Features - Saturday, April 26, 2008 18:05 - 5 Comments

What we can learn from Black Power

The Black Power movement is often portrayed today as an unfortunate, militant and violent byproduct of the struggle for civil liberties in America during the 1960s.

Musab Younis examines Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967) by Stokley Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, and finds a call for genuine democracy and an appeal to grassroots activism that we could do well to learn from today.

It may seem odd to review a book that was published in 1967 and is now (shamefully) out of print. But in less than 200 pages, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, written by Stokley Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, virtually decimates any book published recently in terms of perception, understanding and potential. Its significance is difficult to overstate, and certainly impossible to adequately convey in one article. It is a fiery and impassioned call for the most oppressed group in America – those descendants of slaves, brutally and violently kept in a position of subservience and dependence for hundreds of years – to rise up and claim freedom through political action. But it is couched in the language of the anti-colonial struggle, and at its heart it explicitly seeks the freedom of all people, and the establishment of real democracy and independence around the world.

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