Black Power Movement/Civil Rights Movement - Book Report/Review Example

This paper is a literature review on four articles relating to the black power movement. Keywords: Black power, rights, movement Black Power Movement/Civil Rights Movement The black power movement represents the efforts made by the African-American activists during the 1960s and 1970s, to gain equal treatment as their White-American counterparts. This movement aimed at acquiring control of institutions that the Black-Americans deemed important to their daily lives. This paper is a literature review of four articles related to the black power movement.

A number of authors have written about the black power movement, some have given it much emphasis while others have touched very little about it, and have considered it insignificant to the American political history. Article 1 Joseph (2009) holds two viewpoints concerning the subject of black power; one of them asserts that the black-power movement was politically naive, ineffectual and eventually stillborn. The other position holds that this movement redefined Black identity and the American history at large (p. 1002). Despite these two positions, this author claims that the black power movement scandalized much of the American nation and has been described as the ruthless twin of the civil rights eras. . This Act additionally gave them an opportunity to appeal for racial solidarity among the Blacks through the black arts, black studies programs, spoken word and other avenues (Joseph, 2009, p. 1003). In the process, a movement was born that encompassed almost every aspect of the African-American political life and touched international concern.

Students, poets, intellectuals, and more politicians followed suit by advocating for a political program that is rooted in the principles of the Black Power Ideology. Joseph (2009) claims that violence was the centre of this movement, given that Malcolm X advocated for it through his calls of self-defense and physical retaliation during protests (p. 1003). After Malcolm X’s death, his successor, Stokely Carmichael and his Black Panther Party; followed suit and further advocated for violence in their protests.

By the late 1960s, there was an increase in civil disturbances and clashes between the law enforcement agencies and the Black Power’s militants. Joseph (2009) asserts that the violence that marked this movement could have been drawn from the ideas of the Third World liberation movements and anti-colonialism campaigns in Africa (p. 1008). This author further claims that this same self-destructive rage and violence that started the black movement; is the same power that brought its untimely end.

Article 2 Van Horne agrees with what Joseph asserts in his article; Historians and the black power movement, that violence marked the black power movement. The only difference is that, he justifies this violence; as opposed to Joseph who criticized it, claiming that the violent destruction of the black power was necessary for the building of the black power (Van Horne, 2007, p. 368). Van Horne (2007) maintains that