Black power (2)
BONTOC, Mountain Province -- Although some tangible improvements have been instituted in the material status of American blacks with the passage of legislative measures that promoted racial equality during the first reconstruction period (1865-1877), still equality as envisioned in the American constitution was way off the mark.
This, after the emancipation decree was promulgated in the 1860’s and the defeat of the confederate forces in 1865 after the bloody civil war. One of this is the disappearance of the rigid racial structures after a series of confrontations between the blacks and government authorities. However, this did not dismantle the economic and political deprivation of blacks especially in the deep south where the most bitter opposition was manifested by the white businessmen and working class people.
This general attitude resulted in the passage of many Jim Crow laws and policies that kept the blacks from enjoying same benefits and rights with the whites. Devoid of hope for improvement, blacks migrated in vast numbers to the industrial north in the decades following the civil war and the utter failure of the first social and political reconstruction.
The failure of the first reconstruction to make substantial improvement in breaching racial inequality gave birth to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples under the leadership of Dubois in 1910.This organization was responsible in advancing the political careers of many blacks from the 1920’s to the 1930’s.
A decade after the NAACP was born, Marcus Garvey organized the militant black nationalist movement called the Universal Negro Improvement Association in which he embraced Africa as the symbolic home of the so-called New World Blacks. This laid the groundwork for Pan-African conferences initiated by Dubois in which African intellectuals who attended became the leading lights in their countries’ fight for political independence from colonialist rule. Among these countries from colonial rulers like France, Belgium and England are Nigeria , Ghana and Egypt .
The NAACP Defense Fund was responsible for the repeal of many Jim Crow laws in several southern states through appeals filed with the Supreme Court. These efforts by the NAACP members made an impact in American society that by 1945, many right-thinking Americans concluded that racial segregation is an anathema and should be dispelled altogether.
This attitude propelled President Franklin Roosevelt to improve the lot of the deprived Blacks after his victory in 1944 was largely due to the support of the blacks. An epitome of this is the ending of the all-white primary election on April 3,1944 by the US Supreme Court.
However, it will take another decade before the civil rights of blacks will be strengthened. Following the semi-totalitarian, anti-communist and paranoid environment of America from 1945 to 1954, no serious mass movement for civil rights and equality was registered.
This uneventful hiatus, however, was broken with far-reaching impact when the US Supreme Court declared as illegal on May 17,1954 the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine in educational facilities and others which was espoused way back in 1896. This marked the start of the second reconstruction. Nevertheless, the drive for desegregation in the deep South was generally slow and it was sparked when an ordinary working black woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested in December, 1965.
She dared to sit in the “whites-only” section of a bus in Montgomery , Alabama and caused the ire of the racist whites.
Consequently, the black population of the city boycotted the buses in vehement protest against the city’s entrenched segregation code that humiliated and relegated blacks as second class citizens for several decades. The boycott was led by E.D. Nixon. This widespread and most serious challenge to racism after the anti-communist hysteria of the post-war decade became an international conflagration.
Out of the dark pits of this massive boycotts and demonstrations against state Jim Crow policies and laws, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as the most eminent leader. Aided by many civic-minded ministers, he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which he used to launch massive protest movements against racism, inequality and prejudice starting from Montgomery, Alabama and Tennessee in the deep south up to the North where, although there were no overt Jim Crow laws and policies, segregation was being done in a subtler if not more pernicious forms. This condition was exemplified in Chicago which was ruled in the 1960’s by one of the most astute politician in American History, Richard Daley, an shrewd manipulator for instituting segregationist and racist policies in the North.
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The desegregation in public buses was outlawed in Montgomery by the Supreme court on November 3, 1956 and this success stimulated Martin Luther King to persist in his campaign for racial equality in the USA underpinned by nonviolence. His nationwide marches and boycotts resulted in the supreme court ruling in 1957 that outlawed racial segregation in public transportation by the federal supreme court, the civil rights act in 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965.
All these social and political concessions for the blacks, which were never heard of in the biracial history of America, led to his assassination in 1968. His place was promptly replaced by Rev. Jesse Jackson who with his Operation Breadbasket underpinned by “The Kingdom Theory” provided many employment to blacks in white companies, enabled black products to share space in shelves side by side with white products in white stores and required race as a qualification in hiring policies of white companies. He was the first black to vie for the presidency in 1984 and 1988. In the latter, he received the second highest votes in the primaries.
Other black noteworthy black leaders who contributed to the civil rights movement and won many political, social and economic advantages were Malcolm X and Prophet Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X advocated self-respect and pride for the black men after centuries that he has been unmanned by the white folks.
Through his fiery speeches, he slammed the hypocrisy, accommodating and compromising stances of the Negro man whenever he encounters a white man. He particularly scored the sour smile that lines and does not fade from the Negro’s face to mask his hatred of the whites. Prophet Elijah Muhammad, on the other hand, demanded that the federal government should give at least two states to the blacks if the whites cannot accept the blacks as their equal.
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So with the imminent presidency of Barrack Obama, it can be concluded that black power is on the rise, if not already reaching its zenith.After many centuries of having been downtrodden and suffered the worst human dignities, the blacks are now making it on top of the world. More so as blacks are not only invading the political arena in great strides but also the toast in sports and arts.
Black sportsmen are the best in the world either in boxing, basketball, tennis, swimming, track and field, golf among others. There are also many black super singers who became chart toppers at various times. Truly, this proved the verity of the phrase in Ecclesiastes that there is a time for everything. The blacks had had their time of darkness, despair and misery given man’s inhumanity to man but they are now having their period of light, happiness and immeasurable hope.
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