Black Nationalism in Historical Context

Staff writers at The Nubian Message were not alone in adopting tenets of Black Nationalism as they critiqued social and political developments in the 1990s. As Africana Studies scholar Melanye Price argues, Black Nationalist thought is "one of the oldest and most enduring ideological constructs developed by African Americans to make sense of their social and political world."[1] Yet, Black Nationalism has manifested itself in different ways in different historical eras. Understanding the development of Black Nationalism over time helps to situate The Nubian Message's views within a broader historical context. In turn, identifying Black Nationalist influences on The Nubian Message reveals that America was hardly a "post-racial" society in the 1990s. On the contrary, ongoing racism and political conservatism continued to push African Americans, including The Nubian Message staff, to embrace Black Nationalist ideologies.

As J. Herman Blake writes, Black Nationalism emerged in the early nineteenth century because African Americans felt a disconnect between American ideals--liberty, independence, democracy--and the everyday realities--slavery, racism, oppression--that they faced because of their skin color. Early proponents of Black Nationalism were often free blacks struggling to make their way in a white-dominated society. These individuals argued that the American system of slavery and racial hierarchy would never allow for political equality and justice for African Americans, so the only hope was for African Americans to establish a separate country of their own elsewhere. When the Civil War ended slavery in the United States, Black Nationalists ended their calls for emigration and looked forward to exercising the new political freedoms they gained in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Constitutional Amendments.[2]

But African Americans still faced discrimination in education, employment, housing, and other areas after the war, and in the South especially, African Americans were still disenfranchised thanks to poll taxes, literacy tests, and other Jim Crow efforts to exclude them from voting.[3] Some African Americans, including Booker T. Washington, advocated for an economic version of Black Nationalism as a solution to African Americans' plight. Washington and others argued that white Americans would view African Americans as worthy of equal treatment if African Americans could prove their usefulness in areas such as industry and agriculture. White Americans would also see African Americans differently if the latter raised themselves out of poverty, either through industrial and agricultural education or through black businesses that supported self-sustaining black communities. Both strategies involved racial solidarity and self-help in economic activities; unlike political nationalism, both strategies also emphasized integration into mainstream American society.[4]

Although economic nationalism succeeded in strengthening internal bonds within the African American community, it made few inroads into ongoing discrimination against African Americans in the early to mid-twentieth century. Once again, Black Nationalists turned to a different strategy: cultural nationalism. This view promoted pride in African American history and culture as a way to develop racial pride and identity. It was also thought that promoting historical accomplishments of Africans and African Americans would show white America that black people had made significant contributions to world history and therefore deserved equal rights in contemporary society.[5]

After World War I, writer and activist, Marcus Garvey, integrated these three themes--political, economic, and cultural nationalism--into one ideology that rejected white values and embraced blackness on its own terms.[6] In the mid-twentieth century especially, this integrated form of Black Nationalism often served as a counterpoint to racial integration movements. Black Nationalists in the 1960s and 1970s included Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, as well as Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, founders of the prominent Black Panther Party. These groups and individuals frequently emphasized Black people's right to self-determination, or their right to decide their own form of government and control their own lives. In the process, they encouraged individuals to hold leaders, Black, white or otherwise, accountable for their decisions. Like their predecessors, Black Nationalists in the 1960s and 1970s also emphasized independence from Anglo-American culture, and promoted a shift towards (or back to) African society and culture (a movement known as Pan-Africanism).[7]

Even after the political decline of the Black Panther Party in the 1980s, Black Nationalist thought continued to influence African American activists well into the 1990s, thanks to ongoing publications of the Party's newspaper, The Black Panther, and other literature.[8] Changing demographics in the U.S. and the political threat that new groups posed sparked a conservative backlash against multiculturalism, affirmative action, and other policies intended to promote diversity.[9] At the same time, events like the 1992 Los Angeles riots sparked anger over racial profiling, white police brutality, and judicial prejudice.[10] Ongoing racism and political conservatism frustrated many African Americans who had hoped that the 1990s would usher in a new era of improved race relations. As Kevin Blue's article in The Nubian Message reveals, the rise of Black Conservatism, which emphasized individual self-improvement, economic development through free enterprise, and integration within mainstream American society as the keys to African American success, particularly angered African Americans who thought that such views betrayed the African American community's interests as a whole. The Conservative movement galvanized individuals like Carolyn Holloway of The Nubian Message to call for African Americans to unite in the face of political opposition and collectively voice their concerns and interests.[11]

In addition to reviving elements of Black Political Nationalism in the 1990s, individuals disillusioned with the state of race relations in the U.S. also responded by adopting Black Nationalist views about African American history and culture.[12] The hope was that cultural nationalism could unite African Americans once again in the face of outside racism by providing common bonds of history and heritage. The Nubian Message's calls to adopt an alternate spelling of "Africa," reject "white" materialism and definitions of success, and receive "strong doses of Afrocentric material" can be seen in this light.[13]