Excursus: The American History of Black Consciousness
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Many of the early writers of the Black Consciousness movement were from the Carribean, or were French-speakers, such as Aimé Cesaire, and Frantz Franon, who were both from Martinique.
The French colonies they came from had a policy of assimilating the native people, educating them as French people and alienating them from their traditional culture. Cesaire was one of these, and he became involved in "negritude" - black consciousness. Cesaire advocated the use of violence to take back the land and culture of his people.
Frantz Franon was also assimilated, and was taken to France to be educated. When his education had finished, he chose not to go back to Martinique but to another colony, Algeria. He took part in the uprising against France while there. He was trained as a psychiatrist and observed nervous disorders among the indigenous population. He saw that colonisation and assimilation had produced a state of mind in the people where they could accept this form of life. The only way for the people to be truly free was for them to liberate themselves - they could not just be declared free but had to gain it for themselves and so produce a new state of mind. He said that the colonised people give their consent to the ideology (racism, in this case) and if they come to believe that they need to be controlled, the ideology has won. Many thinkers who followed Franon thought that the state of black people in the United States was the most perilous because they had been declared free with the end of slavery, but had not taken it up and remained to all intents and purposes, slaves.
One of the originators of black consciousness was Edward Blyden (1833-1912). He was born in a Dutch colony and them emigrated to America. He left there because of the discrimination against and inequality of black people in the US. Instead, he went to Liberia, a nation set up for former slaves to return to Africa. He taught that "diaspora" black people had an African history and culture all their own. He criticised Christianity in Africa where a "European" faith had simply been transplanted, unlike Islam in Africa which had adapted to the people and so became a native religion rather than an oppressive one.
Black consciousness did not really reach large numbers of people in America until Marcus Garvey began to stir it. He travelled widely and saw exploitation of black people everywhere. He heavily criticised the segregation within the black community where they had internalised the racist ideology with the result that lighter-skinned people were regarded more highly than darker-skinned people.
Garvey formed the University Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which was in conflict with the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) which was a more middle-class (and lighter-skinned) organisation. Garvey thought NAACP were only there to aid a small section of the black population, not the whole.
Garvey realised that without an economic power base, African-Americans could not gain many political advantages, so he tried to set up black businesses. This idea ultimately failed, but he had given the idea of gaining an economic base of operations.
Garvey's ideas formed a kind of "equity" black consciousness which was followed by Dr Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965 Dr King praised Garvey for having given dignity to the people. However, after Dr King's assassination, many became more extreme and turned to violence, believing it to be the only way to get results in a racist society. This more extreme version was known as "black power".
In 1966 Stokely Carmichael made a speech about "black power" in the tradition of Franon and Cesaire, and this influence could be seen in the riots following Dr King's death. Carmichael advocated violence in the civil rights movement as white people did not deserve the respect of peaceful protest.
Religion entered into black power in the form of the Nation of Islam, which was founded by Robert Poole. The Nation of Islam is a Muslim organisation aimed specifically at black people with some rather different beliefs to normative Islam. They believe the white race to be the creation of the devil and black people to be superior. Their aim is to separate the races. They recruit highly from ghettos and gaols, and insist on a strict moral and dress code, in comparison with the ghettos. Their most famous convert was Malcolm Little (Malcolm X) whose house was burnt twice and his father murdered by the Klu Klux Klan. While he was a devoted follower of the Nation of Islam for a time, he was converted to normative Islam while on a trip to Mecca, after meeting black and white muslims who did not make any distinctions according to race. Malcolm X was later assassinated, with Louis Farrakhan (present leader of the Nation of Islam) being implicated.