Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power. New York: Seabury Press, 1969.

Title:

Black Theology and Black Power

Author:

James H. Cone

Year of Publication:

1969

Thesis:

"Christianity is Black Power.' (ix) That is, Jesus sided with the most oppressed people in society, and therefore our interpretation of the Gospel needs to reflect that. In contrast, he notes, "The white missionaries sought to interpret hope in a way that made it unrelated to the present. They taught the slave that to hope means to look to heaven for a reward for being obedient to the master on earth. It meant accepting his present deplorable lot as a slave." (102)

Time:

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Organization:

Preface to the 1989 Edition

Preface

Introduction

I - Toward a Constructive Definition of Black Power

- What is Black Power?

> "the only response to white racism." (5 - Carmichael)

>"It means complete emancipation of black people from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary." The methods may include selective buying, boycotting, marching, or even rebellion. Black Power means black freedom, black self-determination, wherein black people no longer view themselves as without human dignity but as men, human beings with the ability to carv out their own destiny. In short, as Stokely Carmichael would say, Black Power means T.C.B., Take Care of Business--Black folk taking care of black folks' business, not on the terms of the oppressor, but on those of the oppressed." (6)

- Black Power and Existential Absurdity

- Is Black Power a Form of Black Racism?

- Why Integration is not the Answer

- Issues - Integration doesn't happen on equal footing - must recognize and deal with history, fact of Blackness

Is There and Appropriate Response to White Racism?

- Is there an Appropriate Response to White Racism?

- How Does Black Power Relate to White Guilt?

- "When white do-gooders are confronted with the style of Black Power, realizing that black people really place them in the same category with the George Wallaces, they react defensively, saying, "It's not my fault" or "I am not responsible." Sometimes they continue by suggesting that their town (because of their unselfish involvement in civil rights) is better or less racist than others." (23)

- Continues to discuss the fallacy of this position

- White people are responsible for racism, and there are no excuses for inaction - quote from Karl Jaspers on responsibility:

"There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world, and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant. If I do not do whatever I can to prevent them, I am an accomplice in htem. If I have not risked my life in order to prevent the murder of other men, if I have stood siletn, I feel guilty in a sense that cannot in any adequate fashion be undesrtood juridically, or politically, or morally..that I am still alive after things have been doen wieght on me as a guilt that cannot be expiated." (24)

- Black Power and the White Liberal?

- Black Power: Hope or Despair?

II - The Gospel of Jesus, Black People, and Black Power

- What is the Gospel of Jesus?

- Christ, Black Power, and Freedom?

- The Righteousness of God and Black Power

- Christian Love and Black Power

- The Holy Spirit and Black Power

III - The White Church and Black Power

- What is the Church?

- The White Church and Black Power?

- Black Power and American Theology

IV - The Black Church and Black Power

- The Black Church Before the Civil War

- The Post-Civil War Black Church

V - Some Perspectives of Black Theology

- On Black Suffering

- On Religious Authority

- On Eschatology

- On the Creation of New Values

VI - Revolution, Violence, and Reconciliation in Black

- Theology

- Revolution

- Violence

- Reconciliation

- Notes

- Index

Type:

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Quotes:

"But insofar as racism is still found in the churches and in society, theologians and preachers of the Christian gospel must make it unquestionably clear that the God of Moses and of Jeses makes an unqualified solidarity with the victims, empowering them to fight against injustice." (ix)

On sexism

"But I decided to let the language remain unchanged as a reminder of how sexist I once was and also that I might be encouraged never to forget it. It is easy to change the language of oppression without changing the sociopolitical situation of its victims. I know existentially what this means from the vantage point of racism. Whites have learned how to use less offensive language, but they have not changed the power relations between blacks and whites in the society. Because of the process of changing their language, combined with the token presence of middle-class African-Americans in their institutions, it is now even more difficult to define the racist behavior of whites." (x)

On Black Power

"If whites do not get off the backs of blacks ,they must expect that blacks will literally throw them off by whatever means are at their disposal. that is the meaning of Black Power." (22)

Notes:

Brown, H. Rap. Die N* Die! New York: Dial Press, 1969.

Title: Hubert Rap Brown

Author: Die N* Die!

Year of Publication: 1969

Thesis:

H. Rap Brown is a modern-day David Walker; his appeal speaks to Black people of all shades to set aside their class differences based on a color hierarchy developed by and supported by Black people. Argues that Black people should also be ready to protect themselves and asserts that nothing short of revolution and control by Black and People of Color will equate to freedom.

Time: 1960s

Geography: U.S.

Organization: Numbered chapters

Type: Primary Source

Methods:

Sources:

Historiography:

This text had a wide readership and continues to form a cornerstone of the Long Black Freedom Struggle.

Keywords:

Themes:

Class, colorism, revolutionary violence, education, tone policing, police brutality, gun ownerships, self defense, self respect and dignity, masculinity, integration vs. segregation, racialized imprisonment and mass incarceration (this covers virtually every current theme being discussed in anti-racist circles)

Critiques:

Lisa Corrigan, if I remember correctly, critiques Brown's publication both for its rhetorical force advocating revolutionary violence as a strategy and for its sexism and homophobia in Prison Power (2018) (contextualized within a freedom struggle that often tended to make men more the center of attention, especially early on).

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It would be useful for me to pair this with a biographer's work, especially as Brown has been imprisoned for so long, so it would be helpful to get a sense of how he has changed over time and what he has done since. This book states the aims of the BP movement plainly and resonates.

Brown, Elsa Barkley. “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom.” Public Culture 7, no. 1 (1994): 107-146.

Title: Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom

Author: Elsa Barkley Brown

Year of Publication: 1994

Thesis:

Brown argues that the focus on Black masculinity as the center of African American freedom has its roots in nineteenth-century political dynamics within the Black community. Drawing on extensive literature and research, she opens her article by offering an example of women advocating a role in voting in and out deacons at the First African Church in Richmond, VA. Rather than the loss of male power taken up by women (see: Glenda Gilmore's dissertation "Gender and Jim Crow," 1992), Brown sees an internal shift within the Black community as more significant.

Time: Late 19th century

Geography: Richmond, VA

Organization:

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Historiography:

"Much of the literature on Reconstruction portrays freed African Americans as rapidly and readily adopting a gendered private-public dichotomy. Much of the literature on the nineteenth-century public sphere constructs a masculine liberal bourgeois public with a female counterpublic." (109) References Jones - Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow & other more mainstream works (Foner's Reconstruction, for example)

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Questions:

Quotes:

"Women in First African and in other arenas were seeking in the late-nineteenth century not a new authority but rather a lost authority, one they now often sought to justify on a distinctively female basis." (108)

"This exploration suggests how the ideas, process, meanings and practice of freedom changed within late-nineteenth-century southern African American communities and what the implications of those changes may be for our visions of freedom and for the possibilities of African American community in the late-twentieth century." (108)

"...many African Americans have come to link a history of repression and racial violence exclusively to challenges to black masculinity and thus to establish a notion of fredom and black liberation which bifurcates public discussion privileges men's history and experiences." (145)

"The idea of sexual danger had been a part of the Reconstruction era discourse, as evidenced in the mass indignation meetings and testimonies. Then, however, it was constructed as a matter of general interest, part of the general discussion of the repression of African Americans. Now a more clearly gendered discourse developed where violence against men was linked to state repression and the struggle against it to fredom and violence against women became a matter of specific interst, increasingly eliminated from the general discussions." (140, footnote 59)

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