November 7th, 2008
Black Liberation | Lived Experiences | Memorials | Music
Black Liberation in South Africa
The Black Consciousness movement (BCM) formed during a period when the apartheid government banned major oppositional movements. With the overthrow of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique and Angola in 1975, black South Africans began to believe they too could deliver themselves from the racist framework of apartheid. African and African-American writers like Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmicheal inspired the BCM philosophy. Bantu Stephen Biko, the intellectual architect of BCM philosophy and a medical student at Natal University, split with the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) in which he had been involved, while accusing white liberals of hindering the anti-apartheid effort. Biko believed whites and blacks suffered from superiority and inferiority complexes, respectively, which crippled interracial collaborative efforts for black liberation. In 1970, Biko became president of the organization that eventually created BCM: the South African Student Organization (SASO). BCM philosophy emphasized “psychological rehabilitation as a precondition for political resistance.” Biko argued that because “the greatest weapon of the oppressor was the mind of the oppressed,” blacks had to believe they were worth the liberation they were seeking to achieve. BCM philosophy also redefined blackness, Christ and Christianity, and the history of black South Africans.
The BCM inspired young black South Africans to a revolt against the Bantu Education system; this revolt began in the township of Soweto in 1976. After the banning of BCM and the murder of Stephen Biko in 1977 by the apartheid regime, thousands of black South African youth fled the country and joined Umkhonto we Sizwe (“the Spear of the Nation,” or MK), the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Although the BCM no longer existed formally, the members resuscitated the oppositional parties like the ANC by supplying them with new recruits whom Nelson Mandela described as “a different breed…brave, hostile, and aggressive; they would not take orders, and shouted ‘Amandla!‘ at every opportunity.”
While in King Williams Town, the research team interviewed several individuals who were part of or familiar with the movement. Important interviews included Ntsiki Biko, Stephen Biko’s widow; a member of the Azania People’s Organization; and ordinary individuals influenced by the movement.
(Photo Copyright © 2010, Ryan Koons)
Black Liberation in the American South
Between the 1940s and 1970s, the United States experienced social upheaval on a massive scale. From this crucible of change and activism emerged the Civil Rights Movement. The descendants of black African slaves were now fighting for the general equality afforded them as American citizens. Because of the enormous sacrifices made by those involved, lawmakers purged many laws enforcing racial discrimination and oppression from the books, allowing, in theory, for institutional equality. Because of its unique symbolic significance and horrendous record of racial violence, Mississippi in the 1960s became a central battleground in the struggle for civil rights.
After Reconstruction ended in 1877, the American South entered a period characterized by widespread racism and segregation, violence, and the rise of hostile forms of discrimination upon the African-American community by Southern whites. Consequently, blacks were left to the will of Jim Crow, a system which white Southern state legislatures enacted in order to ensure the political disenfranchisement and economic constraint of African-Americans. Jim Crow laws rendered blacks second-class citizens, segregating them from whites in public facilities, restaurants, public schools, public transportation, restrooms, and essentially every other part of society. Under the society that embraced Jim Crow, blacks were kept at the bottom of society through brutal methods, most notably lynching. Education, or rather the ways state law denied it to blacks, was one of the most pressing issues facing African-Americans in the struggle. It was seen as a means not only of social mobility, but also of liberation. Thus the attainment of equal rights in education was the first step towards freedom and general social equality.
On May 17, 1954, in the United States Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional. This was a turning point in the fight for Civil Rights because the ruling overturned the earlier Plessy v. Ferguson verdict, which established the segregationist doctrine of “separate but equal.” African-Americans began to see a gradual end to legal segregation on the horizon which inspired hope within the community.
But, despite the ruling of Brown vs. Board of Education, school desegregation still had to be achieved through individual acts of courage, as young black students entered often hostile all-white schools. In Mississippi, this proved to be significantly more difficult than in other places. When James Meredith became the first black student at the University of Mississippi, or ‘Ole Miss’, in 1962, he met violent opposition from much of the all white student body. In addition to, or perhaps because of, receiving hundreds of threats, as well as being shot at, the risk involved in Meredith’s act of integration prompted President Kennedy send in the National Guard to protect him and his rights to attend the school.
The event that had the most significance in mobilizing people and making the struggle into a massive movement was not the Supreme Court ruling, but rather the murder of a black teenager in Mississippi. After he allegedly made a pass at a white woman, local white southerners brutally murdered Emmett Louis Till in Money, Mississippi on August 28, 1955. Till, a Chicago, Illinois native, was only fourteen years old at the time of his death. Not familiar with the strict racial caste system in Mississippi, or the behavior expected of blacks there, he unknowingly fell prey to the violent brand of racism exercised in the South at the time. After his mutilated corpse was revealed to the public as a testament to the brutality of Jim Crow, the murder drew immense public criticism from around the country, mobilizing many and sparking a new period of the Civil Rights movement.
Influenced in part by traditions of non-violence from Gandhi, Quakerism, and traditional African-American Christianity, the Civil Rights Movement utilized forms of direct action and civil disobedience to combat discrimination and segregation. Members participated in sit-ins, boycotts, freedom rides, marches, legal recourse, and voter registration drives to galvanize their efforts against racism. Many participants attribute the success of the Civil Rights Movement to the non-violent tactics used to achieve equality.
In another front in the fight for civil rights, SNCC, or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, came into rural Mississippi early in the 1960s to help blacks register to vote. Facing strong opposition and little outside aid, SNCC decided on a revolutionary new method. They brought in hundreds of mostly white, socially-conscious college students from across the country–an action designed in part to draw attention from the media and an American white elite now more involved with the struggle through their children. This influx of hundreds of white students brought national attention to the struggle in Mississippi. It also drew a virulently militant response from a specific segment of the white community, as a new, secretive organization called the White Knights of the previously established Ku Klux Klan was formed in response to the increased presence of outside activists in Mississippi. The White Knights carried out a number of attacks, including the murder of three members of SNCC–an act that drew nationwide attention to the civil rights struggle in Mississippi.
Out of the work conducted by SNCC emerged the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or MFDP, which attended the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Comprised of major grass-roots activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and Aaron Henry, the MFDP sought to unseat the Mississippi delegation of the Democratic Party, citing the fact that the representatives were not democratically elected due to the fact that blacks were systematically prevented from voting in the state. The Democratic leadership didn’t want to lose the Dixiecrats–their traditional base of white support in the South–but they didn’t want to alienate the black vote either. In the end they proposed on a compromise that neither side accepted. The Dixiecrats weren’t unseated, but the MFDP was given two at-large seats, which gave them no real voice at the convention. The Dixiecrats protested by walking out on the convention and the failure of the MFDP to gain representation disillusioned many civil rights activists.
Regardless of setbacks, however, by the late 1960s and early 1970s institutionalized segregation had finally become defunct through the efforts of those involved in the movement. African-Americans all over the country, but especially in places like rural Mississippi, experienced the elation of hard-earned freedoms.
While in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the research team interviewed several individuals who were part of or familiar with the movement. Important interviews included Johnny Lewis, Mayor Espy, Bill Luckett, Sister Kay Burton, and several others who influenced the movement.
Podcast: Mississippi Liberation Philosophy
Created by Kyle Coston and Max Paschal