Missing the Revolution Beneath Their Feet: The Significance of the Slave Revolution of the Civil War to the Black Power Movement in the USA

Marx’s, Weber’s, and Polanyi’s are the most popular articulations of economic revolution.

On revolutionary theory in the BPM, see Bracey et al. (1970), Van Deburg (1992).

In his last days, Malcolm did not distance himself from black nationalism but revised and reconciled his black nationalism with his revolutionary thesis that drew from it (Henderson 2012).

On this point, Moses converges with Stuckey (1987) and Franklin (1992), but there are important divergences, as well. Most notably, Stuckey viewed black nationalism arising from “slave culture”—a pan-Africanist amalgam of African cultures whose remnants were manifest in folk customs and retentions that ultimately were given African American institutional forms, and these customs provided the bedrock of African American culture, which provided the foundation of black national consciousness. Franklin insists that black national consciousness was reinforced by the commonality of racial oppression and resistance to it, eventuating in a syncretic “Aframerican” culture, which provided a sense of national identity for African Americans. Stuckey’s and Franklin’s perspectives are in contrast with Moses’ view that African American culture derived less from “slave culture” of the South and more from the “high culture” of free black intellectuals in the North situated in prominent black institutions such as the AME Church.

Approximately 186,000 black troops served in the Union Army, and about 10,000 served in the Union Navy. They fought in more than 400 engagements including 40 major battles, and even in the racist context of the time, 16 blacks received the Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military honor.

Sexism in the BPM—as in the CRM, and the White Left—was widespread (Bukhari 2010). Woodard (1999: 123) notes that while Malcolm elevated women to leadership in the OAAU, “no clear pattern of women’s leadership was established for the organizations that claimed Malcolm’s legacy.”

Cruse’s thesis targeted the cultural apparatus—primarily the mass communications media—of the USA, but it inadequately focused on the cultural apparatus of the black community, itself, as a precursor to—or concomitant of—the cultural revolution. This is evident in its inattention to the major black cultural institution, the Black Church, and its ignoring of the major cultural contradiction in black communities, sexism, as a key aspect of the cultural revolution it envisioned. It was also inattentive to substantive cultural demands of black America, such as reparations, which would ramify into the political and economic sphere to augur cultural revolution.

The evolutionary approach focused on developing parallel black institutions (i.e., Afrocentric colleges, churches, businesses/cooperatives) to provide for black national development.