A BRAND NEW BAG: How African Americans Revolutionized U.S. Culture And Changed the World 1955-1975 (excerpt)
by Kofi Natambu
The Panopticon Review
© November, 2023
Dr. Martin Luther King (1929-1968), Jr. and Malcolm X (1925-1965) following King's press conference at the U.S. Capitol about the Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Photo taken on March 26, 1964. It was the only time these two giants met in person.
"Every generation, out of relative obscurity, must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it."
--Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Of all our studies history is best qualified to reward our research"
--Malcolm X (1925-1965)
THE REVOLUTION BEGINS (AGAIN): 1955-1965
For an entire century prior to the mid-1950s an extraordinary number of black political and cultural activists, intellectuals and writers, musicians and composers, visual artists and athletes, entertainers and workers waged an intense, unrelenting, and bitterly fought public battle for political, economic, and human rights, cultural autonomy, and social respect and recognition in a highly segregated, ruthlessly capitalist, and profoundly racist nation that actively resisted this movement through a pervasive and deeply entrenched apartheid system that legally sanctioned and promoted racial discrimination, oppression, exploitation, censorship, and exclusion in every area of U.S. life, society, and culture. The post-slavery era after emancipation in 1863 was marked by the pervasive denial of voting rights, brutal economic peonage and exploitation of black workers, widespread and extreme forms of overt physical violence by white mobs (i.e. lynchings, beatings, arbitrary imprisonment, rapes, assaults, assassinations, bombings, arson, shootings, etc.) against black people in general, and a distinctly separate and highly unequal social, educational, and economic structure that gave not only white elites but whites in general great punitive power and control over the national black population. Thus in employment, education, health care, housing, access to public institutions and facilities, and the equal opportunity to compete for jobs, wages, and the distribution of resources (as well as enforced legal protections against discrimination and exclusion), African Americans were forced to endure immense suffering, repression, and neglect for many generations after slavery officially ended in January, 1863. Most of these imposed structural, institutional, systemic, and ideological restrictions on the freedom, mobility, and self determination of African Americans lasted well into the 1960s, and of course, many of them are still very prevalent and intact today.
It was this ongoing historical reality that such major and legendary black political and cultural figures as Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) Frederick Douglas (1818-1895), Harriet Tubman (1822-1913), W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963), Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), William Monroe Trotter (1972-1934), Paul Robeson (1898-1976), A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), Richard Wright (1908-1960), Louis Armstrong (1901-1970), Duke Ellington (1899-1974), Bessie Smith (1898-1937) and Billie Holiday (1915-1959) among many others sought eloquently and forcefully to confront and defeat through their tremendous interventions in the general political, social, and cultural life of the nation in the period from the mid 1850s to the mid 1950s. It is this extraordinary legacy that serves as the bedrock historical foundation of the revolutionary movement of African Americans during the mid and late 20th century, and deeply influences the very form and content of what intellectuals, artists, and activists were able to achieve in the crucial historical period of 1955-1975 that is the focus of this study.
1955 marks a major watershed in African American, and thus American, history. It is also significant as a beginning of this modern development in African American thought, art, and activism because that year marked the start of a dramatic collective response of black people in the U.S. to the deeply frustrating limitations and repressions of the late 1940s and early 1950s period when, after a million black soldiers fought against fascism in the name of the United States in the Jim Crow segregated armed forces during WWII (1942-1945) for “democracy and freedom” abroad in Europe and Asia, found themselves still being denied fundamental human and democratic rights in their own country in the immediate postwar era. This virulent racism, coupled with the deadly specter of McCarthyism (1947-1965) in American politics and public policy against all forms of mass-based democratic liberal and radical reform activity as well as all socialist and communist revolutionary movements for freedom, justice, peace, and equality in the United States resulted in millions of African Americans still being widely subjected to the horrific, cruel, and deadly absurdities of racial oppression.
Thus it was in the period from 1955-1965 that a massive amount of intellectual, physical, cultural, and spiritual energy was expended by a forceful and insistent new generation—actually two generations--of African Americans (largely born between 1915-1945) on behalf of a radical updating and expansion of the movements and activities of the previous century of African American intellectuals, activists, and artists. The “New Negroes” of this period often embodied and openly expressed a widely diverse consensus of philosophy, artistry, and social-political thought and behavior that was highly innovative, original, and daring in its approach to questions, problems, and challenges facing the United States in general, and the African American people in particular. What’s noteworthy about the emergence of this new generation of individuals is the fact that they came from widely different class backgrounds and geographical regions yet still shared a cultural sensibility and social consciousness that actively sought to challenge the status quo in politics and art. It is this insistent demand for radical social, ideological, and aesthetic change that unites these historical contemporaries, and serves as the foundation for their stunning interventions in American society and culture. It was not surprising given these general concerns and realities that the period from 1955-1975 eventually proved to be one of the most dynamic, volatile, and radical eras in the history of the United States. This is the narrative that I will examine and tell in this book.
Part I: Who Are These People?:
“The New Breed” Demands a Change
In 1955 political, cultural, and social life in the United States was on the surface very staid, conservative, and white. Mass cultural conformity and various forms of social repression were widespread and strictly enforced throughout the nation. White supremacy, sexism, homophobia, censorship, and hegemonic ruling class coercion and domination were common and largely accepted or at least not opposed by millions of Americans. Black people were especially held in contempt and patronizing indifference by millions of white Americans, and though such traditional national civil rights organizations as the NAACP (founded in 1909), CORE (Congress of Racial Equality founded in 1942), and the Urban League (founded in 1913) had made limited progress in their various national and local campaigns for legal, constitutional, social, and economic reforms, it was clear to everyone concerned both in and outside of the movement that these efforts, while necessary, were not sufficient. Neither were the primarily moral and ethical appeals of such nonviolent Ghandian-influenced organizations as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) formed in 1957 or even the separatist black religious and cultural nationalist doctrines, values, and programs of such alternative organizations as Elijah Muhammad’s NOI (Nation of Islam) whose position in the 1950s and early ‘60s was being largely represented and enunciated by its National Minister, Malcolm X, via Muhammad. Many black people during this period were also rapidly becoming involved in trying to either augment, or even in some instances replace, these various ideological and institutional groups with even broader and more secularly militant/radical forms of social theory and activism.
In the cultural and aesthetic sphere such major African American popular artforms as Jazz, Blues, Rhythm & Blues, and Rock and Roll, as well as independent black innovations in literature (fiction, poetry, and the essay), musical and dramatic theatre, dance, comedy, painting, and sports were continuing to make astonishingly rich and creative contributions to modern art throughout the world, and were often at the forefront of the general African American revolution in the U.S. in the period under examination here. Such major iconic artistic figures as Miles Davis (1926-1991), John Coltrane (1926-1967), Chuck Berry (1926-2019), James Brown (1933-2006), Charles Mingus (1922-1979), Sarah Vaughn (1924-1990), Bud Powell (1924-1966), Max Roach (1924-2007), Art Blakey (1919-1990), Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993), Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996), Nat King Cole (1919-1965), Sam Cooke (1931-1964), Dexter Gordon (1923-1990), B.B. King (1925- ), Etta James (1938-2012), Otis Blackwell (1930-2002), Eric Dolphy (1928-1964), Little Richard (1932- ), Chester Himes (1908-1984), Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka (1934- ), Marvin Gaye (1939-1984), Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), Toni Morrison (1931-2019), Nina Simone (1933-2003), Ishmael Reed (1938- ) Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), Bob Kaufman (1925-1986), Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925-1990), John Lee Hooker (1917-2000), Romare Bearden (1913-), and Muddy Waters (1915-1987), among many others, constitute a genuine revolutionary vanguard of American artists for the mid and late 20th century.
It was in this electrifying and dangerous climate and context of great social and cultural change and conflict that this era (1955-1960) began. Despite the oppressively rigid and severely glacial surfaces dominating American life large cracks and fissures were already beginning to take place just beneath this façade. It’s highly significant to note, for example, that an obscure 25 year old black middle-class Baptist minister from Atlanta, Georgia (with a newly earned Ph.D in philosophy and theology from Boston University), had begun his public ministry in a small Christian church in Atlanta inherited from his father (also a preacher) at almost the exact same time that a poor, equally obscure black 29 year old ex-convict from Lansing, Michigan (and later Boston, Massachusetts), had, after serving a six and a half year sentence for burglary, began working in 1952 as a member and then minister of a Muslim sect in the U.S. known as the Nation of Islam (NOI). After being appointed minister of the largest mosque in the NOI in Harlem, NY in August, 1954, he had quickly emerged as a major leader within the national hierarchy of the organization. These two individuals were completely unaware of each other and were completely unknown to the rest of the country at the beginning of 1955. By the end of the year, however, both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X would be nationally, and in King’s case, internationally famous.
In March of 1955 a legendary 34 year old black jazz musician and composer would die and be immediately catapulted into mythological cultural status. By the end of year an entire new generation of black musicians, singers, and composers who had already been heavily influenced by, and revered this individual, would also be aggressively extending and expanding his musical legacy on a global scale. His name: Charles Christopher Parker, Jr., better known as “Bird.” Two then obscure 28 year old musicians and composers from St. Louis, Illinois, and High Point, North Carolina (later Philadelphia), one of whom had been a member of one of the late master’s groups, and the other who based a large part of his aesthetic, technical, and expressive style on this same person’s enormous contribution, went on to join forces in 1955 in an ensemble whose sound and style revolutionized American music during this period and for all time. Within a year the leader of this group (Miles Davis) would become world famous, and his partner, collaborator, and colleague (John Coltrane) would also quickly follow within three years with a group of his own that would have an equally influential and powerful international impact.
However it was a horrific racially-charged incident on August 27, 1955 that would further shock and enrage black people in the U.S. and be seen by many both then and later as a pivotal historical moment that embodied the zeitgeist of the era. The incident would also serve as a major galvanizing force for the modern civil rights movement and this new generation to aggressively assert itself in the nation at large. What precipated this dramatic turn of events was the vicious murder of a fourteen year old black male by two white adult men. The young boy was from Chicago and was on his summer vacation visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi. Accused of whistling at a 21 year old white woman at a local grocery store near his uncle’s home, the adolescent was then brutally kidnapped by the husband of the woman and his friend on the evening of August 24. Till was forcibly abducted from his uncle’s home and driven out into the country by the white men who made Till strip naked, beat him severely, shot him in the head, mutilated him, and then attached a cotton gin fan to his nude body so that it would sink to the bottom of the Tallahatchie River. The badly bloated and decomposed body was found three days later disfigured beyond recognition.
Till’s mother came to Mississippi to identify her murdered son and return him to Chicago for funeral services and burial and found the hideously disfigured corspe unrecognizable except for a ring that she had given her son before he left for his visit. Incensed and distraught that her child had been the victim of a such a savage racist act, Mrs. Till insisted that her son’s casket remain open at the funeral so that “the whole world can see what they did to my son.” Thousands of blacks attended the funeral, and the story caused a sensation in the national black community in the U.S. where deeply disturbing photos of the ravaged corspe were published in the black and white press (especially in an issue of the highly popular black weekly magazine Jet). The murder and subsequent trial and verdict were also headline news all over the globe as an international readership condemned and denounced the U.S. for its ongoing tradition of racist terror. Meanwhile a rapid, unjust trial was held in Mississippi where the two men were quickly acquited by an openly racist all white male jury. Just as they had done in thousands of previous lynch cases involving the brutal arbitrary murders of blacks by whites throughout Mississippi’s extremely bloody racial history, the white Judge, the jury, the two acquited men, as well as the white wife of one of the two men all publically maintained that Till “deserved” his fate, and that black people in general (and in particular black boys and men) had better “know their place” and continue to stay well inside the rigid boundary lines of segregation.
The shockwave of this event, coupled with the ongoing protests throughout the country calling for voting rights, social and economic equality, democratic reforms, and the end of instutionalized racial segregattion in all areas of American life inaugurated a new generation of African Americans in the historical struggle for revolutionary changes in the society and culture, and this generation (known by many as the “new breed”) was more than up to the task.
The national and international outrage generated by the verdict in the Till case (and of course many other similar incidents of the era) had immediate repercussions throughout the entire black (diasporic) world. It was certainly no coincidence that at precisely the historical moment when African Americans were aggressively asserting themselves in the United States, the citadel of white supremacy in the West, continental Africans and those of African descent in the Caribbean and South America were simultaneously engaged in fierce battles of their own against European imperialism for national liberation and independence. These intense political, economic, cultural, and ideological struggles against French, British, Portuguese, Dutch, and Belgian colonialism in countries like Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria, Trinidad, Algeria, Kenya, Guyana, Tanzania, Martinique, Senegal, and Barbadoes, among many other newly emerging black nation-states, were instrumental in the extraordinary explosion of radical social, political, and cultural consciousness, organization, and activity that characterized the period.
Thus, the same fierce demands for justice, freedom, and social/economic change that served as the motor force of the nascent modern Civil Rights movement in the United States and spurred the determination of the ‘New Breed’ to insist on a new social and political agenda with respect to “racial matters”, were echoed and openly supported by blacks outside North America who saw their own national struggles and concerns as an integral part of what their brothers and sisters in the U.S. were doing. The international linkages that were advocated and established during the late ‘50s and early ‘60s by such central figures from Africa and the Caribbean as the psychiatrist, political theorist, and revolutionary activist Frantz Fanon (Martinique), the Pan-Africanist and President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah, the radical political leader and President of Egypt, Gamel Nasser, poet, social critic, and activist Aime Cesaire (also from Martinique), political philosopher and President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, the political theorist, philosopher, writer, and activist leader C.L.R. James from Trinidad, and the legendary revolutionary political activist and leader from South Africa, Nelson Mandela, among many others, were crucial to educating and organizing thousands of black people throughout the world to combat oppression and transform their lives. Not insignificantly African American activists like Malcolm X, and later Bob Moses, Stokely Carmichael, and James Foreman spent substantial time abroad in Africa during the 1960s and ‘70s prosletyzing on behalf of radical ideological and cultural alternatives to Western forms of colonization.
Another major development of the late fifties period involved the rise of black visual artists, dancers, athletes, singers and songwriters to major mainstream status (if not immediate recognition). The profound aesthetic contributions of these artists led to a massive seismic shift in the form and content of American popular culture and signaled the arrival of new, original conceptions of what could be expressed and achieved in these fields. The rapid emergence and pervasive acceptance of the popular musical expressions known as “Rock and Roll” and “Rhythm & Blues” were largely due to the major musical and lyrical innovations of such legendary black musical figures as Louis Jordan, Chuck Berry, Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles, Charles Brown, Amos Milburn, Etta James, Wynonie Harris, Charles Brown, Otis Blackwell, Bo Diddley, James Brown, and Little Richard who from 1945-1965 essentially invented (and reinvented) these forms, despite the white media’s stubbornly erroneous, brazenly false, and egregiously racist insistence during the late fifties and early sixties (and beyond) that white artists like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison (and later the Beatles and Rolling Stones) were primarily responsible for the music’s existence and evolution.
In painting, dance, and sports African Americans like Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Emma Amos, Augusta Savage, Ed Clark, Sam Gilliam, Richard Hunt, Betye Saar, Norman Lewis, Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava, Lois Mailou Jones, Bob Thompson, Alvin Ailey, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Oscar Robertson, Althea Gibson, Wilma Rudolph, Bob Gibson, Bob Hayes, Maury Wills, and Lou Brock brought a startlingly new and dynamic sensibility to the arts of movement, gesture, and visual style that emphasized a highly refined, precise, and nuanced use of speed, mobility, grace, crative expressiveness, and power in their work and expressions. These elements were also evident in the independently unique personalities of these individuals which were often characterized by great dignity, poise, intelligence, discipline, and elegance...(to be continued)...
