Black Nationalism

AFRICAN AMERICANS who became famous for their confrontational style of leadership during the days of slavery and Jim Crow racism were generally called black nationalists. The term is nebulously defined, and it is used loosely to describe any African American who strives for something other than integration and equal rights within the traditional white society and political system. Black nationalism is often considered a conservative ideology, but it would be more accurately described as a type of counterconservativism.

Historically, black nationalists have refused to compromise with whites on political issues. During the era of slavery, they rejected gradual abolition, and thereafter rejected limited civil rights and slow, steady improvement, in favor of immediate and dramatic change. Their demands were often viewed by the mainstream as revolutionary, and their tactics were generally designed for maximum shock value; that is, to get the attention of white Americans and political leaders via the news media.

For their efforts, which most whites and many fellow blacks considered scary at best and almost terroristic [Page 550]at the very worst, they were labeled “bad” or “militant” or worse.

Examples of black nationalists throughout American history include David Walker, the radical abolitionist from Boston who, in 1829, published the most shocking challenge to the slave labor system ever written, in his pamphlet the Appeal. Walker's Appeal urged southern slaves to rise up and violently overthrow their oppressors. Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and Bishop Henry Turner were abolitioniststurned-colonizationists who led the pan-African movement in the late 1800s. Unlike contemporaries Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, and John Mercer Langston, they found no hope for a better future for their race in the United States and looked for the black man's salvation in Africa. In the early 20th century, the most famous black nationalist was Marcus Garvey. A Jamaican by birth and a New Yorker by immigration, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Black Star Line of steamships. He took on the honorary title of “Provisional President General of Africa” with the intention of founding a great black nation in Africa. Soon after, Garvey was displaced by black socialist A. Philip Randolph as the country's most visible black nationalist. As the foremost spokesman for black labor, he applied pressure to the Franklin Roosevelt administration, producing tangible gains for his race.