BLACK POWER IS COMING

Lewis Gordon: "I have a category that I call, as a metaphor, an 'anti-Black world'—you notice the indefinite article: an anti-Black world. The reason I say that is because the world is different from an anti-Black world. The project of racism is to create a world that would be anti-Black, anti-woman. Although that's a project, it's not a fait accompli. People don't seem to understand how recent this phenomenon we're talking about is... From the perspective of a species that's 220,000 years old, what the hell is 500 years? And we create a false model of how we study those 500 years when we forget that people have been fighting and resisting. Had they not been fighting and resisting, we wouldn't be here. The problem in the formulation of pessimism and optimism is they are both based on forecasted knowledge, a prior knowledge. And in fact, what in the world are we if we need to have prior knowledge to act? You know what you call such people? Cowards. The fact is, our ancestors, enslaved ancestors who were burning down the plantations and finding clever ways to poison the masters, who were organizing meetings for rebellions—none of them had any clue of what the future would be 100 years later... But you know why they fought? Because they knew it wasn't for them."

Readings

Three Documents on Slave Revolts (1720 to 1793)
Four Petitions Against Slavery (1773 to 1777)
Letter to Jefferson by Benjamin Banneker (1791)
David Walker's Appeal by David Walker (1830)
Slaves Are Prohibited to Read and Write by Law North Carolina Statute (passed 1830-1)
Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall, Boston by Maria Stewart (1833)
Letter to Lydia Maria Child by James R. Bradley (1834)
Angelina Grimké Weld's speech at Pennsylvania Hall (1838)
Henry Bibb's Letter to William Gatewood (1844)

An Excerpt Of The Narrative Of The Life of Frederick Douglass(1845)
"The War with Mexico" North Star Editorial (1848)
Address to the New England Convention by Frederick Douglass (1849)
Ain't I A Woman? by Sojourner Truth (1851)
The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass (1852)
What Time of Night It Is by Sojourner Truth (1853)
"America" by James Monroe Whitfield (1853)
Jermain Wesley Loguen's Letter to Sarah Logue (1860)
Selections from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs (1861)
A Voice from Harper's Ferry by Osborne P. Anderson (1861)
Four Documents on Disaffection in the South During the Civil War (1864/5)
Mississippi Black Codes (1865)
Keeping the Thing Going While Things Are Stirring by Sojourner Truth (1867)
"On the Eligibility of Colored Members to Seats in the Georgia Legislature" by Henry McNeal Turner (1868)
"Red-Handed Murder: Negroes Wantonly Killed at Thibodaux, La." Anonymous (1887)
Open Letter from the New Orleans Mass Meeting by Reverend Ernest Lyon (1888)
"I Denounce the So-Called Emancipation as a Stupendous Fraud" by Frederick Douglass (1888)
Reverend J. L. Moore on the Colored Farmers' Alliance (1891)
The Convict Lease System by Ida B. Wells (1893)
Lynch Law By Ida B. Wells (1893)
"The Negro Should Not Enter the Army" Statement of the Missionary Department of the Atlanta, Georgia, A.M.E. Church (1899)
Open Letter to President McKinley by Colored People Of Massachusetts I. D. Barnett et al. (1899)
Lewis H. Douglass on Black Opposition to McKinley (1899)
"Women As Leaders" by Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey (1925)
The Negro is the Race Oppressed by All the Imperialists by Lamine Senghor (1927)
A selection from Black Bolshevik by Harry Haywood
"You Have to Fight for Freedom" by Sylvia Woods (published 1973)
A Selection of the Poetry of Langston Hughes
Fannie Henderson Witnesses Southern Lynch Law (1933)
The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson (1933)
Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol (1937)
"You Cannot Kill the Working Class" by Angelo Herndon (1937)
The Montgomery Bus Boycott from the Women's Political Council (1955)
Paul Robeson's Unread Statement before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (1956)
Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom by Frantz Fanon (1959)
They Can't Turn Back by James Baldwin (1960)
An Appeal for Human Rights (1960)
"Bigger Than A Hamburger" by Ella Baker (1960)
Appeal to Adlai Stevenson by Robert Williams (1961)
The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker's Notebook by James Boggs (1963)
Malcolm X on Afro-American History
Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)
Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone (1963)
The Revolution Is At Hand A speech by John Lewis (1963)
A Message to the Grassroots A speech by Malcolm X (1963)
My Dungeon Shook by James Baldwin (1963)

The Ballot or the Bullet A speech by Malcolm X (1964)
From The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Basis of Black Power: a SNCC position paper (1966)
"Who Will Revere the Black Woman?" by Abbey Lincoln (1966)
The Weapon of Theory by Amilcar Cabral (1966)
"There Was No Rules At All" — Stories from Vietnam
by Haywood T. "The Kid" Kirkland (1984)
The Thoughts of Muhammad Ali in Exile, c. 1967
Alzada Clark Organizes Black Women Workers in Mississippi (1967)
African History in the Service of the Black Liberation by Walter Rodney (1968)
Power Anywhere Where There's People A speech by Fred Hampton (1969)
Black Panther Party Platform, Program, and Rules
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers: A Historical Study by A. Muhammad Ahmad
Die Nigger Die: A Political Autobiography by H. Rap Brown (1969)
Women, Power, and Revolution by Kathleen Neal Cleaver (published 1998)
An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis by James Baldwin
The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements by Huey Newton (1970)
National Liberation and Culture by Amilcar Cabral (1970)
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron (1970)
Remembering the Real Dragon: An Interview with George Jackson
An interview by Karen Wald (1971)
Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson
George Jackson: Black Revolutionary By Walter Rodney (1971)
Guerilla War in the United States, 1965-1970 (Map)
Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation by Angela Y. Davis
"It's In Your Hands" by Fannie Lou Hamer (1971)
A Fundamental Necessity of the Revolution by Samora Machel (1973)
Street Speech by Walter Rodney
A Selection From Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual by Walter Rodney
The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)
Women in Prison: How It Is With Us by Assata Shakur (1978)
The Struggle Goes On by Walter Rodney (1979)
The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House by Audre Lorde (1979)
An Open Letter to Mary Daly by Audre Lorde (1979)
The Bridge Poem by Donna Kate Rushin (1981)
A Left-Handed Commencement by Ursula K. Le Guin (1983)
Commencement Address at Milton Academy by Marian Wright Edelman (1983)
Black History by Gil Scott-Heron
Nelson Mandela's statement at his trial and his speech given at his release (1964, 1990)
June Jordan Speaks Out Against The 1991 Gulf War
The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez
Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex by Angela Y. Davis
How to Master Secret Work by the Communist Party of South Africa (c. 1980s)