Black Nationalism and Radicalism

The Forerunners

  • Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) and the Tuskegee Institute -- black self-help
  • Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) and the Universal Negro Improvement Association -- "back to Africa" (Black Star Line)
  • Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) and the Nation of Islam
  • Haile Selassie and Ethiopian Resistance to Italian Fascism (1935)
  • Leopold Senghor (1906 - ) and Négritude
  • Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) and Pan-Africanism
Robert F. Williams

  • racism in Monroe, North Carolina
  • advocates armed self-defense
  • framed and escapes to Cuba, China
  • Republic of New Africa
Malcolm X

  • prison experiences and the Black Muslims
  • condemns King's March on Washington
  • breaks with Elijah Muhammed and forms Organization for African American Unity
  • UN Petition on Genocide
  • February 21, 1965 -- assassinated.
"Black Power" and Black Separatism

  • SNCC and the departure of whites (1965)
  • Black Power -- Stokely Carmichael and Mark Hamilton's book
  • cultural nationalism and Afrocentrism -- "Afros", clothes, Kwanzaa (Ron Karenga)
Ghetto Rebellions

  • Watts (August 1965)
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense

  • Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded 1966 in Oakland

Other Useful Links


  • African-American Holocaust
  • Civil Rights: A Status Report
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964
  • "Eyes on the Prize" Viewer's Guide (Blackside)
  • Greensboro Sit-Ins: Launch of a Civil Rights Movement
  • Images from The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68
  • "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Little Rock Central High 40th Anniversary
  • Malcolm X
  • The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. (Atlanta)
  • Martin Luther King Jr. Timeline Page
  • Museum of African-American History (Detroit)
  • National Civil Rights Museum (Memphis)
  • Photo Tour of the Civil Rights Movement
  • Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore
  • Voices of the Civil Rights Era (Webcorp)
  • Push Here to Go Back Home