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Worldwide Black Nationalism

The struggle of black people for freedom and empowerment has taken place in different parts of the world, with the various, movements connected in their goals and often in underlying ideological commitments. The Black Power movement in the United States and the black consciousness movement in South Africa have similar roots in the drive for black nationalism extending back into the nineteenth century and are even more directly connected as influences on one another. Blacks in these widely different and distant countries developed a sense of unity as black people all struggling for the same basic goals of human dignity, freedom, and self-determination. An examination of the roots of these movements and of the beliefs, strategies, and goals of each will show how they were connected and how they influenced the development of the black struggle around the world.

Black nationalism emerged in response to the desire to escape from the confines of the majority and racist society in the United States, and often the movement looked to Africa as the homeland of blacks and as a possible place where a new black society could be created, as was indeed attempted in Liberia. Black nationalism has been described as "the conglomeration of efforts of blacks to resolve problems of cultural identity and sociopolitical weakness as blacks" (Bush, 1984, p. 209). Black nationalism has a long history as a political movement, with varying impact at different points in black history. It had a particular power in the U.S. both before and after the Civil War because of slavery and all the evils that institution visited on blacks in America.

Stuckey (1972) finds that many "free" and slave blacks became dedicated to the idea of liberation with the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolt, leading many to desire unity in their ranks and control over their own destinies as well as independence from an oppressive and racist society. This coincided with...

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Worldwide Black Nationalism. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 20:42, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691604.html