Black Pride

Report Outline
Changing Goals of Negroes in America
Decline of the Negro Rights Movement
Image of Negro in Arts and Education

Changing Goals of Negroes in America

The negro revolution in the United States has acquired a new mood and direction under a new generation of leaders. The old goal of integration—assimilation of Negroes into white American society—is now widely rejected, at least for the time being, as a form of “painless genocide.” The new goals include racial pride, cultural separateness, and economic and political self-sufficiency. The word “Negro” itself is falling into disfavor; “black” or “Afro-American” are often preferred, especially among younger people.

Until around three years ago, the Negro civil rights movement was basically a middle-class movement. The South was the principal battleground. Federal legislation barring racial discrimination in such fields as voting, public accommodations, education, and housing was the major objective. Active participation of white people in the movement was welcomed. The newly emerging Negro leaders, in contrast, seem concerned primarily with problems of the lower-class black ghettos of big cities outside the South. Civil rights laws are generally dismissed as irrelevant to the needs of ghetto blacks. White financial support of the movement is still accepted, but whites are less welcome than formerly in decision-making positions.

Emergence of the Concept of Black Power

The slogan of the Negro revolution today is “black power” —an ill-defined concept that many whites find menacing. LeRoi Jones, the writer, describes it thus: “Black Power, the power to control our lives ourselves. All of our lives. Our laws. Our culture. Our children. Their lives. Our total consciousness, black oriented…. Black power must be spiritually, emotionally, and historically in tune with black people, as well as serving their economic and political ends.” Newspaper columnist Charles Bartlett observed last July 11 that, “stripped of hostile overtones, the concept of black power is simply … that black Americans must create for themselves an environment which is conducive to their psychological health and institutional strength.” He added: “They must narrow the gap between their own sense of inferiority and the white man's sense of superiority before they can hope to live as equals.”