TRANSFORMING FREEDOM INTO POWER

1. TRANSFORMING FREEDOM INTO POWER AIHE - Kern County, California Dr. Lillie Johnson Edwards Drew University, Madison, NJ

2. Malcolm X (1925-1965) • Son of Baptist preacher. Born in Oklahoma • Home burned by the Klan and father murdered in 1938 • Mother in mental institution and children in the welfare system • Malcolm in juvenile detention, quit school after 8th grade, moved to Boston. • Entered street life of gambling, drugs, burglary and prostitution • Arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1946. Converted to Nation of Islam in prison and changed his name to Malcolm X. • 1954 minster of Harlem’s Temple Number 7 and became the voice of the NOI and rejected nonviolence and integration • 1961 he began publishing Muhammad Speaks • Tensions between Malcolm X and NOI lead to his suspension in 1963 • 1964 Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam and founds his own organization, Muslim Mosque, Inc. • 1964 hajj to Mecca, name change to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz • 1964 Found Organization of Afro-American Unity and repudiates the NOI doctrine that all white people were evil and began lecturing on the connection between the civil rights struggle in the South and the struggle against colonialism in Africa. • Feb. 21, 1965. Malcolm X is assassinated. • 1965 Autobiography of Malcolm X.

3. Malcolm Little Malcolm Little “Red” http://www.malcolmx.com/about/photos.html

4. Malcolm X during his Hajj to Mecca http://www.malcolmxonline.com/malcolm-x-pictures.html

5. “This image shows the only time Martin Luther King and Malcolm X ever met, and was taken before a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on 26 March 1964. For years, the two had represented opposite sides of the struggle: King was a leader of the southern Civil Rights Movement, while Malcolm X was recognized as a voice for urban African Americans; however, by 1964 they were moving closer. Tragically, Malcolm X was assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem on 21 February 1965. King was assassinated three years later by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee on 4 April 1968.” Photo by Marion S. Trikosko. Courtesy of the Library of Congress http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0506/photo_essay.jsp?page=7

6. “Drawing on the teachings of black nationalists before them, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, in 1966 in response to heightened police brutality. Emerging in a moment of sharpening racial frustration, the Black Panthers brought a new degree of militancy to the ideas of black pride, power, and nationalism, and the group soon became a strong cultural presence in the United States. A socialist revolutionary group, the Panthers advocated for basic needs for black people such as adequate food, shelter, and employment opportunities. They also advocated armed self-defense against white oppressive powers, which earned them a reputation as a dangerous and revolutionary group.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, MOHAI http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0908/photo_essay.jsp?page=9

7. BLACK PANTHER PARTY PLATFORM AND TEN-POINT PROGRAM (abridged list) • Ten point program mirrors the bill of rights • We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community . . . • We want full employment for our people • We want an end to the robbery of the capitalists of our Black community • We want decent housing fit for shelter of human beings • We want education of our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society. • We want all Black men to be exempt from military service • We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people • We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails • We want all Black people when brought to trail to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities , as defined by the Constitution of the United States • We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which only Black colonial subject swill be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of Black people as to their national destiny.

8. “Few figures in the world of professional sports have been a more significant single influence than Muhammad Ali. The greatest professional prize-fighter of his generation—and many others—Ali was born Cassius Clay on 17 January 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, and went on to become heavyweight champion of the world when he defeated Sonny Liston in 1964 and again when he shocked the world by defeating George Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974. An outspoken and controversial advocate for civil rights, Ali was stripped of his title in 1967 following his declaration of conscientious objector status in the war in Vietnam. This, coupled with Ali's decision to banish the name Cassius Clay as a relic of his ancestors' slave past and to announce his membership in the Nation of Islam, served to make Ali a figure of national speculation and argument. Ali's exuberantly boastful personal style, the quick-witted rhyming patter he used during jousts with both the press and prospective opponents, and his unquestionable status as one of the superstars of the professional sports world have ensured Ali a permanent place in the canon of hip hop and rap's most important forebears.” http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0806/photo_essay.jsp?page=7

9. “On 16 October 1968 at the Olympic summer games in Mexico City, the track-and-field sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos brought Black Power to an international audience. After winning gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200-meter sprint, Smith and Carlos took to the podium wearing black socks with no shoes to represent the poverty of black people in the United States and a black scarf to symbolize black pride. During the playing of the national anthem, Smith and Carlos lowered their eyes and each raised a single black-gloved fist in the traditional Black Power salute. Their gesture, meant to protest racism and segregation, was met with a mixed, though largely negative, response. After the ceremony the two Olympians were suspended by the U.S. team and ordered to leave Mexico City immediately.” Library of Congress http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0908/photo_essay.jsp?page=10

10. “In the 1970s Angela Davis, the political activist and intellectual, came into the spotlight as an outspoken advocate for social change. The 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing that took the lives of four black children occurred in Davis's hometown of Birmingham. This bombing as well as other incidents of racially motivated murder spurned Davis into speaking out for social change and she quickly became a figurehead for prisoners' rights and racial equality. In the early 1970s Davis was famously arrested and tried for kidnapping and murder. An international campaign to "Free Angela Davis" ensued, and she was found not guilty in 1972 after sixteen months of incarceration. Today Davis continues to lecture about various types of oppression found in the United States and abroad. She currently teaches in the esteemed History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.” http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0409/photo_essay.jsp?page=10

11. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , the Poor People’s Campaign, 1967 and Vietnam • Negative impact of suburbanization of black people moving from working class to middle class. Integration did not create equality in spite of growth of middle class. Such growth is stifled by lack of true wealth and continued discrimination; continued economic and educational gap. • King sees connection between war on poverty, racial issues in the US and the Vietnam War. • Expanding suburbanization undermines employment and housing for the urban poor and working class. • Malcolm’s assassination ’65 & King’s in ’68 seems to signal America’s resistance to either method for substantive and comprehensive change • Stereotypes of Jim Crow continue • Institutional and invisible racism, tokenism and class ceilings remain intact • Tokenism

12. “By the 1970s the nonviolent southern-led Civil Rights Movement had been superseded by the more militant Black Power Movement which was influenced by the experiences of young African Americans from the urban inner cities. In this image taken on 19 June 1970 a man at the Black Panther Convention stands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial holding a banner for the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention.” Photo by Warren K. Leffler. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0506/photo_essay.jsp?page=10