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Just as there are major ideological divides between black nationalists and advocates of civil rights or
communist schools of thought, there are also major differences between the various black
nationalist organizations that sometimes resulted in conflict. Militant black nationalists such as
the Black Panther Party and the cultural nationalist organization, Organization US, were the subject
of intense rivalry. In his book, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the1960s, Clayborne
Carson identified the major ideological divide as". . . between cultural nationalists who urged
blacks to unite around various conceptions of black cultural ideal, and the self proclaimed political
revolutionaries who were more likely than cultural nationalists to advocate armed struggle to
achieve political or economic goals. Again, what made it appear to be relatively minor differences proved
to be a major barrier towards unity as will see the following clip...
... In '65 at most, most of the games segued into political parties, like I mentioned, the Slaussens
went into the Black Panther Party but then the other gangs, they kind of identified more with the cultural
nationalist group called the US Organization. . .
"We have gotten our manhood back by the acts of violence. When a brother throws of brick, or snipes
from a building . . . "
These guys had different philosophies. They didn't really get along with each other's philosophy.
They didn't believe in what each other were doing. The Panthers were more about confrontation,
you know, confronting "the man. " The US Organization, to my understanding, was a little more
abstract about their rage.
Well, I'm a little more aggressive. I can fight a little better. I'm a little stronger, so I'll go with Bunchy,
and them. And the guys who couldn't fight so well-- the guys who wanted to be more "jazzy jazzy, "
went with Karenga.
The kinds of things that Maulana Karenga was saying in the first speech I heard, clicked with me in
terms of black people seizing their own destiny and to express that through political power. To seize
political power through a self affirmation of who black people were. Given that both
organizations had been recruiting strongly from gang structures, you can see the beginnings of some
confrontations.
Karenga and all of those people from US Organization were "armchair revolutionaries, "as far
as Bunchy was concerned.
Bunchy was a Slaussen. A lot of that, again, was being acted out at that point through a politicized
environment.
Although there were significant differences of opinion the framework for unity did exist and
was being forwarded under the banner of pan-Africanism. Pan Africanism-- one of the six
elements of black nationalism--is the notion that people of color worldwide shared a common
anticolonial and anti-imperialist agenda.
As we've seen in Episode 2: The Significance of Black Studies, often times the experiences of other
oppressed groups and the instructive and offer much toward our own understanding of our
struggle. In the case of black nationalism the anticolonial movement in Indonesia served as a
valuable lesson. The first president of the independent country of Indonesia, President Sukarno,
played a key role in bringing together delegations from 29 African and Asian nations in the
1955 Bandung Conference. The conference inspired African nations in their quest for independence
from colonial rule. The effort in Asia was duplicated on the African continent by Ghana, which was the
first African country to gain independence from European colonization under its first present
Kwame Nkrumah in 1957. Ghana became a charter member of the Organization of African Unity in
1963, which sought unity amongst African nations and the anticolonial movement. Malcolm X in his
historic 1963 speech, "Message to the Grassroots, "lauded the Bandung Conference as instructive
for African Americans in pursuit of building unity stating, "Once you study what happened at the
Bandung Conference and the results of the Bandung Conference, it actually serves as a model for the
same procedure you and I can use to get our problems solved." Inspired by both the Bandung
Conference and anticolonial struggles on the African continent, Malcolm X founded the
organization of Afro-American Unity as a coalition of organizations modeled after the
Organization of African Unity. In a statement Malcolm X proclaimed,
"We Afro-American people will launch a cultural revolution which will provide the means for restoring
our identity that we might rejoin our brothers and sisters on the African continent culturally, psychologically,
economically, and share with them the sweet fruits of freedom from oppression and independence from
racist governments.
Further and another historic speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet, " on April 3, 1964, Malcolm X
established a framework for intergroup cooperation and collaboration that did not demand
that organizations become subordinate or merge with one particular group but only required
them to adhere to the broad principles of black nationalism and simultaneously remain independent
and autonomous. He proclaimed,
"If the NAACP is preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join the NAACP. Join
any organization that has a gospel as for the uplift of the black man."
Maulana Karenga was also inspired by Bandung. He used the Indonesian motto, "Unity in
Diversity, "to describe his own formula for African American solidarity which he termed,
"Operational Unity. "Using the operational unity approach, Karenga formulated a theory that
allowed for cooperation between several umbrella organizations and coalitions that he worked to build.
So, we can see a theoretical framework for unity was in place but putting it into practice remains a
challenge even in the 21st century.
That does for this program please join us on our web site www.africanelements.org or join the
discussion in our Facebook group, African Elements. This is Darius Spearman.
Thank you for watching.