( Blacks 'n' whites want the same thing: separation and self-rule. )
The Ten Point Plan
1. WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.
2. WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALISTS OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of our fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.
4. WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.
We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.
5. WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.
6. WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR All BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.
We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide our selves with proper medical attention and care.
7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, All OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.
We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against black people, other people of color and poor people inside the united States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.
8. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.
We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the United States ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the United States government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.
9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U. S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR All PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.
We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in United States prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the United States military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.
10. WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE'S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm
Black Nationalist Beliefs
Black Nationalism in the United States , the set of beliefs or political theory that African Americans should maintain social, economic, and political institutions separate and distinct from those of whites.
Black Nationalism, also known as black separatism, is a complex set of beliefs emphasizing the need for the cultural, political, and economic separation of African Americans from white society. Comparatively few African Americans have embraced thoroughgoing separatist philosophies. In his classic study Negro Thought in America , 1880-1915, August Meier noted that the general black attitude has been one of "essential ambivalence." On the other hand, nationalist assumptions inform the daily actions and choices of many African Americans.
Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, Black Nationalists have agreed upon two defining principles: black pride and racial separatism. Black Nationalism calls for black pride and seeks a unity that is racially based rather than one grounded in a specific African culture or ethnicity. Thus the basic outlook of Black Nationalism is premised upon Pan- Africanism . Historian Sterling Stuckey argued that this Pan-African perspective emerged as an unintended byproduct of the institution of slavery. Slaveholders deliberately mixed together slaves of diverse linguistic and tribal backgrounds in order to minimize their ability to communicate and make common cause. In response, African slaves were forced "to bridge ethnic differences and to form themselves into a single people to meet the challenge of a common foe...."
Those espousing nationalist or separatist philosophies have envisioned nationalism in quite different ways. For some, Black Nationalism demanded a territorial base; for others, it required only separate institutions within American society. Some have perceived nationalism in strictly secular terms; others, as an extension of their religious beliefs. Black Nationalists also differ in the degree to which they identify with Africa and African culture.
During the late 18th and 19th centuries African Americans showed an increased level of racial pride and solidarity. African American leaders sought to highlight black accomplishments. For example, black ship owner Paul Cuffe from Massachusetts hired only black seamen to crew his ships so as to demonstrate their ability to a skeptical world. Boston's free blacks made Crispus Attucks the black seaman killed in the Boston Massacre a symbol of the African American role in the American Revolution, and for decades they celebrated March 5 as Crispus Attucks Day.
Nineteenth-century free blacks established separate religious organizations, such as the Free African Society, founded in 1787 by Philadelphians Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, and Boston 's African Meetinghouse. In 1816 Allen played a leading role in the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).
Black pride has also involved an insistence on distinctly black standards of beauty (see Hair and Beauty Culture). Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), deplored black acceptance of white standards of beauty, for example, in preferring straight hair or a lighter skin color. During the 1920s he refused to place advertisements for hair straighteners or purported skin whiteners in Negro World, the UNIA newspaper. In the 1960s black nationalists embraced the political slogan Black Power, but they also proclaimed that "black is beautiful."
In many respects, Black Nationalism represented a response to the overt hostility of white society. During the antebellum era David Walker's Appeal ... to the Colored People of the World (1829) epitomized the demand for a united black defense. According to Stuckey, Walker 's trenchant arguments earned him recognition as the "father of Black Nationalist theory in America ." During the 1850s Martin Delany and the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet emerged as the most forceful nationalists. In the late 19th century AME Bishop Henry McNeal Turner gained prominence as a nationalist leader. Booker T. Washington did not endorse Black Nationalism, but at Tuskegee Institute he insisted on the need for black economic independence and self-help, views that many separatists found congenial.
The most consistent proponents of Black Nationalism were those who advocated emigration or colonization. Delany , Garnet, Turner, and Alexander Crummell all endorsed colonization and insisted that African Americans' greatest hope lay in the establishment of all-black settlements or colonies, most often planned for Africa . Emigration or colonization entailed blacks leaving the United States to establish an African American settlement abroad, often in the hope of creating an independent black state.
In 1815, for example, Paul Cuffe led a group of 38 African Americans to found a settlement in Sierra Leone , which the British government planned to use for the repatriation of slaves freed in its colonies. Free African Society founders Richard Allen and Absalom Jones endorsed Cuffe's plan. Garvey's UNIA was the most powerful back-to-Africa movement of the 20th century. But emigrationists differed among themselves over an appropriate destination and, in the case of emigration to Africa , in their attitudes toward the African people with whom they intended to settle.
Advocates of emigration diverged sharply in their perceptions of African culture. Delany , for example, contended that African ethical values were inherently superior to those of European Christians, who appeared to be driven by an insatiable lust for power and material gain. But Turner and Garnet justified a return to Africa in terms of the opportunity it provided in bringing what they felt were the benefits of Christianity and economic progress to "savage and backward" Africans. Others stressed the opportunity that colonization would offer to demonstrate the extent of African American accomplishment when unencumbered by racial discrimination and prejudice. Some envisioned a black colony as an African American homeland to which all African Americans should return in much the same way that 20th-century Zionists call upon Jews to return to Israel .
Black Nationalists seek racial separation but differ on the degree and nature of that separation. Some have sought a specific territory that could be reserved for and controlled by blacks. Others have advocated separate black social, religious, economic, or political institutions within the existing white society. Territorial nationalists have differed on an appropriate location. Those calling for a return to Africa have most commonly suggested the territories of such present-day West African nations as Liberia , Sierra Leone , and Nigeria .
Others proposed creating a separate black nation in the Americas , often viewing Haiti as a likely possibility. Still others believed that a part of the United States should be set aside as a separate black state. In the late 1920s white radicals of the Communist Party of the United States of America( CPUSA) viewed African Americans as an internal colony of American imperialism and demanded recognition for a Negro Nation that would be located within the Black Belt counties of Mississippi , Alabama , and Georgia .
Many African Americans implicitly acted on nationalist principles. In the 1870s, for example, black " Exodusters " fled the South to found all-black settlements in Kansas . African Americans established other allblack towns-, including Eatonville , Florida , the childhood home of Zora Neale Hurston . Hurston and such prominent African Americans as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois also expressed attitudes that at times resembled or drew upon Black Nationalism. Hurston's writing, notably Their Eyes Were Watching God (1938), portrayed a black world in which whites rarely intruded and mattered little.
Singer and activist Robeson was never a Black Nationalist, but he held views that were, to some extent, compatible with nationalism. He believed that African Americans were fundamentally African people and insisted that they must be "proud of being black." He believed that African peoples were more spiritually attuned and more community-oriented than their white American or European counterparts. He studied several African languages and worked to end Europe 's colonial domination of the African continent. Yet Robeson rejected separatism and never abandoned his vision of a racially integrated society. Moreover, in all of his extensive travels, he never visited sub-Saharan Africa .
W. E. B. Du Bois one of America 's foremost black intellectuals and a leading figure in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People( NAACP) had strong ties to Africa . In 1919 he organized the first Pan-African Congress (see Pan-African Congress of 1919). During the 1920s he traveled to Africa . Yet for most of his life, Du Bois rejected Black Nationalism. In the 1920s he opposed Marcus Garvey and the UNIA. During the 1930s, as Du Bois grew more radical, he turned to socialism and internationalism rather than to Black Nationalism. But during the harsh anticommunism of the Cold War era, Du Bois lost his faith in American society. In 1961 he abandoned the United States and settled in Ghana , where he died two years later, shortly after taking Ghanaian citizenship.
From the 1930s through the 1950s, Black Nationalists maintained a low profile. In 1935 Garvey failed to resurrect the UNIA, despite the hardships that many blacks endured during the Great Depression. Apart from Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam's relatively obscure leader, there was no Black Nationalist who could supplant Garvey. Although Hurston , Robeson , and Du Bois were significant figures, they were not principled separatists.
The 1960s, by contrast, were a high point for Black Nationalist thought. In some respects, it became a radical extension of the Civil Rights Movement. Many blacks grew impatient with the slow pace of change and broke with the movement's principles of passive nonviolence. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) contributed an important expression of Black Nationalism through its slogan Black Power. SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael ( Kwame Ture ) and political scientist Charles Hamilton wrote Black Power (1967) to elaborate that slogan into a philosophy and political program.
In 1966 Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party, which advocated militant self-defense and Black Nationalism. The Black Panther Party, like SNCC Black Power advocates, embraced a Black Nationalism that was primarily secular and political. By contrast, Nation of Islam leaders Elijah Muhammad and the charismatic Malcolm X grounded their goals of racial separation in religious precepts. Black Muslims sought to establish separate economic enterprises, finding a religious justification for a racially separate business life.
As of the late 1990s African American attitudes and beliefs continued to reveal the significance of Black Nationalism, although less as a political philosophy than as a cultural attitude. It is difficult to weigh this cultural impact, but its manifestations can be seen throughout African American society. For example, a growing number of black parents give their children African names. Since the 1970s African-style clothing has been a recurring feature in black fashion. Likewise, the celebration of Kwanzaa emphasizes African Americans' distinctly African heritage.
Kwanzaa, however, is not a traditional African celebration. It is an invented tradition that was developed and promoted by the Black Nationalist Maulana Karenga . Contemporary rap music, while not embracing African culture, emphasizes themes of black pride. Finally, the ubiquitous presence of Malcolm X suggests how broadly Black Nationalism has been disseminated throughout black culture. But few would argue that Malcolm X posters or X insignias on caps or sweaters represent a coherent outlook or set of principles. At the dawn of the 21st century, the most telling assessment remains that of August Meier: African Americans continue to view Black Nationalism with an essential ambivalence.
Contributed By: James Clyde Sellman
http://www.theblacknationalist.com/
