THE CHALLENGE OF BLACK NATIONALISM
By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill (February 14, 2012)
One of the biggest
challenges African people face in America is to rejuvenate Black
Nationalist thinking as struggle to determine for ourselves as a people what is
in our best collective interests.
There are far too
many African people in this country who think what is good for other people
should be good for us. Nothing could be further from the truth. We can only
determine what is good for us by reestablishing Black Nationalist thinking and
developing a Black Nationalist program of action. This is the missing link to
the liberation of African people in America. Let us briefly review the
development and impact of Black Nationalism in America.
Black Nationalism
is a tradition that emerged in the early nineteenth-century among those Black
leaders who understood the need for African people in America to develop a national entity as the only
solution for Black people in North America, Latin America, or
the Caribbean.
These
nineteenth-century Black Nationalist leaders such as Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner, David
Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, James T. Holly, Martin
R. Delany, Pap Singleton, Edwin McCabe, and
Henry McNeal Turner understood that African people in America were a “nation
within a nation” and should organize to collectively struggle for the
liberation of Black people in this country and throughout the world.
During this era
there were some Black Nationalist leaders before, and
after the Civil War, who led movements
for people of African ancestry to leave this country and establish a homeland
somewhere else. These proposals included Africa, Canada, and
the Caribbean.
Other Black
Nationalist leaders led movements for Black people to control the towns where
they lived and others who led movements to the western region of this country
to establish all Black towns in Kansas and Oklahoma.
The core of this
Black Nationalist tradition has been to defeat and overthrow the system of
white supremacy, seize control of
land (somewhere) and to achieve self determination for the oppressed Black
masses.
The Black
Nationalist tradition has always been opposed to integrations, assimilation, and
accommodation as a solution to the problems of people of African ancestry in America. In
this regard, Black Nationalist
tradition has rejected the strategy and tactics of appealing to the morality of
white people and their white supremacy system.
Black Nationalists
have been historically clear that people in power don’t teach powerless people
how to get power. And they certainly don’t give power away, even though, when
challenged, they may give up some
concessions.
As Black
Nationalism emerged in the twentieth-century, the
Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the establishment of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Communicates League (ACL) became
the leading spokesman for Black Nationalist ideas and organizing.
Garvey used his
varied skills to become on of our true twentieth-century freedom fighters.
Garvey arrived in Harlem, New York
on March 16, 1916. By 1919, Garvey was well established as the President
General of the UNIA/ACL that had membership of over three million people with
more than three hundred branches in the United States.
Perhaps Garvey’s
greatest contribution to the upliftment of our people,
through Black Nationalism, was
his ability to find a formula for organizing African people around the African
principle: the greatest good for the greatest number.
This was reflected
in the First International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World, in Madison
Square Garden, in 1920. Over twenty thousand Black people from
all over the world witnessed the choosing of Red, Black, and Green as the colors of the Provisional
Government.
In this context, Garvey and the UNIA/ACL had established an
economic arm, the Negro Factories
Corporation, with cooperative stores, restaurants, steam
laundry ships, tailor shops, dressmaking shops, millinery
stores, a doll factory to
manufacture Black dolls and a publishing house. Also,
Garvey formed a Steamship Corporation.
The Black
Nationalist tradition was continued in the twentieth-century through the Nation
of Islam and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad who utilized many of the Garvey and
UNIA/ACL organizing tactics and strategies.
It was during the
1960s Black Power explosion that the Black Nationalist tradition reemerged
through the influence of Malcolm X who adopted Black Nationalism as the
political philosophy, economic and
social philosophy of the organization of Afro American Unity in 1964 after he
left the Nation of Islam.
Finally, the Black Nationalist tradition, today, is
spearheaded through the African Centered Education Movement. The mass
acceptance of Kwanzaa, African
Liberation Day, Buy Black Campaigns, the Reparations Movement,
and Controlling Our Own Communities Campaigns are all part of
the ongoing Black Nationalist tradition.
Without vigorous
Black Nationalist thinking and an aggressive Black Nationalist program of
action, we will continue to chase
false dreams created by our oppressors. We must put an end to this!
Once Black
Nationalism is understood by all Black people, it
will be the foundation upon which the true liberation of people of African
ancestry in America
will take place.
Conrad Worrill
National Chairman
National Black United Front (NBUF)
NBUF
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