Movements and Debates Flashcards
Movements and Debates: African American Studies - Unit 4
Négritude and Negrismo Movements (Topic 4.1)
Essential Knowledge:
The négritude and negrismo movements in the early to mid-20th century affirmed the influence of African heritage and cultural aesthetics on Afro-descendants throughout the African diaspora.
These movements reinforced each other and were influenced by the New Negro movement in the United States.
The New Negro, négritude, and negrismo movements emphasized cultural pride and political liberation of Black people.
Négritude (meaning “blackness” in French) was a political, cultural, and literary movement (1930s-1950s) started by French-speaking Caribbean and African writers protesting colonialism and assimilation into European culture.
Negrismo emerged in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean around the same time and was embraced by Black and mixed-race Latin Americans, celebrating African contributions to Latin American music, folklore, literature, and art.
Critiques of Colonialism:
Proponents of négritude and negrismo rejected the notion that European colonialism civilized colonized subjects.
They argued that racial ideologies underpinned colonial exploitation, violent intervention, and systems of coerced labor.
African Americans who supported Négritude and Negrismo saw connections between these movements and their own critique of global capitalism and racism.
Writers and activists like Jessie Redmon Fauset (editor of The Crisis) condemned racism and colonialism as interrelated means of dehumanizing people of African descent.
Source Notes:
Négritude emerged in Paris, a diasporic hub for African American jazz performers, artists, veterans, and intellectuals from Africa and the Caribbean.
Notable Afro-descendants in Paris included Josephine Baker, Claude McKay, Anna Julia Cooper, Augusta Savage, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen.
Like the New Negro movement, négritude and negrismo first manifested among educated elites.
Langston Hughes connected the New Negro, négritude, and negrismo movements by translating works from French and Spanish to English and vice versa.
Loïs Mailou Jones's career began during the Harlem Renaissance. She worked as an illustrator for early Black history magazines and created Les Fétiches in Paris, inspired by négritude, conveying strength, beauty, and protection in African ancestral heritage with overlapping masks and a red religious fetish figure.
Afro-Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, also of Chinese heritage, was a leading negrismo artist. His work The Jungle reflects on the legacies of slavery and colonialism in Cuba with faces referencing West and Central African art motifs in a sugarcane field.
Anticolonialism and Black Political Thought (Topic 4.2)
Essential Knowledge:
The Black Freedom movement encompasses transnational activism from the mid-1940s to the 1970s and includes the Civil Rights movement which annulled Jim Crow laws and practices, and the Black Power movement, which heightened Black consciousness and racial pride in the United States and abroad.
In the 1950s and 1960s, African American writers, leaders, and activists visited Africa to express diasporic solidarity and support Africa’s decolonization. Some embraced pan-Africanism and advocated for the political and cultural unity of all people of African descent.
The Pan-African flag was created by Marcus Garvey in 1920 as a unifying symbol to connect people of African descent across the globe.
Ghana's independence from British colonial rule in 1957 inspired visits from African American activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, writer Maya Angelou, lawyer Pauli Murray, and historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois.
In 1960, Joe Louis traveled with a predominantly African American delegation to Cuba to promote Cuba as a tourist destination for African Americans, as an escape from Jim Crow discrimination and segregation.
Diasporic Solidarity:
As African Americans and Africans acknowledged their shared struggles against anti-Black racism and oppression, diasporic solidarity between them bolstered the global reach of the Black Freedom movement to audiences beyond the United States
Diasporic solidarity between African Americans and Africans brought international attention to Africa’s decolonization movement. In 1960, also known as the “Year of Africa,” 17 African nations declared their independence from European colonialism.
Diasporic solidarity continues to the present day.
Source Notes:
The 1963 photo portrays prominent African American activists presenting a petition of support for the March on Washington and the end of apartheid in South Africa.
W.E.B. Du Bois is known as the father of modern pan-Africanism. Early advocates of pan-Africanism include 19th-century African American and Caribbean writers such as Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and Edward Blyden.
Prime Minister and President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah obtained degrees from Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1930s and early 1940s, where he made connections with African American intellectuals.
At the reception celebrating Ghana’s independence in 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. famously told then Vice President Richard Nixon, “I want you to come visit us down in Alabama, where we are seeking the same kind of freedom the Gold Coast is celebrating.”
African Americans and the Second World War: The Double V Campaign and the G.I. Bill (Topic 4.3)
Essential Knowledge:
The United States Armed Forces remained segregated at the outset of the Second World War. Despite this, over two million African Americans registered for the draft or voluntarily enlisted and served in every branch of the United States military.
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American pilots in the United States military, serving in the United States Army Air Corps (the precursor to the United States Air Force) and contributing to the fight against fascism through their service in Europe and North Africa during the Second World War.
During the era of the Second World War, African Americans critiqued the unequal treatment they faced as United States citizens as the country rallied to fight fascism in Europe. In 1942, veteran and journalist James G. Thompson inspired the “Double Victory” Campaign with a letter to the African American newspaper, Pittsburgh Courier. His letter urged readers to fight for the “double victory”—a victory against fascism abroad and a victory against Jim Crow segregation at home.
The G.I. Bill of 1944 was designed as a race-neutral gesture of gratitude toward American veterans returning from the Second World War, including 1.2 million Black veterans. It provided funds for college tuition, low-cost home mortgages, and low-interest business startup loans—major pillars of economic stability and mobility.
Although the G.I. Bill was a federal program, funds were administered locally and subject to Jim Crow discriminatory practices, As a result, they were often disproportionately disbursed to White veterans.
Source Notes:
The Tuskegee Airmen were known as the “Red Tails” due to the markings on their aircraft.
Educator Mary McLeod Bethune and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt advocated for the incorporation of Black women into the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a unit of over 800 women, included women of Caribbean and Mexican descent.
African American veterans were targeted for violent attacks as they continued to fight against racism when they returned to the United States.
Many Black veterans received fewer or no benefits from the G.I. Bill due to several factors, including denials by state and federal agencies, intimidation, and higher rates of dishonorable discharge than their white counterparts.
Discrimination, Segregation, and the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (Topic 4.4)
Essential Knowledge:
Through the mid-20th century, African Americans in the North and South continued to face racial discrimination, violence, and segregation in education, housing, transportation, and voting. The civil rights movement emerged from the need to eradicate segregation and ensure federal protection of the rights guaranteed by the Reconstruction Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 (outlawed racial discrimination in public places).
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The decision determined state-sanctioned school segregation violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and overturned the prior ruling of “separate but equal” established in Plessy v. Ferguson.
The Supreme Court cited the “doll test” conducted by psychologists Mamie and Kenneth Clark in the 1940s as a key factor in its decision. This study demonstrated the impact of racial segregation on children’s self-esteem.
De facto segregation in public schools persisted despite the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. Some states cut funding for integrated schools while providing financial support to those that remained predominantly White. Some White families fled to the suburbs and private schools, shifting their investment into schools and neighborhoods that few African Americans could access. In some places, local and federal police were used to prevent integration, and some schools chose to shut down rather than integrate.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, students at all age levels, such as the “Little Rock Nine” (Little Rock High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957), attempted to integrate schools throughout the South despite continued resistance.
Source Notes:
Five court cases led to overturning the doctrine of “separate but equal:”
Briggs v. Elliott (1952)
Belton v, Gebhart (1952)
Bolling v. Sharpe (1954)
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
Davis v. County School Board (1954)
As a result of the Brown decision, many Black teachers in the South lost their jobs. Their positions were routinely given to white teachers, often with less experience.
Because of de facto segregation, some schools remain segregated.
De facto segregation continued in schools after the Brown decision.
Redlining and Housing Discrimination (Topic 4.5)
Essential Knowledge:
In the 20th century, African Americans faced restrictions on their access to homeownership that in turn limited their ability to pass on wealth to their descendants.
Housing segregation was codified (made legal) in the Federal Housing Administration’s Underwriting Manual (1938) Restrictions made it illegal for African Americans to live in many communities in the United States.
The NAACP fought housing discrimination through the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968.
Throughout the 20th century, and peaking in the mid-1900s, mortgage lenders practiced redlining—the discriminatory practice of withholding mortgages to African Americans and other people of color within a defined geographical area under the pretense of “hazardous” financial risk posed by those communities.
African Americans who integrated into well-resourced neighborhoods across the country sometimes became targets of mob violence.
Housing discrimination intensified preexisting disparities between African Americans and Whites people. Many African American communities had limited access to public transportation, clean water and air, recreational spaces, healthy food, and healthcare services, exacerbating health disparities along racial lines.
Predominantly Black areas often lacked sufficient infrastructure for public transportation and racially segregated transportation remained unequal. African Americans responded by operating jitneys (small buses that provided taxi services) and starting their own bus companies.
Source Note:
The title of Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, was inspired by Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem.”
Major Civil Rights Organizations (Topic 4.6)
Essential Knowledge:
Major civil rights organizations unified African Americans with different experiences and perspectives through a common desire to eliminate racial discrimination and inequality. These organizations included the “Big Four”:
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Local branches of major civil rights organizations launched a national movement built on the shared methods of nonviolent, direct, and radically inclusive protests and grassroots efforts. These efforts—were often met with violence, which sometimes precipitated a response of self-defense. Nonviolent forms of civil disobedience included:
Marches
Sit-ins
Litigation (court cases)
Economic Boycotts
And the use of mass media
Civil rights leaders organized the Birmingham Children’s Crusade (Alabama, 1963), which strategically included children because they were not subject to penalties such as loss of homes or jobs. The violent response by local police against children was televised and met with shock and anger by many Americans and people around the world.
In 1963, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and an alliance of Black civil rights organizations and leaders from religious and labor groups organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march highlighted issues of economic inequality, unemployment, and racial discrimination. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, calling for an end to discrimination and racism.
The Mississippi Freedom Summer project (1964) highlighted the racial violence African Americans faced while trying to assert their constitutional right to vote. The Big Four civil rights organizations established 41 Freedom Schools to prepare African Americans for civic activism through voter registration and a celebration of Black history. The killing of three young activists that summer, one African American and two Jewish, helped galvanize the movement and the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
The coordinated efforts of the Civil Rights movement resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, and religion. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory barriers in voting.
Source Notes:
In the essay “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” Martin Luther King Jr. explained the purpose and major characteristics of the strategy of nonviolent direct resistance as inspired by Christian principles and the example of Mahatma Gandhi.
In his speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), SNCC leader John Lewis called for greater attention to the urgency of civil rights and African Americans’ need for protection from racial violence.
Although the March on Washington initially faced controversy because of discrimination against Bayard Rustin, an openly gay advisor to civil rights leaders since the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955), it was a successful peaceful protest that drew over 250,000 participants.
The Freedom Schools built on a tradition of community-developed schools for enslaved African Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The “Big Four” civil rights organizations mobilized nonviolent direct protest among various groups:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in 1909 as an interracial organization that fought discrimination and racial violence primarily through legal campaigns. W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett were among the founders. Rosa Parks, a local NAACP secretary, helped to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955).
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was a civil rights organization established by Black and White students in Chicago in 1942. CORE collaborated with other organizations to organize sit-ins, voter registration drives, and the Freedom Rides of 1961.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was established by its first president, Martin Luther King Jr. The SCLC coordinated the actions of churches and other local organizations to launch major protests, such as the Selma Voting Rights March (1965).
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in 1960 when Ella Baker assisted students interested in the SCLC’s activism in founding their own organization after the students organized and staged the Greensboro sit-ins.
The main leaders of the civil rights movement were known as the “Big Six.”:
Martin Luther King Jr. (SCLC)
James Farmer (CORE)
John Lewis (SNCC)
Roy Wilkins (NAACP)
A. Philip Randolph (Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters)
Whitney Young (National Urban League)
Black Women’s Leadership and Grassroots Organizing in the Civil Rights Movement (Topic 4.7)
Essential Knowledge:
Black women were central leaders in the Civil Rights movement, though they often faced sex discrimination within the major organizations. Leaders such as Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer stressed the importance of addressing both racial and gender discrimination during the Black Freedom movement, building on a long tradition of Black women activists.
Ella Baker, known as the “mother of the Civil Rights movement,” focused on grassroots organizing and inclusive, group-centered leadership over leader-centered groups in the Civil Rights movement. She encouraged young people to contribute to social justice efforts that fought both racism and sexism.
In her speech at SNCC’s founding in 1960, Ella Baker argued that peaceful sit-ins at lunch counters were about more than access to goods and services; they demonstrated the need for the full inclusion of African Americans in every aspect of American life.
Dorothy Height led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years and routinely worked on major civil rights projects, such as the March on Washington.
In the mid-1960s, the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) was established to protest school segregation in Chicago. Before disbanding in 1967, it turned its attention to other issues like employment and housing discrimination plaguing Black Chicagoans.
In 1964, 464,000 students—nearly half of New York City’s student body—boycotted school to protest racial segregation in schools. The New York City school boycott of 1964 was the largest single-day civil rights protest in United States history.
Source Notes:
Gloria Richardson was the first woman to lead a civil rights organization outside of the South, the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, based in Maryland. The Committee advocated for the Treaty of Cambridge (1963), which sought to address housing discrimination and unemployment. Richardson also participated in the Freedom Rides and the March on Washington.
The Arts, Music, and Politics of Freedom (Topic 4.8)
Essential Knowledge:
During the Black Freedom movement of the 20th century, Black artists contributed to the struggle for racial equality through various forms of expression. Their work brought African Americans’ resistance to inequality to global audiences and strengthened similar efforts by Afro-descendants outside of the United States.
In their writings, poets such as Nicolás Guillén, a prominent Negrismo Cuban poet of African descent, examined the connections between anti-Black racism in the United States and Latin America. They denounced segregation and racial violence and brought Black-freedom struggles to the attention of audiences beyond the United States.
Musicians, such as jazz bassist Charles Mingus, composed protest songs reliant on African American musical traditions like call and response. Their music drew global attention to white supremacist responses to racial integration in the United States (e.g., the Little Rock Crisis, 1957).
Faith and music were important elements of inspiration and community mobilization during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Many freedom songs emerged through the adaptation of hymns, spirituals, gospel songs, and labor union songs in Black churches, which had created space for organizing and adapting this broad range of musical genres.
Freedom songs inspired African Americans, many of whom risked their lives as they pressed for equality and freedom. These songs unified and renewed activists’ spirits, gave direction through lyrics, and communicated their hopes for a more just and inclusive future.
Martin Luther King Jr. described “We Shall Overcome” as an anthem of the Civil Rights movement. Activists often sang the song while marching, while protesting, when they were arrested, and while in jail. Exemplifying the role of freedom songs as an inspiration for political protest, the anthem served as a muse for King’s 1966 speech of the same name. “We’ll Overcome” first appeared as a protest song during a 1945-1946 labor strike against American Tobacco in Charleston, South Carolina.
Source Notes:
Performers like Josephine Baker, who expatriated, critiqued the double standards of an American democracy that maintained segregation while promoting ideals of equality domestically and abroad.
Charles Mingus composed “Fables of Faubus” as a protest song in response to the Little Rock Crisis. In 1959, Columbia Records refused to allow him to include the lyrics to the song, and it remained instrumental. In 1960, Mingus re-released the song as “Original Faubus Fables” with lyrics that used call and response to mock the foolishness of racial segregation through allusions to Governor Orval M. Faubus.
Though many singers like Mahalia Jackson and Harry Belafonte sang iconic renditions of freedom songs, these songs were most often sung by a group and reflected the community stewardship fostered by Black church leaders and expressed in hymns and spirituals.
The Black Arts Movement (Topic 4.10)
Essential Knowledge:
The Black Arts movement (BAM) (1965–1975) galvanized the work of Black artists, writers, musicians, and dramatists who envisioned art as a political tool to achieve Black liberation. They did not espouse a monolithic vision of what Black art should be, though they were unified by the notion that Black art was distinct in its inspiration, characteristics, and purposes.
Like the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, which proclaimed a new mentality for the “new negro”, The Black Arts movement created a new political foundation for Black art. It emphasized the long tradition of Black cultural production by connecting contemporary writers and artists to their forerunners.
The Black Arts movement inspired the creation of Black magazines, publishing houses, art houses, scholarly journals, and some of the earliest African American studies programs in universities. The flourishing of Black cultural forms during this movement helped to establish African American studies as an interdisciplinary field.
Source Notes:
Elizabeth Catlett, the granddaughter of formerly enslaved people, was an African American artist who created paintings, sculptures, and prints that explored themes such as race, gender, class, and history. In the 1940s, she relocated to Mexico and later became a Mexican citizen. Her art reflects the influences of African, African American, and Mexican modernist traditions.
Elizabeth Catlett’s print Negro es Bello II highlights the transnational and diasporic reach of the Black is Beautiful and the Black Power movements and participates in their global circulation. The piece features two faces in the style of African masks and images of black panthers encircled with the phrase, “Black Is Beautiful.”
Black Religious Nationalism and the Black Power Movement (Topic 4.9)
Essential Knowledge:
The Nation of Islam (NOI) was founded in Detroit in 1930, blending basic beliefs and practices of Islam (devotion to Allah, study of the Qur’an) with mythology and Black Nationalist ideology.
Elijah Muhammad, who from 1934 led the Nation of Islam from its Chicago headquarters, encouraged his followers to forgo their surnames for Muslim ones. Many members adopted the letter “X” as a symbolic gesture of abandoning the name of their enslavers until devout members received a new identity.
During the mid-1960s, some African Americans believed the civil rights movement’s focus on racial integration, equal rights, and nonviolent strategies did not sufficiently address the widespread disempowerment and lack of safety they faced in their daily lives. Many embraced Black Power, a movement that promoted self-determination, defended violence as a viable strategy, and strove to transform Black consciousness by emphasizing cultural pride.
Malcolm X, a Muslim minister and activist, championed the principles of Black autonomy and encouraged African Americans to build their own social, economic, and political institutions instead of prioritizing integration.
Malcolm X not only encouraged African Americans to exercise their right to vote but also to exercise the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms. He further urged African Americans to “defend themselves” if the government was “unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property” of African Americans. His emphasis on self-defense, sense of dignity, and solidarity influenced the political groups that emerged during the Black Power movement.
Malcolm X’s ideas evolved over his lifetime. Toward the end of his life, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam to pursue an egalitarian (equal) and inclusive political agenda that promoted human rights and protested injustices internationally.
Source Notes:
Malcolm X encouraged African Americans to relinquish names associated with slavery and its demise (e.g., Negro, colored) and to embrace ethnonyms such as Black or African American with a sense of pride. Following his conversion to orthodox Islam, Malcolm X changed his name once again to el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (Topic 4.11)
Essential Knowledge:
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was a revolutionary Black Power organization inspired by Malcolm X’s arguments. The Party’s Ten-Point Program called for freedom from oppression and imprisonment, and access to housing, healthcare, education, and employment opportunities.
The Black Panthers’ platform cited the Second Amendment to promote and justify the right to bear arms in self-defense. The party’s calls for violent resistance to oppression resulted in armed conflicts. In turn, the FBI waged a campaign against the Black Panthers as a threat to national security.
Local Black Panther offices were frequently led by women, who made up about half of the party’s membership. The organization quickly expanded, with chapters in dozens of U.S. cities, to advocate for other social reforms. To provide help for low-income communities, the Black Panther Party implemented what they termed “survival programs,” including: Free Breakfast for School Children Program, Legal aid offices, and Relief programs that offered free medical care and clothing.
Source Notes:
The Black Panther Party was formed by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in Oakland, California, in the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X, the brutality experienced by nonviolent protesters, and police killings of unarmed African Americans. The Party functioned from 1966 through the 1980s.
Black Is Beautiful and Afrocentricity (Topic 4.12)
Essential Knowledge:
The Black is Beautiful movement and Afrocentricity emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. Both movements emerged as African Americans embraced Black beauty and well-being and sought to strengthen their connections to Africa. They rejected notions of inferiority and conformity to mainstream standards of beauty.
The Black Is Beautiful movement celebrated Afrocentric aesthetics in: natural hairstyles (e.g., the afro and cornrows), fashion (e.g., dashikis and African head wraps), African and Islamic naming practices, celebrations like Kwanzaa (established in 1966), and The embrace of the Akan adinkra symbols like the Sankofa bird.
Afrocentricity is an approach that highlights the experiences, perspectives, and aesthetics of Black people by placing Africa and the achievements of people of African descent at the center of history. This approach emerged alongside the movements in the 1960s to establish the field of African American Studies and to celebrate pride in African heritage.
The Black is Beautiful movement’s rejection of cultural assimilation laid a foundation for multicultural and ethnic studies movements in the future.
Although Afrocentricity celebrates Africa and elevates it to a central position in the identities and histories of people of African descent, it blurs distinctions across ethnicities within the African diaspora. Critics also emphasize the problems of such an approach, including that Afrocentricity can be a substitute for, rather than a challenge to, Eurocentrism.
Source Notes:
Kathleen Cleaver is a legal scholar and was an activist of the Black Panther Party and the Black Power movement. She encouraged Black people to embrace their natural beauty and become comfortable in their own skin.
“Afrocentricity” was coined by scholar Molefi Asante in the 1970s.
The African Jazz-Art Society & Studios (AJASS) was founded by a group of artists and jazz musicians who were inspired by Marcus Garvey and Black nationalism and incorporated Afrocentric themes into their performances. AJASS produced the “Naturally” community based fashion shows annually to celebrate Black beauty. These shows featured the Grandassa models, a group of African American women who emphasized natural hairstyles and Afrocentric fashion.
Since slavery and beyond, African Americans have renamed themselves in response to changing sociopolitical contexts. These naming practices were acts of freedom. They are powerful assertions of self-identity, Black pride, and unity.
In 2019, the California legislature passed the CROWN Act (Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair), which prohibits discrimination based on hairstyle and hair texture.
The Black Feminist Movement, Womanism, and Intersectionality (Topic 4.13)
Essential Knowledge:
Throughout United States history, Black women played central roles in the struggles for freedom and racial and gender equality. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, activists such as Jarena Lee, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman resisted injustice and oppression as enslaved and free people. In the 1970s, The Black feminist movement drew inspiration from these Black women activists and others who highlighted Black women’s unique experiences of racism and sexism.
Taking their name from Harriet Tubman’s famous Combahee River raid that freed over 700 African Americans during the Civil War, the Combahee River Collective was a Boston -based, Black feminist and lesbian organization. Their Collective Statement (1977) argued that Black women’s liberation would free all members of society as it would require the destruction of all systems of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, classism, homophobia).
In the 1980s, writer Alice Walker coined the term “womanist,” which builds upon earlier forms of Black women’s activism through opposition to racism in the feminist community and sexism in Black communities.
In the 1990s, scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality,” which is a framework for understanding the distinct experiences of Black women through the interactions of their social, economic, and political identities with systems of inequality and privilege. The concept of “intersectionality” connected Black feminist scholarship with earlier Black women’s activism.
Source Note:
In the twentieth century and beyond, Black feminism continued to challenge Black women’s marginalization in mainstream white feminist movements and Black political movements.
Interlocking Systems of Oppression (Topic 4.14)
Essential Knowledge:
The concept of “interlocking systems of oppression” describes how social categories (e.g., race, gender, class, sexuality, ability) are interconnected and considers how their interaction with social systems creates unequal outcomes for individuals. The concept examines interrelated contexts, systems, and institutions that facilitate oppression or privilege in many areas of society, including education, health, housing, incarceration, and wealth gaps.
The concept of “interlocking systems of oppression,” first articulated by Patricia Hill Collins builds on a long tradition of Black feminist scholars, activists, and writers who critiqued the tendency to treat race, gender, class, and sexuality as mutually exclusive categories.
In literature like Maud Martha, writers like Gwendolyn Brooks depict how African Americans negotiate the multiple dimensions of their identity and social class as they navigate spaces within and beyond their communities.
Writers like Gwendolyn Brooks and Audre Lorde explore the lived experience of Black women and men and show how their race, gender, and social class can affect how they are perceived, their roles, and their economic opportunities.
Source Notes:
Gwendolyn Brooks began writing poetry as a teenager in Chicago. Her poems document the richness of Black urban life. In 1950, Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize.
In 1953, Gwendolyn
The concept of “interlocking systems of oppression” describes how social categories (e.g., race, gender, class, sexuality, ability) are interconnected, and considers how their interaction with social systems creates unequal outcomes for individuals
The concept examines interrelated contexts, systems, and institutions that facilitate oppression or privilege in many areas of society, including education, health, housing, incarceration, and wealth gaps.
The concept, first articulated by Patricia Hill Collins,
Builds on a long tradition of Black feminist scholars, activists, and writers who critiqued the tendency to treat race, gender, class, and sexuality as mutually exclusive categories.
Writers like Gwendolyn Brooks and Audre Lorde explore the lived experience of Black women and men and show how their race, gender, and social class can affect how they are perceived, their roles, and their economic opportunities
In literature like Maud Martha, writers like Gwendolyn Brooks depict how African Americans negotiate the multiple dimensions of their identity and social class as they navigate spaces within and beyond their communities
Gwendolyn Brooks began writing poetry as a teenager in Chicago.
Her poems document the richness of Black urban life.
In 1950, Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize.
The novel is a collection of vignettes, which trace the experiences of Maud Martha Brown from youth to adulthood on Chicago’s South Side.
The concept of “interlocking systems of oppression” builds on the work of writers such as Claudia Jones, Bell Hooks, and others.
Authors such as Audre Lorde address issues of identity, representation, and womanhood to convey the distinctive perspective of being a woman.
Writers such as Angela Davis and Toni Morrison detailed experiences of gender within the context of race, sexuality, and class.
Topic 4.15: Economic Growth and Black Political Representation
Despite the growth of the Black middle class, substantial disparities in wealth along racial lines remain
Discrimination and racial disparities in housing and employment in the early 20th century limited Black communities’ accumulation of generational wealth in the second half of the 20th century
In 2016, the median (average) wealth for Black families was compared to for whites families
Desegregation in expanded educational opportunities and gradually increased the number of Black college graduates.
By 2019, 23% of African American adults had earned a bachelor’s degree or higher
Urbanization increased opportunities for employment and the growth of Black businesses
Black entrepreneurs have long contributed to American society and the economy
Black-owned businesses, such as restaurants, banks, and publishing houses, were established to serve Black communities.
Some of these are still in operation today
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits local and state governments from enacting laws and procedures that create racial discrimination in voting
As a result of the Voting Rights Act, Black voting power and political representation expanded in the late twentieth century alongside the growth of the Black middle class
Many African Americans achieved influential positions as members of Congress, local legislators, judges, and high-ranking officials in presidential administrations
Between 1970 and 2006, the number of Black elected officials in the United States grew from about 1,500 to 9,000—a sixfold increase
The largest annual increase occurred in 1971, reflecting the impact of the Black Freedom movement on Black political representation
Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968
In 1971, she helped found the Congressional Black Caucus, a group of Black members of Congress that promotes the growth of Black political power by supporting Black candidates in national, state, and local elections, and lobbying for reforms in healthcare, employment, and social service programs
In 2001, Colin Powell became the first Black Secretary of State
He was succeeded as Secretary of State by Condoleezza Rice—the first Black woman to hold the position
The early 21st century saw historic precedents in Black executive branch political leadership:
The elections of Barack Obama as president (2008), and Kamala Harris as vice president (2020)
They are the first Black Americans to hold these positions in United States history
Topic 4.16: Demographic and Religious Diversity in Contemporary Black Communities
Since 2000, the number of Black college degree holders has more than doubled.
The number of Black immigrants in the United States has nearly doubled, driven primarily by immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.
Between 2000 and 2019, the Black-identifying population in the United States grew by 30% to approximately 47 million people, nearly 14% of the United States population.
The term "Black" indicates a community’s shared African heritage and experiences, including the descendants of those enslaved in the United States (often identifying as African American) and recently arrived immigrants who may identify as their race and nationality (e.g., Afro-Colombian).
Topic 4.17: The Role of Religion in the African American Community
Religion serves as a cornerstone in the African American community, providing hope and social mobilization.
Historically rooted in the experience of enslavement, Christianity has shaped African American identities and community solidarity.
The Christian faith has provided a platform for advocating for justice and civil rights.
Diverse religious traditions, including Islam and African spiritual practices, coexist within the community.
Religious leaders have significantly influenced political initiatives and social change.
Topic 4.18: Economic Opportunities and Challenges
Persistent economic disparities affect African Americans compared to White families, with systemic discrimination limiting wealth accumulation.
The 2020 Census highlights a significant income gap between Black and White households.
There is a growing trend towards Black entrepreneurship, with more Black-owned businesses emerging, particularly in urban areas.
Community initiatives that support Black-owned enterprises are essential for economic sustainability.
Cooperative economics are gaining traction to foster community-based economic development.
Topic 4.19: Health Disparities within Black Communities
Health disparities show higher rates of chronic diseases among African Americans compared to White counterparts.
Factors contributing to these disparities include socioeconomic inequality, limited access to quality healthcare, and systemic racism.
Community health initiatives focus on education, prevention, and access to care.
The use of culturally competent care practices and partnerships for health improvement is increasing awareness of health issues.
Topic 4.20: The Influence of Technology and Social Media
Technology and social media have transformed communication, mobilization, and identity expression in Black communities.
Social media platforms serve as spaces for cultural expression and tools for social movement organizing.
Campaigns like Black Lives Matter leverage social media to raise awareness of racial injustices.
Technology enhances the visibility of Black voices and supports collective action.
Topic 4.21: Future Directions for Black Communities
Emphasis will be placed on addressing economic disparities, educational access, and political engagement.
Intergenerational wealth building and sustainable entrepreneurship are crucial.
Investments in community resources, health initiatives, and technology education are essential.
Advocacy for racial justice and systemic change remains vital to dismantling inequities.
Unity, resilience, and strategic activism will determine the future of Black empowerment and excellence. Additionally, fostering connections among grassroots organizations and promoting mentorship programs will amplify our collective impact and ensure long-term progress.