Black Power Movement Lecture

Ph.D. candidate Marc Robinson gave us the pleasure of listening to his lecture entitled “The Black Power Movement on Campus: Student Activism and Black Studies”. In this lecture, Mr. Robinson gave an overview of the Black Power movement as it swept through American communities, including college campuses. While many assume that this movement was yet another that originated in the 1960s, Mr. Robinson claimed that roots for the movement could be found in as early as the 1950s with the beginning of Malcolm X’s career and the rise of other prominent Black Power leaders. Most prominent among the effects of the Black Power movement to college campuses was the formation of the Black Student Union, a group of students that still exists in high schools and colleges today. Students, both black and white, found ways to secure a more ethnically diverse faculty and the expansion of cultural studies to African American history (then called Black Studies). University presidents were sometimes locked into their offices with Black Student Union representatives until they signed documents that would help in reaching these goals. Violence was not unheard of within the movement, but Mr. Robinson wished to destroy the stereotype that African American students started the fights. Escalation of fear and threats led to the formation of gun clubs and many students carried weapons for fear of being killed. Sadly, these violence-oriented aspects of the Black Power movement become magnified in traditional history texts and they are often all that today’s students can remember about the movement.

The emphasis placed on the violence caused supposedly by black students is the exact same bias Loewen is trying to eradicate from textbooks. Blatant racism against African-Americans has taken one of the greatest movements in their history and twisted it into something seen as an atrocity or a tragedy. “The superstructure of racism has long outlived the social structure of slavery that generated it” (Loewen 144). Mr. Robinson said that the Black Power movement was once called the “evil turn” of the Civil Rights movement. Standing up for rights that are supposedly for all people is never evil. It is the perception that skin color dictates action that is evil. Textbooks and history courses hide the Black Power movement as if it is something that America is justifiably embarrassed about. What a contradiction! The supposed ideals of American society include equality, freedom, and something called inalienable rights, all of which were present in the pursuits of the Black Student Unions of the 1960s. This uprising can be seen as a triumph over evil rather than evil itself if only white society can admit to the Black Power movement as being an advocate for true justice. In the poem “Inside Dachau”, Sherman Alexie tells the story of a German friend admitting shame over Dachau and then questioning the existence of death camps in the US, death camps that are hidden rather than learned from. Alexie replies, “Yes, Mikael and Veronika, you ask simple / questions which are ignored, season after season” (Alexie 33-34). In the case of the Black Power movement, Americans mistake a symbol of liberty for a tragedy and hide what should be proudly shown. The simple question to be asked here is why can we not accept that liberty is an ongoing battle and acknowledge the champions who are fighting it?