demands, and affirmative action, them from opportunity and thus politicized them the contributors to this volume further challenge to seek some kind of power. the declension narrative in which the noble nonvi‐ A 2003 conference held at Wheelock College olent armies of the classic phase of the civil rights provided the genesis for the essays in Jama Laze‐ movement gave way to angry, radical black men row and Yohuru Williams’s fine collection In and women. But rather than romanticize their Search of the Black Panther Party. If the contribu‐ subject, the authors are almost universally aware tors to Black Power at Work see their topic that the windows that Black Power activists forced through the lens of the construction industry and open tended to close quickly, and “while African the limited economic opportunities that it repre‐ American movements to desegregate the construc‐ sented, the authors of these essays cover wider ter‐ tion industry made affirmative action politically rain and tackle familiar elements of the Black possible, that moment of possibility was excep‐ Panthers. While providing new perspectives on tionally brief” (p. 20). these well-worn tropes, they seemingly caution That the window was open at all is important readers against trusting what they think they and reveals the shortcomings of the simplistic de‐ know about the Panthers without rejecting all of clension narrative. The authors of Black Power at that inherited knowledge either. The collection is Work focus, largely effectively, on protest move‐ thus not as focused as Goldberg and Griffey’s, but ments that were often at least loosely affiliated in its eclectic and far-reaching ambitions are a Brooklyn, Newark, and Philadelphia in the North‐ strong point and will open new, and revive some east; Chicago and Detroit in the Midwest; and the old, avenues for investigation. 3 H-Net Reviews In their introduction, Lazerow and Williams place their investigations against the backdrop of emphasize the theme of “dynamism” in the history the myth making that surrounded the Panthers, of the Black Panther Party, and after reading the eventually revealing the truth within the myths.

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