Civil Rights Movement

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Leonard N. Moore

The African-American struggle for civil rights marks a turning point in American history because it represents the period when African Americans made their entry into the American mainstream. Although the focus of the long persistent drive for civil rights was centered around political issues such as voting, integration, educational opportunities, better housing, increased employment opportunities, and fair police protection, other facets of American life and culture were affected as well. Most noticeably, African Americans came out of the civil rights movement determined to define their own distinct culture. New styles of politics, music, clothing, folktales, hairstyles, cuisine, literature, theology, and the arts were all evident at the end of the civil rights movement.

Although African Americans have a long tradition of protest dating back to the seventeenth century, the mid-1950s represented a turning point in the black struggle for equal rights. With the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that outlawed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of "Separate But Equal," African Americans realized that the time was right to end all vestiges of Jim Crow and discrimination. On the heels of Brown, black Southerners undertook battles to achieve voting rights and integration, under the broad leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. Through marches, rallies, sit-ins, and boycotts, they were able to accomplish their goals by the late 1960s. With voting rights and integration won in the South, African Americans next shifted their attention to the structural problems of northern urban blacks. However, non-violent direct-action was not the preferred tool of protest in the North where the self-defense message of Malcolm X was popular. Rather, the method of protest was urban unrest, which produced very few meaningful gains for African Americans other than the symbolic election of black mayors to large urban centers.

Immediately, the civil rights movement ushered in a new black political culture. With the right to vote won in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, African Americans now began to place a tremendous emphasis on political participation. Throughout the South African Americans went to the polls in large numbers seeking to elect representatives that would best represent their interests. In the North where the right to vote had been in existence since the mid-nineteenth century, a different type of political culture emerged. As a result of the civil rights movement black voters in the North began to move away from the idea of coalition building with white liberals, preferring instead to establish all-black political organizations. These clubs would not only attack the conservativeness of the Republican Party but they would also begin to reassess their commitment to the democratic party at the local, state, and national level. In essence, the race was moving toward political maturity; no longer would their votes be taken for granted.

Another aspect of the nascent black political culture was a re-emergence of black nationalism which was re-introduced into American society by Malcolm X. While a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X made African Americans feel good about themselves. He told them to embrace their culture and their heritage, and he also spoke out openly against white America. Via his autobiography and lectures, Malcolm X quickly emerged as the instrumental figure in this renewed black consciousness. Shortly after his assassination in 1965, the proprietors of black culture immediately gave Malcolm deity status. His name and portrait began to appear everywhere: bumper stickers, flags, T-shirts, hats, and posters. Although Malcolm popularized this new revolutionary frame of mind, by no means did he have a monopoly on it. Throughout the 1960s African Americans spoke of black nationalism in three main forms: territorial, revolutionary, and cultural. Territorial nationalists such as the Republic of New Afrika and the Nation of Islam, called for a portion of the United States to be partitioned off for African Americans as payment for years of slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination. But they insisted that by no means would this settle the issue. Instead, this would just be partial compensation for years of mistreatment. Revolutionary nationalists such as the Black Panther Party sought to overthrow the capitalist American government and replace it with a socialist utopia. They argued that the problems faced by African Americans were rooted in the capitalist control of international economic affairs. Thus, the Black Panthers viewed the black nationalist struggle as one of both race and class. Lastly, the cultural nationalism espoused by groups such as Ron Karenga's US organization sought to spark a revolution through a black cultural renaissance. In the eyes of his supporters, the key to black self-empowerement lay in a distinct black culture. They replaced European cultural forms with a distinct Afro-centric culture. One of Karenga's chief achievements was the development of the African-American holiday "Kwanzaa." Kwanzaa was part of a broader theory of black cultural nationalism which suggested that African Americans needed to carry out a cultural revolution before they could achieve power.