I am co-teaching a course entitled Black Power Fantasies with Stanford Carpenter an anthropologist who was recently hired at the Art Institute of Chicago. What we are interested in mining are the politics of black cultural production. To the degree we can think of an art as “black” what does it mean to talk about the politics of black art? How have black artists sought to garner control of the means of production and distribution of their art? Why do so many people look to the terrain of popular culture for political content?
Coming up with the syllabus has been a lot harder than normal, because this class is inter-disciplinary using texts from political science, history, anthropology, and cultural studies. But we’re also adding in some music, some movies, and some video, as well as graphic novels, for good measure. I usually slaughter my students with reading, but I’m trying to move to the other side to let the readings breathe.
Given the subject matter we really are talking about an embarassment of riches. We won’t have to fiend to find literature.
I am pretty sure we’re going to be developing a podcast of some sorts out of this. (For real!)
This is a rough version that only contains my suggestions. When we finalize the product I’ll send it out.
What is Racism? (The Purpose of this section is to introduce the concepts of race and racism to the students, to lay out the general framework in which calls for black power are generated)
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, Chaps. 4, 5.
Holt, Thomas. The Problem of Race in the 21st Century
Mills, Charles. The Racial Contract
Racism and the Mass Media (How does racism rely upon and use popular culture to do its “work?â€)
Entman, Robert, and Andrew Rojecki. The Black Image in the White Mind. Chaps. 2,3 (maybe 4)
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Gilens, Martin. Why Americans Hate Welfare. Chaps. 5, 6.
Dominant Black Responses to Racism (How did black people respond to racism? Precursors to Black Power)
Washington, Booker T. “The Atlanta Compromise†(speech should be online)
Dubois, W. E. B. “Of Booker T. Washington and Others†(chapter in The Souls of Black Foik)
Garvey, Marcus “Declaration of Rights of the Negro People of the World.†Pp. 23-31 in Van Deburg, William (ed.) Modern Black Nationalism
Mitchell, Michele. Righteous Propagation, chap. 6
Black Power (Under what conditions did Black Power emerge? What were its political manifestations)
Carmichael, Stokely and Charles Hamilton. Black Power
Selections from Eyes on the Prize
Cultural Manifestations of Black Power (what were some of the ways that black artists used black power to think about their art, and to also develop new institutions and modes of cultural creation?)
Smethurst, James, The Black Arts Movement, chap. 2
Cobb, Jelani. The Essential Harold Cruse, chap. 14
Green, Adam. Selling the Race (chap. 2)
Smith, Suzanne. Dancing in the Street (chap. 4)
Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (chaps. 1-3)
Sicko, Dan. Techno Rebels (chaps. 2, 3)
Selections from Ali Rap, The Great White Hope
Responses to Black Power (What were the dominant responses to black power by whites?)
Aberbach, Joel and Walker, Jack L. 1970. “The Meanings of Black Power: A Comparison of White and Black Interpretations of a Political Slogan.” American Political Science Review 64 (June):367-88.
Churchill, Ward. The COINTELPRO Papers, chap. 5
Here should go an article about the “co-optation†of Black Power by mainstream business interests.
Whoohoo!
Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.
Sounds interesting but here are some suggestions:
1. Where are the women at? Where is gender and sexuality? I see like three women authors. It seems like there should be an entire unit devoted to gender, sexuality, and black power. Especially if you are going to talk about how the black power movement (attempted to) redefined what it means to be (performatively) black.
2. How about some more primary source documents: For a white dude with very little background on the subject, reading pieces by Baldwin and Amiri Baraka helped me get a
“feel” for black power in the 1960s better than any other authors.
finally,
3. You often told your students about how we need to deconstruct a “the single black leader” model for social change and political empowerment. IF this is what we need to do, and it certainly seems to be something that needs to be done, then we need to deconstruct the idea that historically black power has been a “single black leader” model. It seems inconsistent to me to teach the precursors of Black Power as Garvey, Dubois, Washington, or any other single or small group of thinkers. Don’t get me wrong, all of these leaders were important for their ability to create and organize around anti-racist ideologies. But where are the people at? Or more importantly, where are the black people at? (and the women…)
From my limited knowledge, historians have been complicating the idea the black power came from a few thinkers and leaders but rather that it existed latently among the political organizing and survival tactics of everyday black folks in the Jim Crow south. If we are seeking to destroy the “single black leader” model, shouldn’t we be seeking to talk about a history of grassroots “precursors” to the black power movement. I know the literature is limited but Steve Hahn “A nation under our feet” (for which he won the big history award) has taken this argument up to a certain extent.
I give all these critiques with the utmost respect and with the reminder that my orientation to this subject by and large developed under your intellectual guidance… (the women thing is more Durba, Ndidi, And professor brown…)
Sorry to hear about the family and hope you are doing better.
the works on gender and sexuality written by folks like angela davis do an excellent job of bringing to light the gendered aspects of black power.
but as much as i was able to add those readings to your black nationalism class, i don’t know if I can do it in this class…because of the significant multimedia component. We aren’t just talking about political conceptions of black power…we’re talking about cultural conceptions (in movies, in music, in sports, possibly in literature). as such we have to prepare the students to understand conceptions of “the political” and “the cultural” as well as give them the tools to handle the critical assignments we are giving.
given that i don’t think we’re going to have room for critiques of black power.
as for the no single leader position, we’ve already got that covered. Hahn’s book won’t fit, but we’ll likely use some pieces of Peniel Joseph’s work. this is only a first cut though, and i’ll know more by friday. thanks for the well wishes. tell your
wifefiance i said hey.Lester:
I wanted to offer you a few comments a day or two after you posted this; however, I could not sit down and write this comment up until now. I think the course will be outstanding. I wouldn’t mind taking it myself. I have a suggestion.
While a comprehensive review of the history of Black Nationalism and how it influenced the Black Power Movement would certainly be beyond the scope of your course, the need to trace ideological, political, historical, and sociological roots of the Black Power movement is made clear with your choice to use Van Deburg’s 1997 Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan and other selections. Yet, Van Deburg’s anthology focuses on Garvey and beyond. Selections from Wilson Jeremiah Moses’s 1996 anthology Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey would help to fill in some of the pre-Garvey history that Van Deburg’s anthology does not cover in depth. Perhaps your student’s familiarity with this additional history would enrich their understandings of the ideological ancestry of the Black Power Movement?
I’m of the opinion that the Black Power Movement was/is a child of Black Nationalism and was launched, in print, by David Walker’s 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Black Nationalism, of course, has manifested itself in several different forms since then. I have been persuaded that the Black Power Movement’s form of Black Nationalism borrowed heavily from Booker T. Washington’s form—build our own U.S. economic systems and social systems that would be connected to but not dependent on non-Black U.S. systems—as well as much of Malcolm X’s and W.E.B. Du Bois’s/Alain Locke’s forms, which focused more on appreciating and having pride in the best of Black culture and art.
I think the path to the Black Power Movement through Black Nationalism can be roughly traced as follows:
1) David Walker’s Appeal (1829)
2) Martin Delany’s The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the U.S. (1852)
3) Bishop Henry Turner’s speeches
4) Booker T. Washington’s and W.E.B. Du Bois’s rhetorical-ideological debates (which you have covered)
5) Marcus Garvey’s Negro World publications (he sided more with Booker T. Washington and Turner’s forms of Black Nationalism; I think his Declaration should get it done—although a selection of articles from the Negro World might be more effective—and you have this covered)
6) Fard Muhammad and his protégé Elijah Muhammad’s pre-Nation of Islam (NOI) efforts and the NOI beginnings
7) Pre-1964 Malcolm X
8) Post-1964 Malcolm X
9) After Malcolm’s death, Black Power arrives fully with Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton; then Wallace Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan part ways and
10) Farrakhan leads an ever-adapting version of Elijah Muhammad’s NOI-ideology and a version of Black Nationalism that has at times appeared to be very similar to the Black Power Movement.
Your students, especially the strong readers, should profit greatly from this course.
The problem here is that there are only 13 weeks. And really only 12, because the first week you usually don’t assign reading. As I’m not teaching a black nationalism course, but a Black Power course, I can’t do backstory without severely affecting my ability to teach the CENTRAL story. What you’re suggesting looks a little like the Black Nationalist Thought class that I taught Jeremy above.
I’ve almost got it down. I’ll pull it out tomorrow.