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"As shelters against the cold": women writers of the Black Arts and Chicano movements, 1965-1978

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"As shelters against the cold": women writers of the Black Arts and Chicano movements, 1965-1978

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Content “AS SHELTERS AGAINST THE COLD:” WOMEN POETS OF THE
BLACK ARTS AND CHICANO MOVEMENTS, 1965-1978

by

Ulli Kira Ryder

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(AMERICAN STUDIES & ETHNICITY)

December 2008

Copyright 2008 Ulli K. Ryder

ii

Dedication

To my family – particularly to my mother and father, Karen K. Ryder and
Mahler B. Ryder, and to Nana.

iii

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my committee – Teresa McKenna, George Sanchez, Judith
Jackson Fossett and Dana Johnson. A special thank you to Teresa
McKenna who, as director of this dissertation project, gave enormous
encouragement and valuable comments over the course of several years.
Also thank you to the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity at
USC, Sandra Hopwood and my fellow ASE students. I wish also to thank
the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the
University of California – Los Angeles, Jan Freeman, Veronica Benson,
Richard Yarborough, Paul Von Blum, Darnell Hunt, Berky Nelson, Marcia
Dawkins, Richard Lawrence, Mike Kool and K. W. Kgositsile.

iv
Table of Contents

Dedication ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract v

Introduction 1

Chapter One: “The Long Struggle for Liberation” 13

Chapter Two: “Citizenship and Colonial 56
Discourse in Black Power and Chicano
Movement Writing”

Chapter Three: “Racial/Ethnic Nationalist 103
Discourses in the Black Arts and
Chicano Movements”

Chapter Four : “Mixed Race / Mestizaje: 144
The Place of Mixed-Race People in
Ethnic/Racial Nationalist Movements”

Conclusion 173

Bibliography 182

v
Abstract

This dissertation examines the work of women writers in the Black
Arts and Chicano movements during the years 1965-1978. I argue that
understanding the intersectional nature of the women’s experiences is
crucial for understanding their literary output. Further, I argue that
Chicanas and African American women of this era challenged
homogenous notions of community and racial identity and that we can
trace the development of the Third World feminism and multiculturalism
that came to the fore in the 1980s to this earlier period. Thus, this study
also impacts the way we conceptualize identity formation and the creation
of the literary canon. Investigating the ways in which these women
integrated nationalist and feminist rhetoric and activism in their work is
crucial for a full understanding of this critical period in U.S. history. At
stake is an understanding of how Chicana and African American women
in the United States have formed identities and communities; struggled
for liberation and equality; and become part of the U.S. literary canon.

1
Introduction

This dissertation is a comparative study of the women writers of
the Black Arts and Chicano movements. It is an attempt at understanding
the complexities of identity formation and liberation struggles for certain
women of color in the United States in the mid- to late-twentieth century.
Both of these movements have primarily been defined by and examined
through their male members. However, women were crucial to these
movements in a variety of ways. Understanding their contributions not
only provides a fuller vision of the movements writ large but also provides
context for later activism and writing by feminists of color.
By the early 1980s, many of the women discussed here began to
view themselves as part of a Third World Feminist movement that, I
argue, was directly linked to their experiences in the nationalist
movements of the 1960s and 1970s and to their disenchantment with
traditional (white) feminisms. Perhaps the most celebrated text of this
later era, This Bridge Called My Back, was edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and
Cherríe Moraga, both of whom were involved in the Chicano Movement.
1

Other women included in the anthology (such as Audre Lorde and Pat
Parker) had been involved in the Black Arts/Black Power Movement. I do
not think it is a coincidence that so many women who had been involved
in nationalist liberation movements and traditional feminism found

2
themselves re-evaluating race/gender/sexual orientation issues and
began to develop new modes of self-definition and activism.
My focus on poetry has a variety of origins. First, I have been a
poet for many years and most of the women in this project are poets
whom I have read and admired for a long time. My familiarity with their
work is part of what drove me to understand why they have created their
particular body of work. For many (including myself), it has sometimes
seemed as if writers such as Anzaldúa or Alice Walker sprung, fully-
formed, onto the literary scene in the early 1980s. I knew this could not
possibly be true. This project seeks to reconstruct the longer histories of
their careers.
In addition, poetry has a long history as an important genre for
both the African American and Mexican / Mexican American literary
canons. The African American literary canon begins with an African-born
slave woman named Phillis Wheatley.
2
As Henry Louis Gates states in the
introduction to the Schomburg volume of her collected work:
That the progenitor of the black literary tradition was a
woman means, in the most strict literary sense, that all
subsequent black writers have evolved in a matrilinear line
of descent, and that each, consciously or unconsciously, has
extended and revised a canon whose foundation was the
poetry of a black woman.
3

Thus, to examine the poetry of twentieth century black women is at once
to pay homage to the foremother of all black literature as well as an
opportunity to note the distinct differences of the later period.

3
One of the main antecedents to contemporary Mexican American
poetry, the corrido, began in Mexico and predates the 1848 annexation,
although conflict caused by the redrawing of the border intensified the
production of corridos. Corridos have received a great deal of critical
attention since the 1958 publication of Américo Paredes’s With a Pistol in
his Hand, which examines the corrido form through an analysis of “El
Corrido de Gregorio Cortez.” Despite the male-centered nature of the
corrido, scholars such as Ramón Saldívar have traced the importance of
the form to Mexican American literature. Saldívar notes the poetic nature
of the corrido as a folk song or ballad and (quoting John Holmes
McDowell) writes that the corrido is (among other things) “poetic in
technique.”
4
As a widely-known literary form, the corrido’s influence on
later Mexican American writers is well-documented.
Both the Black Arts/Black Power and Chicano movements made
great use of poetry. Poems were not only widely published in anthologies,
movement newspapers and on broadside sheets it was also often an
integral part of movement meetings and rallies. Part entertainment, part
education and part political activism such poetry was read (or performed)
as part of the more obvious calls for action at organization meetings and
public events. Indeed, as will become obvious in this dissertation, the
poets considered themselves activists and their poetry was inseparable
from activist struggle.

4
As this project is conceived of as a cultural studies project (as
opposed to a traditionally literary analysis), I engage multiple frameworks
to explore the writings of the women poets of the Black Arts/Black Power
and Chicano movements. Literary and textual analyses are prominent but
so are history, legal scholarship (particularly Critical Race Theory),
Rhetoric and even some psychology. I take my cues from the women
themselves, who in their own writings engage a variety of genres (beyond
poetry) and methodologies. To only use one lense through which to view
their work is do a disservice to the dynamic and multifaceted writings
they produced.
Gilles Deleuze’s theory of “becoming” (more specifically,
“becoming-woman”) hinges on the idea of literature as a space that –
however temporarily – allows for experimentation and a liberation of the
body from subjectivity.
5
For my purposes, it is useful to think about the
ways poetry allowed women to articulate new subjectivities that were not
bound by race, gender, class, or sexual orientation in the same ways they
had been before. For example, literature allowed Gloria Anzaldúa to
develop a borderlands theory that not only redefined what it meant to be
Chicano/a but also lesbian, feminist, female. Likewise, Alice Walker’s
womanism redefined feminist discourse by opening feminism to women
of color in new ways. It is important to note that ways that the women
differ from Deleuze’s theory, however. Not simply a temporary, literary

5
liberation their work sought to have impact in the real world – a
liberation of the body and the spirit. To that end, they sometimes
followed and sometimes broke with established rhetorical strategies.
Ultimately, they rhetorically constructed identities that were part of and
apart from the racial/ethnic nationalist identities offered to them through
their respective movements.
I also make use of several Critical Race Theory texts. Of primary
importance is Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on “intersectionality” which
posits that the oppression of women occurs on multiple axes including:
race, class, gender and sexual orientation. Although Crenshaw’s work
postdates the period covered in this dissertation, we can see the women of
these movements struggling with many of the same issues she addresses.
Indeed, I would argue that Crenshaw’s work is dependant upon the work
of these earlier writers and scholars, who laid the groundwork and began
the conversation of the structures of oppression facing women of color in
the United States. Devon Carbado picks up where Crenshaw’s
intersectionality leaves off, further elucidating the challenges facing
women of color, particularly those facing workplace discrimination.
While this at first seems like a tangent not directly related to this
dissertation, I argue that for the women of these movements,
discrimination coming from both within and outside their respective
communities was not only tied to the intersectional nature of oppression

6
but also to the very specific ways they publicly “performed” their race,
class, gender and sexual orientation.
Historical context is crucial for understanding the work produced
in this era. The 1960s and 1970s are well-known (and much-
documented) decades of upheaval and turmoil in the United States.
Various ethnic/racial liberation movements, anti-Vietnam war protests,
and the environmental movement (among many others) engaged and
often polarized the nation. The women studied here were full participants
in the movements with which they were associated, despite a tendency to
view most of them as male-led and dominated. It is also important to
understand this period as a time when anything and everything seemed
possible – many of the organizations that made up the Black Power and
Chicano movements were attempting to restructure U.S. society in
fundamental ways so that economic exploitation, discrimination and
violence would cease to be part of the “American Nightmare” for millions
of people of color.
This dissertation is divided into thematic chapters for several
reasons. A theme-based chapter structure allows me to discuss both
African American and Chicano experiences together and draw useful
comparisons and distinctions. Unlike alternating chapters (one African
American, one Chicano, etc.), themes open the discussion and reveal the
cross-influences at work in both the Black Arts/Black Power and Chicano

7
movements. Further, the women themselves reference each other in their
work and it is important to note the community they attempted to build
between their particular movements. This is especially useful when
considering the later multicultural, Third World Feminist movement that
directly followed the era under consideration in this project.
It is equally important to note, however, that these themes are not
discrete and should be considered in conversation with one another. Just
as the women were expressing an intersectionality in their relationship to
the structures of oppression, the themes themselves reveal an
intersectionality in terms of the many fronts liberation struggles have had
to confront. As peoples’ lives do not fit neatly into well-defined boxes,
neither does my discussion of their lives. The themes, therefore, serve as
guideposts and although they have not been chosen arbitrarily, they are in
many respects fluid. For example, it isn’t possible to discuss and idea of
home or homeland without a discussion of slavery or conquest. Yet
shifting emphasis from one to another generates a more nuanced
discussion than simply discussing them in tandem.
Running through and linking all the chapters is the thread of
identity. How are people defined by others? How do they define
themselves and seek to reconcile their self-definition with that imposed
by others? The Black Arts/Black Power and Chicano movements were
both preoccupied with these issues. Political power and community-

8
building required a working definition of what it meant to be black or
Chicano in the United States. Indeed, very often there were multiple and
competing definitions in each movement. The women included in this
project are part of that larger discussion in that they sought to redefine
their roles as part of their specific communities and were committed to
helping their communities as a whole in relation to the larger, Anglo
society.
Chapter One offers an overview of the Black Power/ Black Arts and
Chicano movements. While many of the details may be familiar, I am
attempting here to put these two movements into conversation with one
another in new ways. It is my belief that the Black Power movement, for
example, must be understood as part of a much longer struggle that
stretches farther back in the twentieth century than often acknowledged.
This constitutes a shift in the paradigm normally used for viewing Black
Power and avoids the (erroneous) assumption that the Black Power
movement of the late 1960s and 1970s constitutes a radical (and
unprecedented) break with established civil rights struggles. Likewise,
the Chicano movement has antecedents in Mexican-American political
activism earlier in the century. However, as a comparative study, this
project is also interested in the cross-influences between the African
American and Chicano communities. Most notably, many members of
what would become the Chicano movement gained activist experience by

9
working with African American civil rights and Black Power groups. Part
of the discussion I engage, then, is the ways in which Chicano/as learned
from African American liberation struggles and refashioned various
ideologies and strategies to suit their particular experiences as
Chicano/as.
In Chapter Two, I examine the issue of citizenship in relation to
African American and Chicano/a experiences in the United States. Here,
I explore the role of language to combat racist subjugation and to
rhetorically construct both identity and community for these two groups.
My aim is to demonstrate the places where the women writers of the
period were not diametrically opposed to some of the language of the
movements. This is a crucial point – for if the women found nothing of
use in the movements, why were they members of the organizations at
all? Following Stuart Hall’s “imagined communities,” I demonstrate the
usefulness of ethnic or race-based liberation movements during this era.
I also discuss the limitations of this paradigm, particularly for women and
mixed-race peoples. Using Nikhil Pal Singh’s idea of an “ideal national
subject,” I trace the ways African Americans and Chicano/as have reacted
to (and fought against) the limitations of citizenship enacted by the U.S.
over time.
Chapter Three is dedicated to ethnic/racial nationalist discourses
within the Black Arts/Black Power and Chicano movements. In

10
particular, I focus on the masculinist rhetoric of the movements and the
ways in which women countered such rhetoric in their own writing.
Ultimately, the women were both attempting to call the movements to
account for their unexamined patriarchy and fashion a world in which
violence against women ceased to be the norm. Of particular importance
was the role of lesbian and/or feminist black women and Chicanas as they
sought to express their identities as part of – and apart from – the larger
movements. This chapter thus points us towards future literary and
activist moments, such as the Third World Feminism of the 1980s.
Chapter Four is devoted to the experiences of mixed race people in
racial/ethnic nationalist movements. For African Americans, the figure of
the “tragic mulatto” is supplanted in this era by a “suspicious mulatto”
whose racial loyalties are always questioned. As the Black Power era has
been described as hypermasculine, it was also “hyperblack” and left little
room for racial ambiguity or experimentation. For Chicano/as the
situation was somewhat different. Long understanding themselves to be a
mixed-race (mestizo) people, in this era political loyalty determined
whether one was “Chicano” or “Mexican American.” The implication was
of “Mexican American” as a signifier for an integrationist attitude and
Anglo sympathy. Language, rather than race per se, thus became a site of
contention. The use of English versus Spanish or mixture of Spanish and

11
English became one area of strong debate and a place where one’s
loyalties were tested.
As previously stated, these chapters are by necessity intersecting
and sometimes overlapping. Liberation struggles are rarely (if ever)
straight-forward movements towards some ideal. Instead, people (as the
term implies) struggle to fashion a better world for themselves and for
those who come after them. The Black Arts/Black Power and Chicano
movements were no different. As each was made up of many different
organizations and individuals, with different and competing ideologies
and strategies, so too must a discussion of the movements take into
account the inherent contradictions of revolution. It would be a mistake
to view either of these movements as simply one more step on the path
towards liberation. Instead, we must acknowledge the places where, in a
quest for liberation of one group, the oppression of another may occur.
The lesson to be learned from a close examination of the women writers
of the Black Arts/Black Power and Chicano movements is that all
struggles for freedom must be self-reflective, and must be willing to
jettison any ideologies that (re)inscribe subjugation of part of the group in
a misguided attempt to liberate the whole.

12
Introduction Endnotes

1
Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa eds., This Bridge Called My Back;
Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983).

2
Phillis Wheatley: Born c. 1753-5, Died 1784.

3
Phillis Wheatley, The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley ed. John Shields
(New York & London: Oxford, 1988) x.

4
Ramón Saldívar, Chicano Narrative (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1990) 32.

5
Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook, Deleuze and Feminist Theory (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2000).

13

Chapter One
The Long Struggle for Liberation

On February 21, 1965, as he stood at the podium of Harlem’s
Audubon Ballroom, former spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI)
Malcolm X was gunned down by men identified as members of the Nation
of Islam.
1
During the week his body was on view at the Faith Temple
Church of God in Christ in Harlem, 22,000 people came to pay their last
respects.
2
On March 7 in Alabama, close to 600 civil rights workers were
stopped on Edmund Pettus Bridge where local and state law enforcement
met them with billy clubs and tear gas. Almost three weeks later, 25,000
marchers made it to the capitol of Montgomery, helping to convince
President Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
3
In Los Angeles,
months of protest culminated in one of the worst uprisings the nation had
ever seen.
4
What may or may not have been a routine traffic stop in Watts
ended six days later with the following result, detailed by Gerald Horne:
At least 34 people died . . . 1,000 more were injured, and
4,000 arrested. Property damage was estimated at $200
million in the 46.5-square-mile zone (larger than Manhattan
or San Francisco) where approximately 35,000 adult “active
as rioters” and 72,000 “close spectators” swarmed. On hand
to oppose them were 16,000 National Guard, Los Angeles
Police Department, highway patrol, and other law

14
enforcement officers; fewer personnel were used by the
United States that same year to subdue the Dominican
Republic.
5

For the black population of Los Angeles, simmering tensions had finally
boiled over. Whatever the causes of the 1965 uprising (the late summer
heat, color-consciousness among blacks, housing segregation, lack of
employment, police brutality, poverty, the inspiration of Selma) what
became clear in those six days was that the status quo in Los Angeles had
become untenable for masses of black people.
Out of the violence and destruction of Watts (and South Los
Angeles generally) came a new generation of black activists and the rise in
Los Angeles of what came to be known as the Black Power movement.
Though they owed a debt to earlier struggles for black liberation (such as
Garveyism and black involvement in the Communist Party), these
activists were markedly different than their predecessors.
6
A sense of
urgency and militancy motivated the activists whether “revolutionary
nationalists” such as the Nation of Islam or the Black Panther Party (BPP)
or “cultural nationalists” like Mualana Karenga’s Us Organization.
7
Sit-
ins and marches – the hallmarks of the southern civil rights movement –
were replaced by armed resistance and direct-action tactics. In many
cases, separatism rather than integration became part of the dominant
ideology.
8
Art, particularly literature (with a special emphasis on poetry),

15
was integral to Black Power. Even groups that were not defined as
“cultural nationalists,” such as the Black Panther Party or the Nation of
Islam, supported black artists and included black art (particularly poetry)
in their newspapers and as part of their political rallies. The differences
between the activists and organizations should not be overlooked,
however. These differences, in the end, proved insurmountable and
(coupled with other factors such as FBI infiltration and COINTELPRO
harassment) led to the eventual demise of most of the organizations and
the destruction of many of the leaders and members.
In order to understand the writings of women during the Black
Arts Movement, a discussion of Black Power is crucial. Black women’s
writing (all black peoples’ writing) was and is inextricably linked to the
political battles being waged on the streets, in the courtrooms and on
university campuses nationwide. The writers of the Black Arts Movement
were especially aware of the political nature of their art and saw their
writing as a vital part of political struggle – not an ancillary or lesser
activist response to oppression. As part of what has come to be called the
Black Power movement, Black Arts writers (male and female) engaged in
a militant battle of words and ideas, images and theories designed to
destabilize the racial status quo, call into question the supremacy of
European literary models, and forge a “black” culture that was not
dependent on Euro-American traditions but instead celebrated African

16
American cultural norms. While such efforts may have been laudable, too
often an effort to disrupt patriarchy was not part of the effort to disrupt
white supremacy. Black women writers challenged Black Power/Black
Arts Movement politics by asserting the need to acknowledge multiple
hierarchies of oppression, including those based on race, gender, class
and sexual orientation.
As part of the effort to tease out the particular nature of black
women’s oppression and their responses to oppressive forces, we must
look closely at the larger liberation struggle in which they were situated.
The Black Power movement can appear as an anomaly – a brief period of
unparalleled militancy (read as violence) in an otherwise non-violent
quest by African Americans for full inclusion in the U.S. body politic and
social sphere. However, the vision of African Americans as long-
suffering, patient oppressed people strips them of agency and frames any
gains in the arena of civil rights as the work of beneficent whites. This
view completely ignores active, militant struggle dating as far back as the
slave era – from on-board slave revolts (such as the case of the Amistad)
to successful and failed plantation revolts (Demark Vesey, Nat Turner) to
black women who murdered their children in order to save them a
lifetime of servitude. Clearly, black resistance to overwhelming
oppression is not a twentieth century phenomenon. This does not mean
that all resistance has been the same or is synonymous. Indeed, the types

17
of resistance that were available to and appealed to black people during
slavery was very different than that for later, free blacks. Further,
historical and political circumstances facing blacks in various eras have
circumscribed their responses to oppression.

Civil Rights and Black Power

Many scholars date start of the modern civil rights movement from
the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision that ordered the
desegregation of United States public schools. This watershed moment
overturned more than a century of discrimination in the public sphere
directly related to the 1896 Plessy v Ferguson case that codified the
“separate but equal” doctrine that helped to create two Americas – one for
whites and another (greatly inferior) for blacks.
9
Plessey and the
concomitant Jim Crow regulations of the post-Reconstruction era
separated blacks and whites in all areas of public life: education,
employment, hotel accommodations, restaurants, theatres, and the iconic
“White Only”/”Black Only” water fountains as well as a host of other
public spaces. The success of the Brown decision opened the door to
challenges to all forms of “separate but equal” treatment in public life.
However, recent scholarship has advanced the idea that the
modern civil rights movement can be traced back much further. The idea
of what Nikhil Pal Singh (among many others) terms the “long civil rights

18
era” allows us to understand the origins of both non-violent resistance a la
Martin Luther King as well as the militancy of Malcolm X and Black
Power more generally.
10
Dating the modern civil rights movement from
the 1930s and 1940s situates African Americans (and their liberation
struggles) within major shifts in U.S. domestic and foreign policies of the
earlier part of the twentieth century. The start of World War II, the Great
Migration of black people to northern and western cities, FDR’s New Deal
and the rise of the Communist threat all had bearing on the ways in which
black people organized and around which issues they chose to struggle.
11

Robert O. Self’s essay “The Black Panther Party and the Long Civil
Rights Era” offers ample support for this position, at least as it pertains to
the Black Panther Party. According to Self, “the New Deal and the Cold
War produced the largest, most active and interventionist federal state in
American history, and in so doing radically remade American cities on the
one hand and the nation’s political culture on the other. These historical
developments represent the critical background to the rise of the Black
Panther Party.”
12
The restructuring of U.S. cities profoundly changed the
way people lived and interacted. As African Americans migrated to
northern and western cities in unprecedented numbers during and after
World War II, whites began to move out into the suburbs. This “White
Flight,” coupled with codified residential segregation, sharply divided
people by both race and class. As whites with economic means moved out

19
of the inner cities, the cities began to suffer from increasing levels of
neglect that are still apparent today. The government (federal, state and
local) helped subsidize White Flight by offering incentives to suburban
white homebuyers and instituting restrictive covenants. In addition,
blacks (and other minorities) were prevented from obtaining mortgages
due to discriminatory lending policies.
13
These institutional inequities
helped ensure that the suburbs became all-white enclaves.
The abandonment of the inner cities by whites was compounded by
the exodus of manufacturing to suburban and foreign locales which
resulted in predominantly non-white, under-employed, poor inner cities
that suffered from (and continue to suffer from) substandard schools and
other infrastructure. As Bullard and Lee document in Residential
Apartheid:
Federal mortgage subsidies facilitated white movement out
of the cities, at the same time that federal restrictions made
lending difficult to African Americans desiring to move to
the suburbs. Such policies fueled the white exodus to the
suburbs and accelerated the abandonment of central cities.
Federal tax dollars funded the construction of freeway and
interstate highways systems. . . the nation’s apartheid-type
policies have meant community displacement,
gentrification, limited mobility, reduced housing options
and residential packages, decreased environmental choices,
and diminished job opportunities for those who live in
cities, while good jobs often move to the suburbs.
14

Additionally, increased crime was met with an increased police
presence that would be characterized as an “occupying army” by many
blacks.
15
These conditions gave rise to a variety of black activist

20
responses, including the development of the Black Panther Party. It is no
coincidence that the issues on which the BPP focused were those directly
related to White Flight and the resultant negative impact on the inner
cities, namely: police brutality, poverty/hunger and the right of black
people to control their own communities.
16
Although mid-twentieth
century shifts in the political and social landscape gave rise to Black
Power organizations, these new activists owed a great debt to earlier
movements.
One major antecedent to the political activism of the 1960s was the
movement started by Marcus Garvey at the close of World War I. With
the establishment of the Universal Negro Improvement Association
(UNIA) by Marcus Garvey in Harlem in 1918, militant black nationalism
found great purchase in the black communities of the United States.
17

Herbert Shapiro asserts that, “it is established that tens of thousands of
Afro-Americans supported Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement
Association, along with its associated organizations and publications, and
turned out for mass rallies and parades.”
18
Garvey’s platform included the
belief that black people around the world must unite to fight a common
oppression. To that end, and in the face of horrific violence against blacks
in the U.S., Garvey called for repatriation to the African continent. Africa,
he reasoned, was the original home of black people and belonged
rightfully to them (not to the European and American powers that had

21
colonized it). Central to his ideology was the notion that black people had
to organize themselves around their blackness; that race bound blacks
together and served as a site of unity that needed to be exploited in order
to effectively struggle for liberation.
19
Unlike other civil rights
organizations, Garvey’s UNIA believed that black people had the right to
protect themselves against racial violence using “every means.”
20
This
sentiment would again be raised in the 1950s and 1960s by Malcolm X in
his belief that black people had the right to protect themselves “by any
means necessary.” The UNIA lasted until Garvey’s imprisonment and
deportation in the 1930s. As the largest mass black organization ever, it is
hardly surprising that later black activists had connections to the
organization.
21

Malcolm X, the charismatic leader in the Nation of Islam, would by
the early 1960s become the face and voice of the NOI and an inspiration
for radical black activists. Malcolm X’s father was a member of the UNIA
and his membership and activism are generally believed to be
contributing factors in his murder when Malcolm was a child.
22
Certainly,
Malcolm remembered the death of his father and the resultant
catastrophes that befell his family. In his autobiography, written with
Alex Haley, he recounts his childhood vividly and many scholars have
acknowledged his experiences growing up in a Garveyite household as
formative. For example, Klaus Fischer writes,

22
Malcolm’s childhood experience centered on his father’s
pastoral activities and the harassment the family was
exposed to as a result of his father’s crusading on behalf of
Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.
. . In 1931 the Reverend Little [Malcolm’s father] was
allegedly attacked by angry whites, thrown under the wheels
of a streetcar, and crushed. Malcolm X later claimed that
his mother, cheated out of her husband’s insurance policy
because the death was listed as a suicide, was unable to take
care of her seven children at the height of the Depression
and had to be hospitalized in a mental institution. The
children became “wards of the state” and were placed in
foster homes.
23

Eventually, Malcolm embraced a life of crime and ended up in
prison.
24
While imprisoned, he reflected on his life, began to read
voraciously and encountered members of the Nation of Islam. While I do
not advance an argument that places Malcolm’s father’s Garveyism at the
heart of his own conversion to Islam or leadership within the Nation of
Islam, I would suggest that Malcolm may have been receptive to the
messages of the Nation, particularly it’s insistence on black self-reliance
and race pride which were also hallmarks of Garvey’s movement.
The Nation of Islam itself traces its beginnings to the 1930s, in the
controversial and nebulous person of Wallace D. Fard Muhammad.
25

Fard Muhammad was the first to wholly reject the term “Negro” and use
instead the term “black” – perhaps one of the most enduring legacies of
struggle that we normally date to the late 1960s. The Nation of Islam
preached “cautious and pragmatic resistance, frugality, and cultural
regeneration.”
26
It also firmly believed in separation of the races – that is,

23
a separation between blacks and whites but a connection between black
Americans and other non-white peoples including Asians. Fard believed
that black people were actually the “Asiatic black man – the founder of
civilization and Original Man, created in the image of God, whose proper
name is Allah.”
27
Elijah Muhammad took over the Nation of Islam in
1934 after Fard disappeared and became the mentor and surrogate father
of Malcolm X in the 1950s. By the time Malcolm joined the Nation, it
owned a 140-acre farm in Michigan, other businesses in other states and
“property worth millions.”
28

Numerous scholars have pointed out that the black nationalism
that gained prominence in the 1960s owed a great debt to earlier
nationalist movements.
29
In particular, the rise of the black nationalism
of the Nation of Islam can be linked to the movements started by W. D.
Fard and Marcus Garvey in the 1930s.
30
The ascension of Malcolm X to
the world stage as the foremost spokesperson for the Nation of Islam
ushered in a new era of growth for the organization. Indeed, the power
that Malcolm wielded within the NOI has been put forth as one of the
main reasons Elijah Muhammad suspended him after his infamous
“chickens coming home to roost” statement following the assassination of
John F. Kennedy.
31
By 1964 the situation between Malcolm and the NOI
had become untenable. Malcolm’s travels in Africa and the Middle East
had profoundly changed him.
32
In Mecca, scenes of Muslims from all

24
across the world interacting peaceably stunned him. He later recalled,
“Throngs of people, obviously Muslims from everywhere, bound on the
pilgrimage, were hugging and embracing. They were of all complexions,
the whole atmosphere was of warmth and friendliness. The feeling hit me
that there really wasn’t any color problem here. The effect was as though
I had just stepped out of a prison.”
33
This revelation flew in the face of
everything he had been taught to believe by Muhammad and the NOI –
that white people were devils, that blacks and whites could never get
along, that separatism was the only answer. Unfortunately, although
Malcolm returned to the United States and started two new organizations,
Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, his
murder less than a year later prematurely ended what was becoming a
new, more inclusive political and personal ideology.
The NOI, on the other hand, continued to espouse a separatist
agenda, calling for blacks to form and support their own businesses,
believing the economic control was the answer to racism. Uninterested in
integration, the NOI wanted to lessen blacks’ dependence upon white
America, in effect setting up a separate yet parallel state within the state.
As for Malcolm and his legacy, the NOI continued to denounce him (as it
had after his break with Muhammad in 1964). Representative of the
attacks is an article by Raymond Sharrieff in a June 1971 issue of
Muhammad Speaks, the official paper of the NOI:

25
Malcolm, goes to MECCA. He makes a pilgrimage, and for
the first time Malcolm gets a chance to eat out of the same
dish with the devil. This excited Malcolm, lover of the devil
. . . Malcolm, saw white people in MECCA and he dined
with them and ate out of the same dish with them. Judas
Iscariot ate out of the dish with Jesus, but Judas was not a
Jesus. Judas was a betrayer.
34

Thus, despite Malcolm X’s prominence and his new attitude following his
trip to African and the Middle East, the NOI maintained the ideology it
had always promoted. Elijah Muhammad retained his power (until he
was succeeded by his son Wallace Deen Muhammad and later, Louis
Farrakhan, who remains in power today). Malcolm X was vilified and
branded a traitor within the organization.
Outside the NOI, reaction to Malcolm’s death differed markedly.
Many were still in admiration of the man who had risen from pimp and
hustler to the best orator the NOI ever had. His spiritual transformation
and the respect he demanded served as a model for many black
Americans. His speeches were reprinted, giving subsequent generations
access to his calls for militancy. Ossie Davis would eulogize him with the
highest praises:
Malcolm was our manhood, our living black manhood! This
was his meaning to his people. In honoring him, we honor
the best in ourselves . . . Consigning these mortal remains to
the earth, the common mother of all, secure in the
knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now
a man – but a seed – which, after the winter of our
discontent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will
know him then for what he was and is – a Prince – our own
black, shining Prince! – who didn’t hesitate to die, because
he loved us so.
35

26
For members of what would come to be called the Black Power
movement, Malcolm X was a martyred “prince.” His philosophy of self-
determination and self-defense resonated with African Americans who
had grown tired of waiting for integration and the end of violence against
blacks promised by leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
36
For these new
activists, some of whom had been active members of civil rights
organizations, songs such as “We Shall Overcome” were replaced by
chants like “What do we want? Black Power! When do we want it?
NOW!” Taking up the mantle of black nationalism and incorporating a
variety of other philosophies (such as Marxism), Black Power
organizations sought to force the end of centuries of racial subordination
of blacks in the United States.
The NOI, however, did not believe in activism, preferring to
concentrate on building a membership devoted to religious instruction,
self-help and separatism. Although NOI leaders such as Malcolm X had
gained wide-spread attention with their anti-white, black-pride rhetoric,
the organization’s unwillingness to engage in political activism alienated
those black people who wanted to actively struggle against oppression.
Indeed, some activists who would later join groups like the Black Panthers
would do so after considering – and rejecting – the NOI largely on its
stance against political engagement.
37

27
The other force for securing the liberation of African Americans
came from organizations that were part of the civil rights movement. The
“Big Six” organizations and leaders were the National Urban League
(NUL, led by Whitney Young), the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, led by Roy Wilkins), A. Philip
Randolph Institute (led by A. Philip Randolph), Congress on Racial
Equality (CORE, led by James Farmer), Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC, led by John Lewis and later, Stokely
Carmichael) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC,
led by Martin Luther King, Jr.).
38
These organizations and leaders were
varied in their theoretical and practical approaches to black liberation.
The two oldest organizations, the NAACP (1909) and the NUL (1910),
were fully committed to integration, although not necessarily non-
violence (particularly in the case of self-defense). The SCLC, SNCC and
CORE, on the other hand, followed a non-violent philosophy most often
associated with Martin Luther King’s Gandhian approach to civil
disobedience.
Thus, the activism of the 1950s and 1960s was not without
precedent. Indeed, some of the same people involved in struggles in the
1930s were active in the later period. Further, activists of the 1950s were
the children, neighbors, and political inheritors of the earlier activists.
Just as earlier black writers guided and mentored the radical writers of

28
the Black Arts Movement, activists from an earlier tradition inspired and
mentored the activists of the civil rights movement in the years after
Brown.
39

Power to the People!

By 1965, the dividing line between the civil rights movement and
“Black Power” (represented initially by the NOI) was becoming more
difficult to discern.
40
The prevailing wisdom has reinforced the notion
that Black Power sprung almost organically (and inevitably) from a
dissatisfied young cadre of blacks who had grown impatient with non-
violence and integration generally. While the dissatisfaction may have
been present, particularly among younger activists, as I earlier
demonstrated the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s had
powerful antecedents in African American liberation struggles of the past.
In addition, the activists themselves came out of the protracted struggles
for equality fought by many of the “Big Six” organizations. The NAACP,
NUL and SCLC would not ultimately join the Black Power movement.
Indeed, their leaders would harshly critique Black Power as a philosophy
and tactic.
41
SNCC and CORE, however, began to embrace a Black Power
stance. Perhaps most notably, Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Toure)
would lead SNCC to fervently embrace Black Power and is credited with

29
being the first (or at least the most vocal) to espouse Black Power as a
slogan and philosophy.
42

Formed in Oakland, CA in 1966, The Black Panther Party (BPP)
was one of the foremost Black Power organizations. The six original
members –Elbert “Big Man” Howard, Huey P. Newton, Sherman Forte,
Bobby Seale, Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton (and later, Eldridge
Cleaver) – would not only work to end police brutality and provide
services to the black community such as health care and free food, they
would influence other ethnic/racial groups to organize in their
communities and adopt many of the same tactics as the Panthers.
43

Organized around their “10-Point Plan,” the BPP demanded strict
discipline and adherence to a code of conduct.
44
While the 10-Point Plan
is most-often quoted and laid out the demands of the Party, the BPP also
had “8 Points of Attention” which governed conduct of members within
the Party. The 8 Points were as follows:
1. Speak politely.
2. Pay fairly for what you buy.
3. Return everything you borrow.
4. Pay for anything you damage.
5. Do not hit or swear at people.
6. Do not damage property or crops of the poor, oppressed
masses.

30

7. Do not take liberties with women.
8. If we ever have to take captives do not ill-treat them.
45

Crucially, the BPP included number 7: “Do not take liberties with
women.” Contrary to much of the scholarship on the organization, the
BPP worked towards ending gender discrimination in its organization.
Though the attempts were not always successful, they did open space for
women to engage in meaningful ways, including in leadership positions,
such as BPP Chairperson Elaine Brown. Within the context of the other
eight points, number seven is clearly in keeping with a BPP desire to treat
other human beings with respect (even their possible captives).
Importantly, the BPP was “the first major black organization to align itself
with the women’s liberation movement, as well as the gay liberation
movement.”
46
While the respect that women received within the
organization varied according to chapter, time and leadership, that the
BPP was aware enough to include the treatment of women in what is
really a very short list of rules is testament to their recognition of gender
inequities in the organization and society at large. Unfortunately, most
discussions of the BPP ignore the 8 Points of Attention and their support
of women’s and gay rights. Perhaps this is because the BPP “10-Point
Plan” has been widely disseminated, reproduced, modified and adopted
by other racial/ethnic groups and consists of provocative demands for the

31
restructuring of U.S. society. The result is a preoccupation with the
demands of the BPP rather than an examination of the internal dynamics
that impacted relationships between male and female members.

Why SNCC, why Black Power?

Stokely Carmichael, leader of SNCC, forged connections to the
fledgling Black Panther Party and tried to help broker a truce between the
rival Oakland and San Francisco chapters.
47
Ties between SNCC and the
Black Panther Party (BPP) appear particularly strong. As Jeffrey O. G.
Ogbar notes, “[i]n some instances, SNCC chapters simply became
affiliated with the Black Panther Party, and members were eventually
absorbed, after a formal process.”
48
Further, Stokely Carmichael claimed
that the Black Panther Party started in Oakland by Huey Newton and
Bobby Seale was directly influenced by the Lowndes County (Alabama)
Freedom Organization in which Carmichael was intimately involved and
which used a black panther as its symbol.
49
According to Carmichael,
Mark Comfort from California asked if he could take the Black Panther
idea to California and start a group there. At this point, several groups
claimed the name, resulting in fighting which Carmichael then tried to
resolve. This proved to be an impossible task. In addition to ideological
differences, many of the California activists were former gang members

32
and their rivalries could not be overcome by political organization.
50

Carmichael remembered:
My thought was to try to bring all these groups together into
a unified Black Panther organization and to discuss exactly
what political program they were going to organize around.
Never happened. My brother, the contradictions out there
were rough. Uh-huh, I mean rough, Jack. . . .No way. It
became clear real quick that no one coming in from the
outside could hope to solve these contradictions. It was just
impossible. Histories went back years between these
groups. Members once of the same group had to split into
factions and these were competitive, if not openly hostile.
51

Eventually, the disputes were settled, with Newton and Seale retaining the
name Black Panther Party (initially called the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense). Mark Comfort recalled that winning the name was not
done with diplomacy, rather Newton and Seale confronted their rivals for
the name and “just flashed their guns on everyone . . . It was nothing but a
cold-blooded bogart, man.”
52
Clearly, this behavior was very different
from that practiced by members of the civil rights organizations like SCLC
or the NAACP. However, the Black Panther Party was formed by and
drew membership from a very different constituency.
Much has been made of the gang origins of many BPP members.
While the influence of gang-culture (and its attendant violence) might in
some cases be overstated, it is certainly true that a type of gang-mentality
was present in the organization and was not necessarily discouraged by all
members of the leadership.
53
Indeed, the BPP purposely built its
organization around the black masses – including gang members and

33
criminals. The NOI had also drawn on the masses (lumpenproletariat) for
its membership – the conversion of Malcolm X stands as its most obvious
criminal-to-Muslim success story. In fact, the NOI was hugely successful
in reforming criminals. At a time when approximately 90 percent of the
male membership of Harlem Mosque Number Seven (Malcolm X’s
mosque) had criminal records, there was a near-zero recidivism rate.
54

The BPP, unlike the NOI, did not try to alter the lumpen in this way.
Where the NOI had strict dietary restrictions, religious instruction and
codes of conduct (much of which was diametrically opposed to black folk
culture), the BPP sought to channel black folk culture – including gang
culture and violence – into political action. Newton and Seale exploited
the appeal of a black masculinity that relied of physical strength and
weapons in the cultivation of the BPP style – shotguns, black berets, black
leather jackets, sunglasses. This style was purposely developed to appeal
to young men from the streets who were never going to go for the NOI’s
pressed suits and bow ties.
55
It can be argued that the BPP’s fostering of a
gang-mentality is proof that the organization was destined to implode.
On the other hand, the NOI, which reforms criminals, has continued to
thrive.
The reasons why SNCC was particularly susceptible to Black Power
as a viable tactic are varied. First, contradictions had always existed in
“non-violent” organizations regarding the use of violence. For example,

34
as Ogbar demonstrates, even the staunchly non-violent SCLC made use of
the Deacons for Defense and Justice as security for their marches and Dr.
King purchased a firearm after receiving death threats and having his
home firebombed.
56
Indeed, the carrying of firearms for personal
protection was commonplace in many of the organizations, regardless of
their public stance on non-violence.
57
Thus, the public embrace of self-
defense was not as far from many activists’ origins as is commonly
believed.
Second, events of the mid-1960s served as a catalyst for change.
The 1965 Watts Rebellion, the incredible violence King and his marchers
encountered on Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the shooting of
James Meredith as he attempted his “March Against Fear” in Mississippi
all influenced a shift in the thinking and tactics of some activists.
58
If one
were to point to a single, defining moment, the aftermath of Meredith’s
shooting during the March Against Fear comes close. Activists from
SCLC, NAACP, NUL, and SNCC wanted to continue the march but did not
agree on the purpose. Meredith, who had integrated the University of
Mississippi, planned a “one-man march against fear through the state of
Mississippi to encourage black citizens to assert their right to vote.”
59

When civil rights leaders decided to carry on the march after Meredith’s
shooting, there was dissention over the tactics and purpose of the march.
While the NAACP, SCLC and NUL saw Meredith’s march as an

35
opportunity to demonstrate to the Johnson administration the need to
expand civil rights legislation, SNCC (led by Stokely Carmichael) took the
position that black people needed to literally march against fear. For
SNCC, the march had a two-fold purpose: 1) to demonstrate to black
people that they were strong enough to overcome any fear of white
reprisal that may keep them from asserting their civil rights and 2) to
show whites that black people would no longer live in fear and
subjugation.
60
It was at a rally connected with this march that the
national media heard the first shouts of “Black Power”. Carmichael, who
had been arrested and released just in time to speak at the rally, later
recalled:
I was in no mood to compromise with racist arrogance. The
rally had started. It was huge. The spirit of self-assertion
and defiance was palpable. . . I told them what they knew,
that they could depend only on themselves, their own
organized collective strength . . . The only rights they were
likely to get were the ones they took for themselves. I raised
the call for Black Power again. It was nothing new, we’d
been talking about nothing else in the Delta for years. The
only difference was that this time the national media were
there.
61

The media captured and repeated the refrain: “What do you want?”/
“Black Power”, “What do you want?”/ “BLACK POWER!” As noted in
Carmichael’s autobiography, this moment “assured that the Meredith
March Against Fear would go down in history as one of the major turning
points in the black liberation struggle.”
62
The struggle would be divided

36
between civil rights (SCLC, NAACP, NUL) and Black Power – represented
by SNCC, BPP, Us Organization and many others that would come and go
over the next decade.

Mexican American to Chicano

On March 1, 1968 high school students in East Los Angeles walked
out of their classrooms in protest over poor school conditions. The
demands included bilingual education, more Chicano/a teachers and a
curriculum that reflected their Mexican heritage.
63
Sal Castro, a teacher
at Belmont High School, had long encouraged Chicano students to agitate
for their rights and to participate in student government.
64
Although
Chicano/as made up the majority of the student body at several East Los
Angeles high schools, the faced issues ranging from openly racist teachers,
high drop-out rates, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated facilities.
They also wanted their history to be an integral part of the curriculum and
an increase in the number of Chicano/a teachers and administrators.
65

To protest these conditions, 10,000 Chicano students walked out of their
high schools in March, 1968. The police swiftly came down on the
students, beating and arresting many of them. Sal Castro was among
those arrested. After years of appeals, the charges were found to be
unconstitutional. The East L.A. walkouts had deep repercussions

37
throughout Chicano communities in Los Angeles and other cities. Taking
their cue from East L. A. students in cities as far away as Phoenix, Denver
and Abilene also walked out of their schools. The Brown Berets, present
at the East L.A. walkouts as a security force, were targeted by the police,
some of the members were arrested and the organization itself was
infiltrated by undercover police officers.
66
Although the East L.A.
Blowouts (as they would come to be called) remain a pivotal moment in
the Chicano Movement, it is crucial to understand the antecedents to this
moment as well as the lasting repercussions of the students’ action.
Much of the history of people of Mexican descent in the United
States has been characterized by struggle for inclusion in the American
body politic, which had supposedly been granted with the 1848 ceding of
Mexican lands to the United States. Granted citizenship after the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo as white persons, people of Mexican descent
quickly found themselves treated as anything but “white” in the United
States.
67
Dispossessed of lands grated to them after the Treaty,
marginalized as a labor force, shut out of many unions and facing
segregation in housing and education as well as lacking substantial
political power, Mexican Americans had for over a century fought for
equality in the United States.
68
By the 1960s, Mexican American activism
had become Chicano activism, signally a shift somewhat similar to the
shift that occurred between the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

38
Again, the word “militancy” came to stand for the new movement and
direct action tactics became common strategies. Chicanos demanded
inclusion and recognition of difference. Thus the demands of the East
L.A. Blowouts – Chicano teachers and courses in Mexican and Mexican
American history and culture.
However, like the Black Power Movement, the Chicano Movement
cannot be characterized as a single, unified movement. Instead, it was a
loosely organized (and often not organized) collection of many groups,
ideologies and tactics that often were in direct conflict with one another.
Given the diversity of the Chicano population, this is not surprising. The
myriad of issues embraced by Chicano activism produced a variety of
organizations with differing political objectives and ideologies. In
addition, a geographically diverse population meant that organizations
were physically separated from each other and served the needs of their
local constituencies. One of the great tasks for Chicano Movement
organizers was to forge a community out of a diverse population that
occupied a liminal status in relation to the larger power structure. To that
end, numerous groups were formed across the southwest including
United Farm Workers (led by Cesar Chávez in California), La Alianza
Federal de Pueblas Libres (New Mexico), Crusade for Justice (led by
Corky Gonzalez in Denver) and La Raza Unida Party. In addition, Sal
Castro’s Chicano Youth Leadership Conferences inspired the students

39
who took part in the East L.A. Blowouts. Some organizational ideas
traveled quickly and were taken up by independent groups of Chicanos.
For example, in Los Angeles, the Mexican American Student Association
(MASA) was formed at East Los Angeles Community College and later
students at Loyola University formed United Mexican American Students
(UMAS). Chicano students across the southwest began organizing
student groups to serve their needs and press for improvements for
Chicano/as in schools – including better teachers, facilities and an end to
discrimination against Chicano students in the classroom. It was this
spirit that fed support for the L.A. Blowouts in 1968.
69

Some issues facing Chicanos did bridge geographic boundaries,
such as Cesar Chávez’s United Farm Workers (UFW). Based in central
California, the UFW nonetheless drew support from Chicanos (and non-
Chicanos) from across the country. Founded in 1962 to combat the
exploitation of farm workers (most of whom were Mexican-American), by
1968 the UFW was calling for nationwide boycott of California table
grapes. Such a boycott was only possible by gaining widespread support
not only from Chicanos but also other groups. As Lauren Ariaza writes
“[f]rom the beginning of the UFW’s first strike against grape growers in
Delano, California in 1965, Chavez sought assistance from the farm
workers’ diverse allies, such as civil rights activists, organized labor, and
the clergy.”
70
The Black Panther Party would be a particularly important

40
supporter for Chávez and the UFW. Although their support (and that of
Chávez and the UFW for the BPP) would rise and fall depending on the
strength of the organizations and intra-organizational politics, the BPP
saw the UFW as part of the larger struggle of oppressed working-class
people against capitalist exploitation.
71
The UFW’s success at garnering
national attention and support marked a crucial moment in the
burgeoning Chicano Movement. As Rodolfo Acuña states, the influence of
Chávez and the UFW in developing Chicano consciousness “cannot be
overestimated. Chávez and the farmworkers gave youth a cause, symbols,
and a national space to claim their presence in the national civil rights
movement. Chávez’s fasts and state and corporate violence heightened
anger and polemics, which are fodder of a movement. In turn, Chicano
youth and the large Mexican-origin community gave the farmworkers an
urban constituency.”
72
Thus it was possible for different Chicano
organizations to accomplish community-building on the basis of some
shared experiences. As Laura Pulido notes:
One of the legacies of el movimiento was the creation of a
consolidated regional identity among Chicanas/os. Given
the geographic concentration of Mexican Americans in the
Southwest at the time, it was inevitable that political activity
would be spacially concentrated. This led Chicana/o
activists across the region to begin seeing themselves as one
people with a common heritage. Like Japanese Americans,
Chicanas/os had to figure out who they were and how they
fit into a bipolar racial structure. Mexican Americans were
neither white nor Black, and although nominally more
accepted by whites, they had a low socioeconomic position
and were even more politically marginalized than Blacks.
73

41

Chicano/a activists, while endeavoring to come together as “one people
with a common heritage,” nonetheless had a variety of approaches to this
goal. The Brown Berets, for example, offer an interesting subject for
analysis and are particularly useful for my purposes.
74

Modeled in part after the Black Panther Party, the Brown Berets
demonstrate the ways in which activists of the era moved between
organizations and movements, gathering information and experience and
forging alliances between seemingly disparate groups. Again, Pulido is
instructive. Quoting a Chicano activist, she writes:
I started going to UMAS meetings and identifying with the
Black student movement, what was happening in the South,
SNCC, the Black Panther Party, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap
Brown. So I started talking to these older Chicano guys [in
MASA] about Stokely and H. Rap Brown, but they weren’t
into it. I saw the difference between them and the Young
Citizens for Chicano Action [the predecessor of the Brown
Berets], and I started hanging out with them. That’s when I
split from more traditional student politics and into more
community activism.
75

The confluence of ideologies between the Black Panther Party and the
Brown Berets was visible on a variety of fronts. Like the Panthers, the
Brown Berets (as the name suggests) adopted a paramilitary fashion that
included the wearing of berets. They also policed the police in their
neighborhoods, hoping to curtail the widespread police abuse that
characterized much of the interaction between Chicanos and law
enforcement (just as it did with blacks and law enforcement). Further,

42
the Brown Berets (like the Panthers) adopted the “8 Points of Attention”
that originally appeared as Mao Zedong’s “Eight Rules” in 1928. The
Brown Berets’s “8 Points of Attention” differed slightly from the ones
used by the Black Panthers. The Brown Berets articulated the points as
follows:
1. Speak politely to the people
2. Pay fairly for what you buy from the people
3. Return everything you borrow
4. Pay for anything you damage
5. Do not hit or swear at the people
6. Do not damage property or possessions of people
7. Do not take liberties with women
8. When working with the people do not get loaded
76

The most glaring difference is point eight. In the Black Panther version it
reads: “If we ever have to take captives do not ill-treat them,” while the
Brown Beret version states: “When working with the people do not get
loaded.” I’m not sure why this change was made. Certainly, the Black
Panthers did not advocate getting drunk or high while doing community
activism.
77
It is possible that the Black Panthers thought they could deal
any such behavior without including the admonishment in its “8 Points”
while the treatment of possible captives was an unknown and thus must
be set down in writing. Curiously, the Brown Berets did not seem to see

43
possible captive-holding as part of their political future. It is highly
unlikely that the Brown Berets did not read the BPP’s version, as there are
several documented examples of interaction between the two groups.
Elaine Brown offers this example:
On New Year’s Eve, we held our first formal coalition
meeting with the Brown Berets. Mexicans, or Chicanos, had
joined with other Latinos to form the group. Patterning
their program after ours, they wore brown berets, à la the
Panther black beret, to represent unity of our common
revolutionary commitment. Black Panthers and Brown
Berets welcomed in the new year: 1969.
78

Despite their “common revolutionary commitment,” both the Black
Panther Party and the Brown Berets were primarily responsible to their
own communities. Thus differences in the “8 Points of Attention” and in
the emphasis of the organizations’ programs. In addition, neither the
Black Panther Party nor the Brown Berets represent the totality of the
Black Power or Chicano movements. Each was but a part of a much larger
struggle for political and social justice that took many forms and included
many organizations operating throughout the United States. The result of
this type of struggle was a sometimes problematic activism and an uneven
legacy of struggle. As Cherríe Moraga explains:
What was right about Chicano Nationalism was its
commitment to preserving the integrity of the Chicano
people. A generation ago, there were cultural, economic,
and political programs to develop Chicano consciousness,
autonomy, and self-determination. What was wrong about
Chicano Nationalism was its institutionalized heterosexism,

44
its inbred machismo, and its lack of a cohesive national
political strategy.
79

The Black Arts/Black Power and Chicano movements therefore
cannot be characterized as coherent movements. Rather the movements
more closely resemble an assortment of inter-related organizations,
people and political ideologies that, taken together, mark a shift in
political and cultural organizing in their respective communities.
80
We
must resist the tendency to romanticize this activist past and remain
mindful of the complex ways in which the organizations and individuals
worked together. They argued and debated tactics, theory and purpose
and were impacted upon (positively and negatively) by outside influences.

45
Chapter One Endnotes

1
Most sources acknowledge that members of the Nation of Islam were involved
in Malcolm’s murder however evidence also suggests at least some measure of
complicity by the United States government. See for example Karl Evanzz, The
Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press,
1992); Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 1979); Alex Haley and Malcolm X, The Autobiography of
Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988); Bruce Perry, Malcolm: The
Life of a Man Who Changed Black America (New York: Station Hill, 1991).

2
Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1979) 301.

3
See Robert Weisbrot, Freedom Bound: A History of America’s Civil Rights
Movement (New York: Plume Books, 1991) Chapter 5 “The Voting Rights
Campaign.”

4
Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s
(Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia, 1995) 46-49.

5
Horne 3.

6
See Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s
(Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia, 1995) and James
Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and
1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

7
Revolutionary nationalists generally believed in separatism of the races in some
fashion. While the NOI at times called for a separate black state (in the southern
U.S.), the BPP shied away from territorial separatism, focusing instead on
building black-pride and control of inner cities, which were already heavily
populated by blacks. Revolutionary nationalists have in common a desire to
disrupt the national status quo in some way – by setting up a separate black state,
dismantling capitalism, or in some meaningful way change the balance of power
between blacks and whites. Cultural nationalists like Us Organization
concentrated on building black pride that was based on real and imagined
African traditions. It is not coincidence that Karenga, founder of US
Organization, is also the founder of Kwanzaa, a pseudo-African winter holiday
that roughly corresponds with Christmas and has gained popularity in African
American communities since it was introduced in 1966. Black cultural
nationalism has proven easily absorbed into the national culture, with Hallmark

46

making Kwanzaa cards and the U.S. Postal service issuing Kwanzaa stamps
without making any real demands on the state to change its treatment of black
people. For more on Kwanzaa see
www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/index.shtml, the official Kwanzaa website
(which also includes a link to the US Organization).

8
See for example James Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary
Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2005) and Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism
in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
9
Plessy v Ferguson (1896). For the text of the decision see
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/33.htm which reads in part:
“We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the
assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race
with a badge of inferiority. . . The argument also assumes that social prejudices
may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the
negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept
this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it
must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's
merits and a voluntary consent of individuals...Legislation is powerless to
eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical
differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the
difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races
be equal one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be
inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put
them upon the same plane...” Brown v Board of Education (1954) challenged the
assumptions of Plessy. The decision reads in part: “Segregation with the sanction
of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental
development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they
would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.Whatever may have been
the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this
finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v.
Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.We conclude that, in the field of
public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the
plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought
are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection
of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes
unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” See
http://www.nationalcenter.org/brown.html.

47

10
Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for
Democracy, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). See also Robin
D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (New
York: Free Press, 1994); Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer & Hoe: Alabama
Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1990); and Charles M. Payne and Adam Green, eds. Time Longer
Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950 (New York:
New York University, 2003).

11
See for example, Charles M. Payne and Adam Green, eds. Time Longer Than
Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950 (New York: New
York University, 2003).; James Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary
Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2005).

12
Robert O. Self, “The Black Panther Party and the Long Civil Rights Era” in In
Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary
Movement. Eds. Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2006).

13
This process has been well-documented. For an in-depth look at residential
segregation see Robert Bullard et. al. Residential Apartheid: An American
Legacy (Los Angeles: CAAS Publications, 1994).

14
Bullard 5.

15
For example, see Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and
African American Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2004) 85-86.

16
More will be discussed about the Black Panther platform later in this chapter.
But it is worth noting that the programs the BPP is still remembered for most are
their patrols of the police and their Free Breakfast programs.

17
The UNIA was originally founded in Jamaica in 1914 but headquarters moved
to Harlem in 1918. At its height, the UNIA boasted millions of members in 41
countries. See Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African
American Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

18
Herbert Shapiro, White Violence, Black Response: From Reconstruction to
Montgomery (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988) 162.

48

19
There were, however, many contradictions inherent in Garvey’s position
regarding Africa and repatriation. Garvey himself never visited the continent yet
he appointed himself “Provisional President of Africa.” Beyond the obvious
problem of being a leader for a continent containing diverse cultures, languages,
histories and customs, Garvey also never asked any Africans whether they
wanted him to be their “President.” Such a move can be read as imperialistic in a
sense similar to the American and European colonial powers. Evidence suggests,
however, that Garvey was widely supported in at least some areas of the Africa
and the colonial governments saw him as a threat. Laws were instituted in order
to stop the importation of Garveyite literature and Garvey supports were often
targeted by colonial police. See Robert A. Hill, Editor in Chief, The Marcus
Garvey and UNIA Papers Volume IX, Africa for the Africans, 1921-1922
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995).

20
Hill 166.

21
Much has been written about Marcus Garvey and the UNIA. Robert Hill is
one of the leading scholars and has written several books including: Comp. with
Barbara Bair, Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons (Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1987); Editor, The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Vols. 1 -
5, with Introduction (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1983); “
‘Africa for the Africans’: The Garvey Movement in South Africa, 1920-1940”,
Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, eds. Race, Class, and Nationalism in
Comparative Perspective in South Africa (London: Longmans, 1987); Robert A.
Hill, Editor in Chief, The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Volume IX, Africa
for the Africans, 1921-1922 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California Press, 1995). For a discussion of Garveyism in California
(particularly in Los Angeles) see Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom: Black
Los Angeles in Jim Crow America (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University
of California Press, 2005); Lawrence De Graaf, Kevin Mulroy & Quintard
Taylor, eds. Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California (Los Angeles:
Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 2001).

22
See Alex Haley and Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1988).

23
Klaus Fischer, America in White, Black, and Gray: The Stormy 1960s (New
York: Continuum, 2006) 126-127. See also Alex Haley and Malcolm X The
Autobiography of Malcolm X.

24
Malcolm also embraced the multiracial Zoot culture of the 1940s. For
Malcolm and other blacks, Zoot culture was a way to assert individuality and

49

independence despite the existence of both Jim Crow and the patriotic fervor of
the World War II era. Indeed, for Malcolm Zoot culture (both the dress and
language) was a platform to challenge Euro-American hegemony. See Luis
Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World
War II (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of Californai Press, 2008)
and Robin D. G. Kelley, “The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black
Cultural Politics during World War II,” in Kelley Race Rebels: Culture, Politics,
and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994).

25
See Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American
Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

26
Ogbar 12.

27
Ogbar 13.

28
Ogbar 19; 60.

29
See Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s
(Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia, 1995); C. Eric Lincoln,
The Black Muslims in America (New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1994); James
Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and
1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
30
C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (New Jersey: Africa World
Press, 1994) 63.

31
Lincoln 191. Upon the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X
stated that the assassination was a case of “chickens coming home to roost.
Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make
me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” A little over a year later, Malcolm
revisited this theme in a speech at Harvard University in which he explained (but
did not apologize for) the reasons he made the statement initially. He explained
that the violence and racism that the United States puts out into the world has got
to come back to our shores. He stated, “The chickens that this country is
responsible for sending out . . . someday, and someday soon, have got to come
back home to roost.” See Archie Epps, ed. Malcolm X: Speeches at Harvard
(New York: Paragon, 1991)161-182.

32
For an extended description of his travels and their effect on him, see Malcolm
X’s autobiography, Alex Haley and Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm
X, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988) 319-342.

50

33
Haley 321.

34
Muhammad Speaks, June 5, 1971 (quoted in Lincoln 193).

35
Official Website of Malcolm X:
http://www.cmgworldwide.com/historic/malcolm/about/eulogy.htm.

36
See for example Bobby Seale. CNN interview, August 1996, available at
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/13/interviews/seale/ and Laura
Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 91.

37
Also, the NOI’s embrace of Islam alienated many blacks who had been reared
in the black Christian faith. To them, many of the religious teachings and strict
regulations regarding everything from diet to dating were too unusual and
oppressive. See Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African
American Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) 129.

38
Ogbar12.

39
For a discussion of the connection between writers, see James Smethurst, The
Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005) and Cheryl Clark, “After Mecca”:
Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (New Jersey: Rutgers University,
2005) on Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.

40
The NOI, which had represented the Black Power stance through the mid-
1960s, was eventually supplanted by groups such as the Black Panther Party.
This shift, in part, can be linked to the ouster of Malcolm X from the NOI in
1964 and his subsequent assassination (in 1965). The Black Panther Party would
garner such attention, both inside and outside black communities, that J. Edgar
Hoover would call them “the greatest threat to the internal security of the
country.” (quoted in Lazerow & Williams, In Search of the Black Panther Party
45). Hoover’s FBI would engage in a campaign of harassment, infiltration and
liquidation aimed at neutralizing the BPP and other black activist groups, which
has been documented in a vast number of books and articles written about the
period.

41
Some reasons for this include reliance on white patronage and leadership and a
real philosophical and moral commitment to non-violence. Black Power and
Malcolm X/NOI were also threats to the membership of the more moderate
organizations. For a more extended discussion of the reasons and critiques see

51

Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American
Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) 52-67.

42
See Stokely Carmichael and Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. Ready for
Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) (New
York: Scribner, 2003) 507-508 for a description of Carmichael’s call for “Black
Power” at a rally connected with Meredith’s “March Against Fear.”

43
For an extended discussion of the influence of the BPP on other groups, see
Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

44
The BPP 10-Point Platform is widely available, including at the University of
California – Berkeley Social Activism Sound Recording Project available at
www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificapanthers.html and the Black Panther Official
website at http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm.

45
“8 Points of Attention” in Charles Jones, et. al. The Black Panther Party
Reconsidered (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998) 476. For a description of
the position of women in the BPP, see Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, eds.
In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary
Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006) 276-277.

46
Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, eds. In Search of the Black Panther
Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2006) 277.
47
Carmichael and Thelwell 475-477.

48
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American
Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) 99.
49
Carmichael also later recalled that Huey Newton sent a letter to him, formally
asking permission to use the Black Panther name and logo. Carmichael
responded that he didn’t own either one – that they belong to the people and
anyone can use them. He joked, “Who’d ever heard of intellectual property rights
in those days?” Carmichael and Thelwell 477.

50
See for example Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther
Party and Huey P. Newton (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1997); Eldridge
Cleaver, Target Zero: A Life in Writing Ed. Kathleen Cleaver (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: Delta
Books, 1991) (reprint); Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical
Activism in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006);

52

Stokely Carmichael and Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution: The
Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) (New York: Scribner,
2003). Also see Bastards of the Party, Dir. Antoine Fuqua and Cle “Bone” Sloan
(HBO Documentary, 2005).

51
Stokely Carmichael and Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution:
The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) (New York:
Scribner, 2003) 475.

52
Carmichael and Thelwell 476.

53
Eldridge Cleaver, for example, was notoriously violent towards both women
and men. Much of his philosophy towards violence is documented in his
autobiography Soul on Ice, which made Cleaver a best-selling author and
activist-star.

54
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American
Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) 22.

55
Ogbar 86-87; 108.

56
See Ogbar 41-52, for a discussion of use of arms and armed protection in non-
violent organizations. Also, one former member of the Black Power/Black Arts
Movement, K. W. Kgositsile, claims that Malcolm X had a photo of Martin
Luther King in his Harlem office. When questioned about it, Malcolm expressed
admiration for King’s commitment to helping black people, if not for his non-
violent approach. Kgositsile also claimed that Malcolm said he was sending
members of the Nation to help protect King in an upcoming march, stating that,
“If he won’t protect himself, we will.” Although I deem Kgositsile a very reliable
source, there is no evidence that King asked for or even knew about the plan, nor
have I found outside corroboration. Personal communication to the author, 1996.

57
Some members of SCLC are even today reluctant to discuss the carrying of
firearms, perhaps because such an admission might tarnish the heroically non-
violent legacy of Dr. King. See Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical
Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2004) 215 n. 42.
58
The Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles, CA began on August 11 and lasted for 6
days. The March 7, 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March was initially stopped at
the Pettus Bridge when local and state law enforcement beat and tear-gassed the
marchers. James Meredith planned a solo “March Against Fear” in June of 1966
across Mississippi but was shot soon after beginning. He survived (later to rejoin

53

the march) which members of various civil rights organizations, including SCLC
and SNCC, continued.

59
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American
Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) 61.

60
According to Stokely Carmichael/ Kwame Ture, there was never any
dissention between King and SNCC. Although their rhetoric and tactics differed,
Carmichael/Ture insists that there was both support and admiration between
them, even on the Meredith march. See Carmichael and Thelwell, Ready for
Revolution 507-519.

61
Carmichael and Thelwell 507.

62
Carmichael and Thelwell 508.

63
See, Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (New York:
Pearson Longman, 2004) 319-321.

64
Acuña 319.

65
Acuña 319-320.

66
Acuña 320-321.

67
See for example, Tomás Almaguer, Racial Faultlines: The Historical Origins
of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994); William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angles and the
Remaking of its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004);
Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas
Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); George J.
Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in
Chicano Los Angeles 1900-1945 (New York & London: Oxford University
Press, 1993).

68
See Gilbert G. Gonzalez and Raul A. Fernandez, A Century of Chicano
History: Empire, Nations, and Migration (New York: Routledge, 2003); Rodolfo
Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (New York: Pearson
Longman, 2004); Carey McWilliams Southern California: An Island on the
Land. Utah: Gibbs-Smith, 1973.

54

69
For a more in-depth discussion see Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A
History of Chicanos (New York: Longman, 2002) 319-320.
70
Lauren Araiza, “ ‘Common struggle, against a common oppression’: The
United Farm Workers and the Black Panther Party, 1986-1973.” Chicana/o-
Latina/o-African American Relations: Workshop in Comparative and
Transnational History. University of California San Diego. 6-7 June 2008.

71
See Lauren Ariaza, “ ‘Common struggle, against a common oppression’: The
United Farm Workers and the Black Panther Party, 1986-1973.”

72
Acuña 312.

73
Pulido 114. However, Gloria Anzaldúa argues that the idea of solidarity based
on race/ethnicity is deeply flawed. She states: “Yes, we have a lot of common
stuff, but it’s abig imposition, a big burden, to put on an ethnic group that they
should get their shit together and unite. White people aren’t united.” Annlouise
Keating, “Writing, Politics, and las Lesberadas: Platicando con Gloria Anzaldúa
in Chicana Leadership ed. Yolanda Flores Neimann et. al. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska, 2002. 120-143.

74
Certainly the Brown Berets were not the only group to be allied with Black
Power groups. United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez enjoyed a long,
mutually supportive relationship with the Black Panther Party. For more on this
relationship see Lauren Arazia. For a discussion of El Centro de Acción Social y
Autónomo (CASA) support of the Black Panther Party, see Pulido 173-175.

75
Pulido 92.

76
Ernesto Chávez, ¡Mi Raza Primero! (My People First): Nationalism, Identity,
and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966-1978 (Berkeley,
Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2002) 51.

77
For more about the rules governing the Black Panther Party, see Elaine Brown,
A Taste of Power : A Black Woman's Story (New York: Anchor Books, 1993).
78
Elaine Brown 155.

79
Cherríe Moraga, “Queer Aztlán.” Ed. Francisco H. Vázquez and Rodolfo D.
Torres. Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and Society (New York & Oxford:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003) 260.

80
See for example Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism
in the 1960s and 1970s; Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri

55

Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill & London:
University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow & Left:
Radical Activism in Los Angeles; Chávez, ¡Mi Raza Primero! (My People
First!): Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los
Angeles, 1966-1978.

56

Chapter Two
Citizenship and Colonial Discourse in Black Power
and Chicano Movement Writing

Issues of citizenship have always been fraught for people of color in
the United States. Immigration, naturalization and U. S. citizenship have
been understood as linear processes in which one leads directly and
uncomplicatedly to the next. However, for African Americans and
Chicano/as (and other “minorities”) these processes have not always been
so straightforward. African Americans, coming to this country in the first
instance as slaves, have had to fight for recognition as persons alongside
their struggle for full citizenship. For Chicano/as, immigration has been
complicated by the history of conquest of northern Mexico which
“created” Mexican Americans (whether the people involved wished for
such a designation or not) and by the back-and-forth border crossings
that have characterized much of Mexican American life. By looking at the
language used, we gain a better understanding of what has been at stake
for members of these groups. We can also gain insight into how each
group deployed specific frameworks as part of their overall political and

57
rhetorical strategies. In particular, we can evaluate the similarities and
differences in the use of colonial discourse by African American and
Chicano/a activists and writers.
1
Further, an examination of the rhetoric
of struggle employed by women exposes contradictions inherent in many
racially-based arguments for equality posed by many of the male leaders
of Chicano and African American organizations in the late 1960s and
1970s.

In the Beginning, There was the Word: African Americans and
the Construction of a National Subject

The discursive strategies deployed by African Americans as part of
the struggle for liberation have been bounded by the language of
oppression.
2
Blacks have always pushed language and the meanings of
important ideas/terms beyond what may have been originally meant. For
example, “all men are created equal” has been expanded by blacks (and
other marginalized groups) to apply to people most agree were not
included by the authors of the phrase.
3
However, as language is a primary
site where identity is constituted, language used to limit the possibilities
of identity must be examined alongside the language of expanding
identity. While I am primarily concerned with public identity – that is,
the defining of individual and group bodies in relation to the state – the
connections between the public identity and private identity should not be

58
underestimated.
4
Although every person has an interior, private sense of
self that self (I contend) is linked to the self that is possible in a wider,
public domain. For example, Frederick Douglass recounts deciding
within himself that he would no longer be a slave despite the physical
limitations placed on his body. Thus he demonstrated the power of the
interior, private self to overcome a public oppression (slavery). However,
this private decision required action – he escaped from slavery and
became an abolitionist. The private self had to be reconciled with the
public self.
5
Although he had decided not be enslaved (mentally) his
physical enslavement had to also end in order for his public and private
identities to be reconciled.
6

Marginalized persons often feel this two-ness, to borrow from Du
Bois.
7
While Du Bois’s construction of double-consciousness rests on the
idea of African Americans’ sense of being both part of American and not
part of America, I argue that the construction should be expanded to
include the individual’s sense of self (interior identity) and the way in
which their identity is delimited by external forces (public identity). This
articulation is not only bound by race, indeed any person may feel this
two-ness. However, I suggest that individuals oppressed due to race,
gender, class, sexual orientation or physical (dis)ability may have a
heightened experience of doubleness: who they believe themselves to be is
not necessarily who the world believes them to be (or who they ought to

59
be). Frederick Douglass, by law and by custom, was a slave and
subhuman being. However he believed himself to be a free man.
Escaping slavery ended his physical bondage but he remained (again by
law and custom) something less than a fully free man. His race meant he
was not a citizen, not an equal to the “real” citizens of his country (white
males). Freedom from bondage, then, was a false freedom. He was still
shackled by racial oppression. This has remained the status of blacks
almost 150 years after Emancipation.
Because this status is reified in law and public discourse, we must
examine the ways blacks have continued to articulate counter-hegemonic
discourses that challenge prevailing legal and social constructions. I chose
to examine these women and movements through a rhetorical lens
because the nation itself has been constructed rhetorically. If we think
about what it means to be an “American” or what “America” is we are
immediately drawn into rhetorical constructions of citizenship and
nationhood.
First, and of more import than we usually ascribe, is the idea of
“America” as finite and confined within the territorial borders of what is
actually the United States. “America” (at least to most “Americans”) does
not include Canada, Mexico, or any country in Central or South America –
although these too are in fact part of America (or the Americas). Thus,
the vast majority of what is actually America is normally excluded and the

60
term “America” is understood as synonymous with the “United States.”
This is no mere shorthand but a rhetorical imperialism, a chauvinism
perpetrated by the most politically and economically dominant nation
among many American nations. Such a construction deeply impacts the
way we view the world, making the United States the nation of two
hemispheres and relegating all others to second or third class status. The
domination and centrality of the United States is therefore normalized
and taken for granted. The imperialist projects of this nation remain
unquestioned and unrecognized under this system.
Further, within the United States borders, citizenship has been
constructed legally through language.
8
Who is or is not part of “America”
ultimately depends upon who is included and who is excluded under the
law. Although many factors influence citizenship – one’s nation of birth,
labor needs, war – and citizenship is granted (and withheld) based on
shifting rubrics and historical exigencies, the constant of the rhetorical
construction of “acceptable” citizens remains.
Many scholars have begun to examine the ways the legal
machinations of citizenship have impacted a variety of minority
populations. Mai Ngai, for example, explores citizenship issues in regard
to Asian Americans and Latinos.
9
Devon Carbado, Kimberle Crenshaw,
Cheryl Harris and others have explored the legal status of blacks in the
United States, paying close attention to issues of race, class and gender.
10

61
Nikil Pal Singh examines both the construction of the nation and black
response to what Carbado has rightly pointed out as the African American
conundrum of “inclusion/exclusion.”
11

As Singh notes, “the ideal national subject” (which by definition is
white and male) has been constituted in opposition to the subaltern.
12

Thus, as the shaping of “the boundaries of the nation has also involved
articulations of race … blacks presented the anomaly of an exclusion that
was at once foundational to and located within the polity.”
13
Singh argues
against those who would see racism (and the violence and oppression it
engenders) as an anomaly to an otherwise egalitarian national project.
Therefore, despite rhetorical articulations of the United States as
“democratic,” “free,” and “equal” what is also true is that the nation – at
its core – is also “undemocratic,” “unfree,” and “unequal” for many of the
people who make up the nation. Race, then, operates as a central theme
for both white and black national identities.
14

Even as the government deprived slaves of citizenship status, it did
not completely exclude slaves from inclusion in the nation. From 1620 to
1865 slavery as an institution was integral to the workings of the nation.
The bodies of slaves occupied part of the national imagination, as well as
social and political spheres.
15
Slaves, of course, did not occupy a space as
actors – thus Singh’s “exclusion” – but as bodies acted upon, contained
and maintained within a specified sphere. Insofar as laws had to be

62
enacted to regulate the trade in black bodies, African Americans were part
of the polity. In regulating everything from how to count blacks for
purposes of state representation to prohibitions against slave literacy to
the Fugitive Slave Act, the United States government (federal, state and
local branches) included this non-citizen group in the national polity.
Indeed, creation of the black “Other,” with the simultaneous creation of
the white “norm,” both gave blacks an American identity and denied them
American citizenship.
16

The modern civil rights movement stands as one of the most well-
known epochs of black struggle against exclusion and the negative
implications of being “Other” in United States society. Martin Luther
King’s famous rearticulation of Jefferson’s “all men are created equal”
credo has often been cited as a primary example of how African
Americans have reinterpreted the language of U. S. nationalism to include
those who have traditionally been excluded.
17
Indeed, the civil rights
movement of the King era was instrumental in ending de jure segregation
in many areas of public life, particularly in the southern states. As the
struggle moved to northern urban areas, however, the rhetorical
strategies shifted.
18
The marches, sit-ins and non-violent philosophy that
characterized much of the southern civil rights movement gave way to
other strategies that were (and are) characterized as more “militant.”
19

Black Power rhetorical strategies drew on a number of sources in order to

63
argue for full citizenship for African Americans. United States slavery
served as both an historical and metaphoric touchstone for blacks. The
history of enslavement and the legacy of inequality, poverty and brutality
that it produced had to be redressed by any organization truly interested
in full liberation of African Americans. Thus, the Black Panther Party’s
10-Point Plan called for (among other things) decent housing,
employment, education and black control of black communities.
20
But
slavery also served in a more metaphoric sense, as a site of commonality
and of collective action.
By invoking slavery, black leaders could close the gap between
diverse black populations – all (or nearly all) black people had a history of
slavery in their family backgrounds.
21
For example, arguments based on
the differences between “house” and “field” slaves resonated with many
black audiences.
22
House slaves were vilified, both for their supposed
loyalty to their white masters and for their light skin, which was assumed
to cause house slaves to feel superior to the darker field slaves. However,
the reality of the sexual exploitation that created light-skinned blacks was
also a reminder for some of who the enemy really was. For example, red-
headed Malcolm X often spoke of the rape that resulted in his own mixed-
race ancestry. He thus used his own body as proof of the inhumanity of
whites and a visual reminder of what the liberation struggle was truly
about.
23
This house/field slave dichotomy had mixed results. On the one

64
hand, it united all blacks in an indictment of slavery as an institution and
of whites as perpetrators of a great crime. On the other hand, the
dichotomy also split the black community – pitting darker skinned blacks
against lighter-skinned blacks. Stereotypes were perpetuated, including
the idea that mixed-race blacks were not to be trusted and, in fact, were
not really “black.”
24

Slavery was used in other ways as well. For Eldridge Cleaver
slavery was part and parcel of the history of blacks in America.
“Memories of the Boston Tea Party and the slave revolts sustained us in
our faith. That hard core beauty of the American dream was real, but
buried. We had to bring it up for air, to blow away the lies and the
bloodstained history that had hidden it.”
25
Here again we hear echoes of
Du Bois as Cleaver invokes the American Dream, but one that includes
both the fighters of the American Revolution and participants in slave
revolts. Thus, any patriotic fervor or historical discussion must include
both sides of the double-ness – freedom and slavery were the legacy left
to blacks, and perhaps to all Americans.
That slavery should play such a prominent role should not be
surprising. As the defining epoch in black history, it has continued to
resonate through the generations.
26
Ron Karenga, founder of cultural
nationalist Us Organization, has written extensively on African American
rhetorical strategies and notes that:

65
[W]hile the stated theme of a given speech may be white
racism, Black pride, freedom, crime, poverty, desegregation,
poor housing conditions and voting rights, the underlying
issue is always the slavery experience.
27

If Karenga is correct then the arguments advanced by both men and
women in the Black Power and Black Arts movements should be read
within the context of the slave experience.
A short poem by Michael Harper illustrates the resonance of the
slave experience in the consciousness of many blacks involved in the
Black Arts Movement:
Those four black girls blown up
in that Alabama church
remind me of five hundred
middle passage blacks,
in a net, under water,
so redcoats wouldn’t find them.
Can’t find what you can’t see
can you?
28

For Harper, a contemporary event – “Those four black girls blown up / in
that Alabama church” – is part of a longer history of murder at the hands
of whites.
29
The image of slaves being put in nets under Charleston
Harbor to escape detection by the British is horrific.
30
Further, the image
turns our normal idea of the American Revolution on end. We are
accustomed to viewing the colonists as heroic figures, refusing to bow to

66
the tyranny of the British. In this case, however, the colonists exhibit
extreme inhumanity – preferring to drown hundreds of African men,
women and children than allow the British to find (and probably liberate)
them. The last lines – “Can’t find what you can’t see / can you?” – may
have more than one meaning. On the surface, it is a reference to the
British not seeing the drowned slaves. But it may also signify differently
for a black audience that was just beginning to learn more about its
history. Education that included the true history of black people was one
of the issues pressed by members of the Black Power / Black Arts
movement.
31
The pressure brought by blacks during this era resulted in
the creation of Black Studies programs at American colleges and
universities that are still in existence today.
32
Harper, then, might be also
commenting upon the fact that few blacks reading his poem had probably
heard of the event in Charleston during the Revolution. Many might not
know very much about black involvement in the American Revolution at
all. Thus, those who don’t “see” are not just the British, but also his black
audience – an audience that was educated in U. S. schools that have
notoriously neglected the history of black people (and other non-whites).
And if his black audience can’t see/ find their own history, how are they to
build a future? In essence, this was the argument used by proponents of
Black Studies programs.

67
Don L. Lee (later, Haki Madhabuti) is even more overtly critical in
his poem “The Primitive”:
taken from the
shores of Mother Africa
the savages they thought
we were –
they being the real savages.
to save us. (from what?)
our happiness, our love, each other?
their bible for
our land. (introduction to economics)
christianized us.
raped our minds with:
T.V. & straight hair,
Reader’s Digest & bleaching creams,
. . .
reefers & napalm,
european history & promises.
. . .
this weapon called
civilization –
they brought us here –

68
to drive us mad.
(like them)
33

This is poem of colonization. For Lee, the true home of black people is
“Mother Africa,” from which Africans were stolen and brought to the New
World. While we may be critical of Lee’s idealization of Africa, history has
proven that life for those taken across the Atlantic was considerably worse
than whatever they may have experienced in the homeland. Christianity
and the Bible were insufficient recompense for what was lost. Beyond a
loss of a homeland, blacks also lost their own minds. That is, they lost an
understanding of who they were separately from whites. In essence,
“Africans” became “black” during this process and learned to hate
themselves.
34
Hence, Lee’s references to straight hair and bleaching
creams. One can easily understand how the works of Franz Fanon would
resonate with a poet like Lee.
35
Fanon’s assertion that the colonization of
land results in the colonization of minds is precisely what Lee is
articulating in this poem. The results are disastrous – drug addiction
(“reefer”) and fighting unjust wars in Southeast Asia (“napalm”). Blacks
were given “european history” and, it is implied, lost their own. The
“promises” (of equality) have gone unfulfilled. “Civilization” is thus a
“weapon” wielded against Africans. Like many black writers before him,
Lee uses the inhumanity of slavery to prove the inhumanity of whites.
Rather than blacks being “savages,” the whites who enslaved and continue

69
to oppress them are the true savages. Finally, exposure to and
internalization of the pathology of whites has created pathology within
blacks – “they brought us here – / to drive us mad. / (like them).”
In “The True Import of Present Dialogue: Black vs. Negro,” Nikki
Giovanni takes up the issue of the colonized mind and links it to direct
action aimed at decolonizing both mind and body. As with others in the
Black Power/Black Arts Movement, she makes a crucial distinction
between being “Black” versus being a “Negro.” The term “Negro” was
widely used to denote African Americans who were traditionally
assimilationist, in the Martin Luther King/ Civil Rights Movement vein.
“Black,” on the other hand, signaled progressive and “militant” African
Americans, such as those in the Black Panther Party. Giovanni’s poem is
a vindictive against “Negroes” who call themselves “Black” but haven’t the
courage to back up their assertion. She begins boldly:
Nigger
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can a nigger kill a honkie
Can a nigger kill the Man
Can you kill nigger
Huh? nigger can you
kill
36

70
These first lines are more complex than they first appear. She begins with
what is arguably the worst racial epithet in the English language – and
she directs it at members of her own community. The weight of that word
therefore causes an immediate split between her (as a member of the
“black” community) and the person she is addressing (who is suspected to
not be a true black person). In fact, despite the title of the poem she never
mentions the word “Negro,” forcing her readers to understand that
“Negro” and “nigger” are synonyms. This is a bold move, as the term
“Negro” was acceptable and widely used, while “nigger” has always
contained hatred and violence and was widely shunned.
37
It must also be
acknowledged that such language – which to many is profane – being
used in a poem (“high art”) is one of the hallmarks of the Black Arts
Movement. Conversational vernacular speech was one of the goals of
Black Arts Movement poetry and here Giovanni is upholding that tenet
completely.
She continues by using two derogatory terms for whites, “honkie”
and “the Man,” signaling that she has little respect for them just as she
doesn’t respect “niggers.”
38
She repeatedly asks if “a nigger” can kill. The
reader at first understands that she is asking if “a nigger” can kill a white
person but her line breaks suggest another interpretation. She writes,
“Can you kill nigger/Huh? nigger can you/ kill” in which the person being
killed is suddenly “a nigger.” “Can you kill nigger” can be read as “can you

71
kill that being which we call a nigger?” And “Huh? nigger can you/kill”
may be read as an inversion of the same question: “that being called
nigger, can you kill it?” The rest of the poem bears out this reading. She
continues:
Can you kill the nigger
in you
Can you make your nigger mind
die
Can you kill your nigger mind
It is clear in these lines that Giovanni is admonishing the “nigger”
(perhaps even her reader?) to throw off their colonized minds, to kill that
within them that has been brainwashed by white America. The stakes for
not doing so are incredibly high:
We kill in Viet Nam
for them
We kill for UN & NATO & SEATO & US
And everywhere for all alphabet but
BLACK
Black people are sent to fight and die in wars around the world under the
banner of the American flag and as U.S. citizens. Yet, full equality at
home has not been achieved. Here, Giovanni asserts an argument that is
not new. Black people have fought in every war in which the U.S. has

72
been involved, including the American Revolution. Always, the hope has
been that freedom would be the prize won for fighting. Giovanni, having
grown up during the years following World War II, would have been
aware of the hopes of the “Double-V” campaign, in which black soldiers
and citizens hoped that a victory for the Allies abroad would result in a
victory over oppression at home. Not only did the men go fight abroad
but many black women joined the workforce to support the war industry,
working in defense plants and doing many of the jobs vacated by men
who were off at war. Despite the patriotism demonstrated by millions of
blacks at the time, the end of the war did not bring the desired relief from
violence and discrimination at home. The failures of this campaign did
much to spur the modern civil rights movement, out of which Giovanni
came.
39
She asserts here that it is now time for black people to stop
fighting for whites and start fighting against them, for blacks:
Can we learn to kill WHITE for BLACK
Learn to kill niggers
Learn to be Black men
Here she reiterates the need for black people to recognize the true enemy
– the whites who oppress them. Yet it also necessary for black people to
kill the “niggers” within themselves, to destroy the thinking and behavior
that keeps them subservient to whites. It is arguable whether Giovanni
means to “kill” literally. Certainly, there’s an aspect of metaphorical

73
killing involved in ending the colonized thinking of “niggers.” Still, given
the violent era in which the poem was written and the murder of black
people (particularly black activists) it is entirely possible that she was
advocated the literal killing of whites and “niggers” who stood in the way
of black liberation. In order for black people to become “Black men” the
white power structure and the blacks who help uphold it must be
destroyed one way or another.
This poem does not differ substantially from those written by male
members of the Black Arts Movement. Instead, Giovanni seems to
subsume a gender identity in favor of racial solidarity. Perhaps part of the
reason is that the poem is mean to incite “niggers” to become “black” and
a discussion of gender differences would complicate this project in ways
Giovanni thought might be divisive. It is also possible that her use of
“men” should be read in the more general “human” sense of the word. We
should not assume that gender differences or patriarchy were not of
interest to her or that she didn’t recognize disparities between the lives of
black men and women. Indeed, in other poems her awareness is evident.
Instead, we should read this poem for what it is – an indictment of
colonization of black people (male and female) by whites and an
admonishment to “niggers” to throw off their oppression and join the
black struggle.

74

To Conquer the Conquerors: Nation-Building and Chicano/a’s
Shifting Identities

If we understand African American rhetoric as containing an
undercurrent based on a history of slavery, we can also understand
Chicano rhetorical strategies as containing the undercurrent of conquest.
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo almost instantly created “Mexican
Americans” yet the meaning of this new term was (and continues to be) in
dispute. For members of the Chicano Movement, the 1848 treaty became
a rallying point. What it meant to be “Mexican American,” the cultural
legacies of Mexico and the relationship between people of Mexican
descent in the U.S. to Mexico were all issues that had to addressed. At the
heart of these discussions was the border – a physical barrier between
people of Mexican descent from land that they still had ties to, a space
that many crossed and re-crossed throughout their lives, and a
metaphoric space of between-ness that mirrored the liminal status of
people of Mexican descent in the U.S.

75
We have seen some of the ways that African Americans have
experienced inclusion/exclusion in the U.S. social and political spheres.
People of Mexican descent have faced inclusion/exclusion in different but
related ways. Rather than removing or exterminating the native
population, the Anglos in the southwest devised a way to live with
Mexicans yet still maintain white supremacy. Many factors contributed to
the way Anglos and Mexicans interacted in the southwest: the relatively
few Anglos who entered the area prior to the middle of the nineteenth
century; the mestizo heritage of Mexican people which helped to
complicate the black / white binary prevalent in other parts of the U.S.;
the Spanish (and thus European) heritage of Mexicans; and the presence
of a wealthy, landowning ranchero class who relied on peon labor and was
capable of resisting domination by Anglos in some circumstances.
Furthermore, the system of Spanish racism operating in the southwest
was familiar to the Anglos in many respects – the wealthy tended to be
lighter skinned, the peons tended to be darker. A phenotypically-driven
racism was already part of the U.S. racial landscape. However, Mexican
racism was complicated by the ability of darker people to “whiten” as they
grew wealthy – a possibility foreclosed by the U.S. system of racial
oppression.
Stephen J. Pitti states that “[i]n the mid-nineteenth century it
became the Anglo American community’s fortune, born of force, to place

76
itself squarely atop this [Spanish] pre-existing, nascent hierarchy of race.
Americans didn’t force their way up a ladder so much as they grafted a
new top rung to a pre-existing one.”
40
But this grafting was not
uncomplicated. As Tomás Almaguer explains:
Spanish colonization had of the Southwest had conferred
upon Mexicans a “white” racial status, Christian ancestry, a
romance language, European somatic features and a
formidable ruling elite that contested “Yankee”
depredations. Less cultural distance existed between
European-American immigrants and “half civilized”
Mexicans than between whites and other racialized, non-
European ethnic groups.
41

In this passage, Almaguer not only alludes to the differences
between black and Mexican racialization but also between black, Mexican
and Asian (particularly Chinese and Japanese) racialization in California.
Almaguer’s work forces us to consider the impossibility of understanding
the racial landscape of California by looking through the lens of racism
against other groups, including African Americans.
California, although admitted into the Union as a free state, was
hostile to the immigration of blacks into the state. Key to understanding
the hostility to black immigration is the concept of “free labor.” Linked to
the ideology of Manifest Destiny, free labor was part of the system of
white supremacy operating throughout the nation. The west was
fashioned as a wide, open territory, where whites from other parts of the
nation could get cheap (or free) land and improve their economic
circumstances. Anglo settlers recognized that the presence of blacks –

77
especially black workers – meant competition for white workers. As an
organizing economic principle, free labor ideology posited that “social
mobility and economic independence” were only possible if “nonwhite
populations and the degrading labor systems associated with them” were
not present.
42
According to Almaguer, free labor was not only directed
against blacks but also other groups, including Mexicans and Asians.
California, therefore, provides a site to examine the ways in which
different racialized groups were caught in the web of white supremacy.
Mexicans experienced this web differently from blacks. The 1848
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which annexed Mexico’s northern
territories to the U.S., created an “instant” immigrant population.
Annexation was not a foregone conclusion at the beginning of the U.S.
war with Mexico. Many white Americans were wary of incorporating a
non-white “mongrel” people into their nation. As Senator John C.
Calhoun stated: “We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union
any but the Caucasian race – the free white race.”
43
Neil Foley points out
that “the new border between Mexico and the United States was drawn in
such a way as to take as much land and as few Mexicans as possible.”
44

But the Treaty, in conjunction with the Gadsen Purchase (1853), did
redraw national boundaries and bring thousands of Mexicans and Indians
within the borders of the U.S. Some of these Mexicans were landed elites;
far more of them were poor peasants. Reaction to these newly created

78
“Mexican Americans” varied. Some elites, for example, were able to hold
onto their land for a time. Some married into Anglo families. The
majority lost their land and quickly moved down the socio-economic
ladder. With the end of the Civil War, more Anglos moved westward.
Many of them came from the U.S. south and brought with them notions of
racial hierarchies developed during slavery. In the southwest, the
Mexican, Indian and Asian populations forced these former southerners
to reconfigure (although not abandon) the position of racialized Others.
One consequence was the implementation of Jim Crow legislation across
the southwest that was aimed at controlling Mexicans as it had previously
been used against blacks. The continuing discrimination against Mexican
Americans in the 20
th
century was the basis for what would become the
Chicano Movement.
45
The centrality of land and labor in the Chicano
Movement can be directly traced back to these early moments of conquest
and contested incorporation into the United States economy and body
politic. Although I am focused mainly on California as a site
of Mexican American struggle, the experiences of people of Mexican
descent in other parts of the U.S. are worth mentioning.
46

Neil Foley provides an interesting and useful comparison with the
racialization of Mexicans California. In the central Texas area examined
by Foley, Mexicans, blacks and poor whites were all enmeshed in an
agricultural system that depended upon their labor. The “agricultural

79
ladder” allowed for movement either up or down, though Foley explains
that poor whites were not much more likely than Mexicans or blacks to be
able to take advantage of the upward mobility ostensibly provided by the
“ladder.” What differentiated whites from non-whites was tenant farming
versus sharecropping. As tenant farmers, whites held a slightly better
position. Tenant farmers owned their tools and animals, owned the crop
they produced, and earned more by renting on “thirds” or “fourths.”
47

Blacks and Mexicans, on the other hand, were usually sharecroppers.
They owned nothing and worked for wages, normally half the profit of the
cotton crop. Sharecroppers in Texas, like those in the south, were
routinely exploited and cheated out of their earnings. They had to rely on
their employers to give them what they were rightfully due at the end of
each season, a practice made more complicated by the practice of forcing
sharecroppers to purchase all goods from stores run by the landowner
using credit that almost always resulted in the sharecropper “owing” the
planter and having his wage reduced or withheld each year.
What differentiated sharecropping in Texas from most of the south
was the presence of Mexican sharecroppers. Mexicans complicated the
racial hierarchy normally associated with this type of labor. Foley notes
that after the turn of the century, when small farms were replaced by
agribusiness and blacks began to move into more urban areas, Mexicans
became the preferred sharecroppers in Texas. Racist beliefs fueled an

80
already exploitative system. A 1915 report found that “negroes are
considered more amenable to supervision than whites, and Mexicans are
more tractable than either negroes or whites.”
48
A similar sentiment was
expressed in California. In A Century of Chicano History: Empire,
Nations, and Migration, Gilbert Gonzalez and Raul Fernandez consider
Mexican and Mexican American history from within an economic and
labor framework.
The enormous rise of the citrus industry in California between
1890 and 1960 depended heavily on Mexican labor. Gonzalez and
Fernandez write that “[e]ventually Mexican workers supplanted the
Japanese, who had monopolized the workforce at the turn of the century
and had become a liability by organizing unionlike associations.”
49
In
California during this time period, African Americans were not central to
one of the most important industries in the state. Unlike the U.S. south,
California agriculture did not depend on black workers, in part because of
their relatively low population in the state as a whole. However, Mexican
workers were valued in California, as in Texas, at least in part because of
assumptions about Mexicans as a race. F. Arturo Rosales quotes a fruit
grower who said:
We want the Mexican because we can treat them as we
cannot treat any other living man . . . We can control them
by keeping them at night behind bolted gates, within a
stockade eight feet high, surrounded by barbed wire. . . . We
can make them work under armed guards in the fields.
50

81
The image of Mexican workers’ conditions recalls a combination of the
penal system and slavery. In addition, Rosales notes that enganchistas
(contractors) stole a part of the Mexicans’ pay (one out of every three
dollars) and withheld a portion in order to ensure that they would not
leave before the end of the season.
51
Mexican citrus workers in California
were therefore in a similar situation as the Mexican cotton sharecroppers
in Texas as described by Foley. Given this history, it is not surprising that
land and labor issues have been central to much Mexican American
activism.
The history of people of Mexican descent in California is not simply
a tale of exploitation and discrimination. Mexicans have resisted Anglo
attempts to subjugate them. The landed elite of the nineteenth century
held onto their land and their power as best they could. Mexicans in
America have always maintained ties to Mexico, often crossing and re-
crossing the border first to take advantage of opportunities and then to
escape persecution in the U.S. For example, during the 1910 Mexican
Revolution hundreds of thousands of Mexicans fleeing the conflict settle
in the southwest. However, as Rodolfo Acuña explains, Mexicans in the
U.S. during this period were believed to be Pancho Villa sympathizers.
The situation was exacerbated by the U.S. entry into World War I and the
rising belief that Mexicans in the U.S. were also sympathetic to Germany.
Both of these episodes seem to be evidence of tension in regard to

82
Mexican Americans relationship to the state (i.e. the U.S. government and
society). While Mexican Americans may have been granted citizenship, it
seems as though there is always a lingering doubt as to the true patriotic
sympathies of Mexicans in the U.S.
52
Such a connection between
Mexicans and Germany was used to break up Mexican workers’ strikes
and harass Mexican immigrants. Los Angeles became a site of particular
tension with the “Los Angeles County supervisors requesting federal help
to deport cholos likely to become public charges.”
53
As a result of actions
like this and other developments, many Mexicans left Los Angeles and
returned to Mexico. Acuña explains that on “May 18, 1917, Congress
passed draft laws; and Mexicans were reluctant to be conscripted into a
foreign army. The cost of living had increased in the United States, while
conditions had improved in Mexico. The Mexican government, fearing
the effects of the exodus of so many productive workers, campaigned to
entice them back. By the end of June, nearly 10,000 Mexicans had left for
Mexico.”
54

As economic opportunities increase in the U.S., Mexicans again
crossed the border. This back and forth movement has characterized
much of Mexican immigration in the U.S. This movement has been
influenced by Mexican as well as U.S. state-sponsored programs such as
the 1917 exodus from Los Angeles mentioned above. A number of
deportations have occurred, such as after the stock market crash in 1929

83
when “Mexicans were unwanted, and U.S. authorities shipped an
estimated 1 million of them back to Mexico. A hysterical public did not
differentiate between Mexican Americans, who were citizens, and the
Mexican born.”
55
Deportations have been used to remove Mexican-origin
workers from jobs needed by “real” Americans, particularly during times
of economic crisis. They have also been used as retaliation against
Mexican-origin workers who attempted to organize unions.
One of the reasons Mexican labor was valued by California citrus
growers was because, unlike the Japanese, it was believed that Mexicans
“did not organize troublesome labor unions, and it was held that
[Mexicans were] not educated to the level of unionism.”
56
By the 1930s,
when Mexicans did begin to organize unions, deportation was used to
punish those who took part in such activities. The U.S. also has a long
history of recruiting Mexican labor. One of the most well-known labor
program, the Bracero Program (1942 – 1964), was an agreement between
the Mexican and U.S. governments aimed at augmenting the U.S. labor
force during World War II. A recession in 1958 and opposition from the
AFL-CIO finally ended the program in the mid-1960s.
57

Mexicans in the U.S. have in a sense often been seen by the
dominant society as “foreigners” and perhaps, more precisely, “foreign
laborers.” This attitude allows for deportations that don’t differentiate
between U.S.-born and Mexico-born people and for the ever-changing

84
policies towards Mexican immigration that are so closely tied to the
economic health of the nation. For this reason, it is useful to think of
Mexican-origin struggles for citizenship as, at least in part, a condition of
“alien citizenship.” According to Mae Ngai, alien citizenship refers to
“persons who are American citizens by virtue of their birth in the United
States but who are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of
American culture and, at times, by the state.”
58
The term is applicable to
Mexican Americans who have (at times) not only been seen as a racialized
Other in the U.S., but also distinctly foreign.
59
This term can be applied to
Mexican Americans throughout the southwest.
60
Further, like African
Americans, the designation of Mexican Americans as “Other” in the U.S.
racial landscape, has at once included them within the nation yet
excluded them in fundamental ways.
Yet if we apply Ngai’s “alien citizenship” and Carbado’s “racial
naturalization” to Mexican Americans we must acknowledge that while it
is tempting to tie alien citizenship to race, the idea is actually far more
complicated. Although race undoubtedly plays an important role – both
Asian Americans and people of Mexican descent can appear
phenotypically non-white – race alone does not explain alien citizenship.
Some Mexican Americans, prior to the Chicano Movement had somewhat
successfully argued to be included in the U.S. census as “white.”
61
Unlike
African Americans, then, “race” was not (arguably) the reason for

85
discrimination against people of Mexican descent. Instead, “race” is
compounded by what Singh has termed the “ideal national subject” and
by U.S. policies towards immigrants from places other than Western
Europe. As Ngai notes:
Particularly in the decades since World War II, migration to
the United States has been the product of specific economic,
colonial, political, military, and/or ideological ties between
the United States and other countries (Mexico, South Korea,
Cuba, the Philippines, El Salvador, to name a few) as well as
of war (Vietnam). Saskia Sassen reminds us that migration
is an “embedded,” “temporally and spatially bounded”
process that crosses these kinds of “bridges” between
sending and receiving nations. It is not, as conventional
thinking suggests, a unidirectional phenomenon, in which
the hapless poor of the world clamor at the gates of
putatively disinterested wealthier nations.
62

This is certainly the case for people of Mexican descent in the United
States, who were at first made citizens through an act of war and have
ever since maintained ties to both sides of the U.S. – Mexico border.
Ian Haney Lopez suggests that understanding the role of “race” in
the Chicano Movement is critical and that an examination of African
American liberation struggles is useful in framing the Chicano Movement:
Current movement theorists posit that group identity exists
in a dialectical relationship with social activism, with
reconceptualizations of identity serving as spurs to
insurgency, and in turn, with mobilization contributing to
the development of new collective identities. . . the Mexican
community’s turn to race as a basis of group identity cannot
be understood except by reference to the African-American
struggle for social and political equality as an initiator
movement.
63

86
Setting the tone for the Chicano Movement was El Plan Espiritual de
Aztlán, which read in part:
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its
proud historical heritage but also of the brutal "gringo"
invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and
civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came
our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and
consecrating the determination of our people of the sun,
declare that the call of our blood is our power, our
responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.

We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which
are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our
brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant
the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to
the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious
frontiers on the bronze continent.

Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a
people whose time has come and who struggles against the
foreigner "gabacho" who exploits our riches and destroys
our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in
the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation.
We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the
world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in
the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free
pueblos, we are Aztlán.
64

The masculinist rhetoric of El Plan is self-evident. Although it is an
important aspect of the Chicano Movement, here I wish to focus on the
nationalist language. First, El Plan makes a clear racial distinction
between Chicanos and “gringos.” “gringos” are the Anglo invaders of the
Chicano peoples’ homeland, denoted as Aztlán. Just as African American
questioned white “civilization,” El Plan asserts that it was Chicanos – not
whites – who civilized the territories now included in the U.S. southwest.

87
This language suggests that while Chicanos are asserting a racial minority
status as a basis of community and unity, that status does not carry with it
the stigma of racial inferiority.
In highly nationalist language, El Plan declares that Chicanos are
“free” and “sovereign” and not bound by the imperialist and racist
predations of Anglo settlers. Recalling some arguments by African
Americans, El Plan suggests that the land in question is theirs not just by
birthright but because it has been the labor of Chicanos that has enriched
the land and made it profitable and fit for human habitation.
65
Further,
Anglo encroachment has destroyed Chicano culture (which is posited as
very different from Anglo-American culture). Thus, El Plan ends with a
declaration of separatism, in the hopes of reclaiming and reconstituting a
healthy, “bronze” nation.
The poetry that grows out of this movement reflects the new racial
consciousness growing among Chicano/as. Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’s “I
am Joaquín/ Yo Soy Joaquín” (1967) is perhaps the most noted and
earliest example of this developing consciousness:
and still
I am the campesino
I am the fat political coyote
I,
of the same name,

88
Joaquín.
In a country that has wiped out
all my history,
stifled all my pride.
In a country that has placed a
different weight of indignity upon
my
age
old
burdened back.
Inferiority
is the new load . . .
66

Although, as Ian Haney Lopez notes, “I am Joaquín/ Yo Soy Joaquín”
does not evince the “racial conception of Chicano identity” that would
develop later, Gonzales does clearly present the issues of Chicanos in
relation to the U.S. state.
67
Despite the long history he presents in the
poem, the present for Chicanos is bounded by U.S. imperialism and
racism. By linking the present moment with the history of struggle of
Mexican people against tyranny (at the hands of the Spanish, for
example), Gonzales ultimately presents a future of possibility. This
moment, then, is but one episode that will pass – though not without
struggle:

89

La Raza!
Mejicano!
Español!
Latino!
Hispano!
Chicano!
or whatever I call myself,
I look the same
I feel the same
I cry
and
Sing the same

I am the masses of my people and
I refuse to be absorbed.
I am Joaquín
The odds are great
but my spirit is strong
My faith is unbreakable
My blood is pure
I am Aztec Prince and Christian Christ

90
I SHALL ENDURE!
I WILL ENDURE!
These final lines link the present struggle with all those that have gone
before. Gonzales links the character of Joaquín to “the masses of my
people” but also retains his singular identity: “I refuse to be absorbed.”
Indeed, “I refuse to be absorbed” can be read both as Joaquín’s personal
identity within the Chicano community as an individual but also as a
declaration that Joaquín, as a representative of all Chicanos, will not be
absorbed in the larger Anglo American identity. He is both “Aztec Prince”
and “Christian Christ” – both indigenous and Spanish, colonized and
colonizer.
Ana Castillo’s “Our Tongue was Nahuatl” takes on a similar theme
but in a very different way. Her poem begins softly, as a love poem:
You.
We have never met
yet
we know each other
well.
i recognized
your high
set
cheekbones,

91
slightly rounded
nose,
the deep brown of your hardened
face, soft
full lips.
68

The words, spoken to a stranger, nonetheless full of tenderness. Only the
“flashback memories” that the encounter engenders in the speaker breaks
the mood. Suddenly, the speaker (and the reader of the poem) is
transported to a time before the conquest of Mexico. In this pre-Spanish
and pre-Anglo era there were “sky topped mountains,/ god-suns, wind-
swept rains;/ oceanic deities/ naked children running/ in the humid air.”
The land and its people was peaceful. But then, the idyll was broken by:
White foreign strangers
riding high
on four-legged
creatures;
that made us bow to them.
In our ignorance of the unknown
they made us bow.
Castillo’s use of “White foreign strangers” triply indicates an invasion by
outsiders. We have already learned that the people of this land are “deep
brown,” thus reference to whiteness is a clear indication that the ones she

92
is writing about are not of that land. “Foreign” and “stranger” both also
indicate an outsider. The doubling of what are essentially synonyms
reinforces the shock of what is to follow and immediately signals that the
interlopers are not visitor but invaders. Castillo then refuses call horses
by name, preferring to call them what they may be called by someone who
had never seen a horse – “four-legged/ creatures.” The ignorance of
knowing the name for a horse in compounded by the ignorance of the
people in not recognizing the danger presented by the invaders. Instead,
they “bow” and do not drive the “white foreign strangers” out of their
land. This forced subservience results in a loss not only of culture (“and
nothing anymore/ was our own”) but even of the color of their skin, which
became “the color of caramel.” It is not clear whether Castillo means this
metaphorically or if she is alluding to the literal lightening of skin through
miscegenation.
The final stanzas bring us back to the present and to the legacy of
conquest:
Yet we bowed,
as we do now –

On buses
going to factories
where “No Help Wanted” signs

93
laugh in our faces,
stare at our hungry eyes.

Yet we bow . . .
WE BOW!
It was a time

much different
than now.
Although the idyllic, pastoral scene presented in the flashback portion of
the poem contrasts sharply with the modern, urban industrial scene
presented here, the fact that the people still “bow” refutes the notion that
“It was a time/ much different/ than now.” Perhaps the foreigners of the
first part of the poem were Spanish and perhaps they were conquerors of
a sovereign land. Perhaps the land in the second part of the poem belongs
not to Spanish but Anglo people and it is now their sovereign land
(regardless of how it was acquired). Yet, the result is the same – bowing
indigenous Mexican people, stripped of their culture and even of a way to
make enough money to survive.
The poem is not without hope, however. The readers of the poem
have a choice – either accept the status quo and continue to bow, or fight
for change. They can become like Joaquín and “refuse to be absorbed.”

94
Castillo may in fact be referencing the shift from Mexican American
assimilationist politics to the more militant Chicano Movement era in her
final lines. “Now” is the time to stop bowing and to reclaim Chicano
history and culture. Certainly, her invocation of “Nahuatl” – an Aztec
language – is a signal that all has not been forever lost. The process of
relearning and rebuilding a Chicano culture despite conquest and
subjugation is the project that must be done now.
Although there are many areas in which African American women
and Chicanas differed from their male counterparts, it is misleading to
think of them as always in opposition. To do so would imply that there
are in fact two movements within both the Black Power/Black Arts and
Chicano movements. In the area of citizenship and colonization, the
women and the men were actually in much more agreement than
disagreement, at least in the poetry that they produced. By examining
how both groups responded to U.S. rhetorical constructions of the nation
and national subjects, we gain insight into how African Americans and
Chicanos sought to redefine their groups and their place within the
national framework.

95
Chapter Two Endnotes

1
For the African American and Chicano/a writers in this study, activism was an
integral part of their writing. Indeed, the two projects (writing and activism)
were inseparable.

2
This is also true of other groups who have struggled for full inclusion in the
nation. However, since the very earliest abolitionists, African Americans have
publicly challenged many constructions of citizenship and even what it means to
be human. These challenges have been grounded in and bounded by ideas
already in place. For example, as Christianity was used as a justification of
slavery, blacks used Christianity as a basis to argue for emancipation. See, for
example, Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave 1845. Ed. Houston Baker (New York: Penguin, 1982); David
Walker, Appeal: To the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in particular, and
very expressly, to those of the United States of America 1829. Ed. Sean Wilentz
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1995).

3
The Founding Fathers most likely could not have conceived of this phrase being
deployed by groups such as blacks, women, Latino/as, Native or Asian
Americans. See Eric Black, Our Constitution: The Myth that Binds Us (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1988).

4
This is not the only definition of “public identity.” Scholars such as Bryant
Keith Alexander, Judith Butler and others have interrogated the “performance” of
gender, race, etc. by individuals. The performance of these aspects of identity
are often “public” in nature. For the purposes of this dissertation I am most
interested with a public identity “performed” in relation to the state as this was
the primary focus for the liberation struggles of the organizations discussed here.

5
It may be argued that the public/private divide requires citizenship to perform
however I would disagree. As the example of Douglass demonstrates, both
public and private identities can be (and have been) constructed regardless of the
subject’s citizenship status. Devon Carbado’s “Racial Naturalization” upholds
this argument by demonstrating that inclusion in the state (via racialization)
happens both with and without formal citizenship. Thus, as with the case of
Douglass, a body constructed as “black” by the public is thereby included into
the national racial landscape despite the fact that the private identity of the
subject may be at odds with this construction.

6
See Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave 1845 Ed. Houston Baker (New York: Penguin, 1982) 111-113.

96

7
See W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin Books,
1989) for his discussion of double consciousness.

8
This is not the only way that citizenship is constructed. Violence has also been
used to police the borders of citizenship – lynching and other forms of terror
directed at non-whites is a primary example. This dissertation is primarily
concerned with rhetorical constructions of citizenship as the focus on the women
writers centers their rhetorical challenges to such constructions. Certainly,
however, contained within their critiques are challeneges to violence (both by
whites and by males in their own groups).

9
Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern
America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

10
Devon Carbado, “Racial Naturalization.” American Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3
(September 2005): 633-658; Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination
Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Anti-Racist Politics.” Ed. D. K. Weisberg
Feminist Legal Theory. (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989) 57-81; Crenshaw,
Kimberle. “Race, Reform and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation
in Antidiscrimination Law”, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 101, No. 7 (May, 1988):
1331-1387.

11
Devon Carbado, “Racial Naturalization.” American Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3
(September 2005): 633-658.

12
Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country (MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)
21.

13
Singh 21-22.

14
Ian F. Haney-Lopez, “Protest, Repression, and Race: Legal Violence and the
Chicano Movement.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 150, No. 1
(Nov., 2001): 214.

15
See Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary
Imagination (New York; Random House, 1993). Also, the 3/5 clause of the
United States Constitution.

16
See Devon Carbado “Racial Naturalization.”

97

17
Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream” Eds. James L. Golden and Richard D.
Reike, The Rhetoric of Black Americans (Columbus: Charles E. Merrill
Publishing Co., 1971).

18
“Rhetorical strategies” should be understood to include not just written and
spoken language but also strategies and tactics such as clothing, hairstyles, the
carrying of weapons, etc.

19
I would argue that the term “militant” is misused in this context. A black
student sitting at a lunch-counter, refusing to be moved even when faced with
jail, beatings or death, is no less “militant” than a Black Panther standing in front
of the California capitol building with a rifle. There is, nonetheless, an important
difference between the non-violent philosophy of someone like Dr. King and the
refusal to allow oneself to be beaten without a fight characterized by the stance
of Malcolm X and others.

20
http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm

21
Indeed, in the 1960s, only 100 years removed from slavery, many blacks had
grown up with grandparents or great-grandparents who had been slaves. Don
Williams, former Black Panther, recalled growing up in a neighborhood where
several of the old people had marks on their backs from being whipped. Slavery
was, then, for many not the ancient history far removed by time that it is for us
today.

22
“House” slaves were portrayed as loyal (to whites), usually light-skinned and
untrustworthy (in dealings with blacks). “Field” slaves were portrayed as loyal
(to blacks), dark-skinned and were the slaves who bore the brunt of slavery –
working long hours in the fields and being subject to the lash. More recent
scholarship has exposed the fallacy of such thinking. All slaves were slaves; no
one was free. While some house slaves may have had a slightly less brutal
experience, proximity to the master (and his family) also exposed them to
hardships that have often been ignored. For example, house slaves would be
“on-call” 24 hours a day and had no time out of their master’s reach. Further,
female house slaves were easy prey to the master, his sons and male guests who
wished to sexually exploit them. Field slaves, while having to endure the horrors
of field work, also had housing separate from the main house and might, at night,
have some time to themselves. Field slaves, not confined by serving in the house
under the watchful eyes of the master and his family, might also have had better
opportunities for escape. In the end, neither house nor field slaves had “easy”
lives and the dichotomy between was not only false but can also been seen as one
of the ways black people have internalized racist thinking – the “pure” black field

98

hands were the real black people and mixed-race house slaves were some
untrustworthy, tainted group. We must also remember that divisions between
light-skinned (house) blacks and dark-skinned (field) blacks serves the white
interest, as such thinking splits black people into factions and causes in-fighting
that distracts from the struggle that should be waged against the (white)
establishment. See Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in
the Plantation South (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985); Angela Davis, Women,
Race and Class (New York: Vintage, 1983).

23
Alex Haley and Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1988).

24
It is impossible to understate the damage done by such thinking. In addition to
the psychological damage done to black people, black struggles for liberation
have suffered by an inability to unite because of perceived differences based on
skin color. The irony is, of course, that in a nation in which the rule of
hypodescent still operates, the idea that light-skinned blacks are somehow
immune to the effects of racism is ludicrous.

25
Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero (New York: Palgrave Press, 2006) 73.

26
“The defining epoch…” Had there been no slavery, there would be no African
America, at least not with the characteristics we now recognize.

27
Karenga, African American Rhetoric 9 (Italics mine).

28
Michael Harper “American History” in The Black Poets Ed. Dudley Randall
(New York: Bantam Books 1971) 291.

29
Harper is referring to the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16
th
Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, AL in 1963. Four African American girls, between the
ages of 11 and 14 were killed. The event became a galvanizing moment for the
Civil Rights Movement.

30
I have found no corroboration for this part of the poem and do not know
Harper’s source for the image. However, Charleston was a major port,
particularly for the importation of slaves. During the American Revolution the
British successfully captured the port and city so it is not unlikely that colonists
resorted to various extreme measures to keep their “property” out of the hands of
the enemy.

99

31
See “Black Panther 10-Point Plan.” June 2007. Black Panther Party Website.
http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm; Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero: A
Life in Writing. Ed. Kathleen Cleaver. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

32
The same is true of other ethnic studies programs and departments. For
example, Chicano/as pushed for and created Chicano/a Studies programs as well.

33
Don. L. Lee “The Primitive” in The Black Poets Ed. Dudley Randall (New
York: Bantam Books 1971) 297.

34
Most people from Africa actually identified themselves by their ethnic group
affiliations rather than as “African.” So, for example, a person would be Ibo,
Yoruba, etc.

35
I have no evidence to suggest that Lee read Fanon prior to writing this poem.
However, Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth was widely circulated amongst
members of the Black Power / Black Arts Movement.

36
Nikki Giovanni, “The True Import of Present Dialogue: Black vs. Negro” in
The Black Poets 318-19.

37
I do not wish to get into a debate about the use of “nigger” today, of the
supposed differences between “nigger” and “nigga.” It is enough to
acknowledge that the often heated debate that continues to rage over the word is
proof of the power of this particular term and the controversial nature inherent in
anyone using it.

38
Here it is important to reiterate that, despite many of the media portrayals,
members of the Black Power/Black Arts Movement did not hate all whites.
Rather, they hated to oppression perpetrated by some whites on blacks as a
group. Black Power groups, such as the Black Panther Party, were not against
working with progressive whites in coalitions. Even Malcolm X, who had spent
much of his public career with the Nation of Islam calling white people “devils,”
changed his thinking after visiting Mecca. We should also be aware, however,
that the primary audience for Black Arts Movement poetry was black and thus
tended to have a “no-holds-barred” tone.

39
Many scholars have noted World Ward II and the Double-V campaign as
defining moments that galvanized black activists and proved instrumental to
creating what we now think of as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and
1960s. Giovanni’s own family had long been involved in struggles for black

100

liberation and she attended her first demonstration against segregation at the
insistence of her grandmother. See http://nikki-giovanni.com/timeline.shtml.

40
Stephen J. Pitti, The Devil in Silicon Valley (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2003) 2.

41
Tomás Almaguer, Racial Faultlines: The Historical Origins of White
Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) 4.

42
Almaguer 13.

43
Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas
Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 22.

44
Foley 22.

45
In some ways, pre-1848 Mexico functions for Chicanos in much the same way
that “Africa” functions for blacks of this period. That is, the pre-1848 era (like
“Africa”) stands as a symbol of lost homeland and lost autonomy, with 1848
marking the dramatic beginning of Anglo-American domination of Mexican-
origin peoples. Of course, this is complicated by previous conquest by the
Spanish. Later analysis of Aztlán will further explore the issue of homeland/land
in Chicano Movement ideologies. Though in the case of Aztlán, the homeland is
not a distant place but a domestic homeland that is an occupied territory.

46
My focus on California is mainly due to the fact that California is one of the
few places that blacks and Chicanos worked and lived together in significant
numbers.

47
Foley 10. Foley explains that “thirds” and “fourths” referred to the rent paid to
the land owner (1/3 of the grain and 1/4 of the cotton produced). The rest could
be sold by the tenant farmer for a profit.

48
Foley 39.

49
Gilbert G. Gonzalez and Raul A. Fernandez, A Century of Chicano History:
Empire, Nations, and Migration (New York: Routledge, 2003) 133.

50
F. Arturo Rosales, Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil
Rights Movement (Houston: Arte Público, 1996) 118.

51
Rosales 118.

101

52
A similar situation can been with Japanese Americans and the interment during
World War II of those residing on the west coast. Mae Ngai suggests that such
groups represent “impossible subjects” who are always deemed suspect by the
state. For a further discussion, see Mae Ngai Impossible Subjects and my later
discussion in this chapter.

53
Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (New York:
Pearson Longman, 2004) 167.

54
Acuña 167.

55
Acuña 208.

56
Rosales 118.

57
We are currently seeing a resurgence in concerns about “foreign” labor, by
which is usually meant “Mexican” labor. Recent anti-immigration legislation,
discussions of guest worker or amnesty programs for Mexican-origin people
currently in the U.S. without documentation, deportations and the stigmatizing of
people as “illegal aliens” are all part of this longer history of needing the labor of
Mexican people but not actually wanting Mexican-origin citizens.

58
Ngai 2.

59
A similar case can also be made for Asian Americans.

60
The impact of alien citizenship (and the tendency to lump all Mexican-origin
people into one, undifferentiated group) was made explicit with the 1997 passage
of Proposition 187.

61
Ian Haney Lopez. “Protest, Repression, and Race: Legal Violence and the
Chicano Movement” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 150, No. 1
(Nov., 2001) 206.

62
Ngai 10-11.

63
Haney Lopez 211-212.

64
http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/mecha/archive/plan.html. El Plan also listed
seven organizational goals, very much like the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point

102

Program. See also Laura Pulido Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical
Activism in Los Angeles.

65
One argument posited by African American nationalists is that blacks have
earned their freedom through centuries of slave labor. Some even suggest that
blacks should be given all the states south of the Mason-Dixon line, as it was
their ancestors’ slave labor that made those states what they are today.

66
Gonzales “I am Joaquín/ Yo Soy Joaquín” in Literatura Chicana, 1965-
1995:An Anthology in Spanish, English, and Caló ed. Mauel de Jesús
Hernández-Gutiérrez and David William Foster (New York: Garland Publishing,
1997) 207-222.

67
Haney-Lopez 222.

68
Ana Castillo “Out Tongue was Nahuatl” in My Father was a Toltec (New
York: Anchor Books, 2004).

103

Chapter Three
Racial/Ethnic Nationalist Discourses in the Black Arts
and Chicano Movements

Men, Art and Power: The Masculinist Rhetoric of Black Power

According to James Smethurst: “It is a relative commonplace to
briefly define Black Arts as the cultural wing of the Black Power
movement. However, one could just as easily say that Black Power was
the political wing of the Black Arts movement.”
1
As Smethurst
demonstrates, art and activism were not separate. In fact, art was a
political tool. He writes: “the Black Power movement distinguished itself
by the sheer number of its leaders (and members) who identified
themselves primarily as artists and/or cultural organizers or who had...
some early professional interest in being artists.”
2
It is therefore perhaps
more useful to see Black Power and Black Arts not as synonymous but as
concurrent and connected movements that depended on each other in
very real and tangible ways. Indeed, the artists/ activists themselves
recognized the deep connections between artistic production and political
action. This was not a new idea. The famous 1926 debate between

104
George Schuyler and Langston Hughes on the nature and purpose of
black art is but one earlier example.
3
However, unlike many of the Harlem
Renaissance writers, the writers of the Black Arts movement were not
interested in changing mainstream society but in cultivating a black
consciousness and aesthetic. As Cheryl Clark explains:
Certainly, 1966 was not the first time African-American
people decided to remake themselves something new.
During the New Negro Renaissance (c. 1917-1930), “new”
signified a break with the past, with the South, with slavery,
a rebirth to embrace modernity and modernism as well as to
enunciate to Europeans/Euro-Americans that
Africans/African-Americans were just as capable of culture
and civil society as they were . . . However, “new” to the
Black Arts writer meant a decided rupture with the “West/ a
grey hideous space” (Jones 62).
4

Hoyt Fuller’s “Towards a Black Aesthetic” (1968) presents one of
the first articulations of the mission of the Black Arts writers. Fuller
declares that “[t]he black revolt is as palpable in letters as it is in the
streets.”
5
He thus links the turn in cultural production with a turn in
political activism – the shift from the Civil Rights/Martin Luther King era
to what is often described as a more “militant” (certainly not non-violent)
Black Power era. Fuller contends that, “the two races [blacks and whites]
are residents of separate and naturally antagonistic worlds.”
6
Such a
situation rendered it impossible for a white literary critic to cross over and
interpret the literature of the black writer. Thus, Fuller calls for black
literary critics to take up the task of reading and analyzing black
literature. Further, Fuller calls for a new “black aesthetic” that is not built

105
upon the traditions of Europe but instead springs, almost organically,
from the souls of black people themselves. The writers, he says, strove to
“invest their work with the distinctive styles and rhythms and colors of
the ghetto.”
7
This is a move away from earlier notions of an essential
blackness that was located in a southern, rural landscape. Unlike writers
of the 19
th
or early 20
th
century, Fuller contends that mid-20
th
century
writers had been altered by the Great Migration of the World War II era,
the Civil Rights movement, and the ghettoization of America’s cities.
While it can be argued with ample justification that Fuller’s articulation of
the Black Arts Movement was equally essentialist, what is important to
note is the shift away from the rural south and towards the urban north.
This shift mirrors the shift in the political world as the Civil Rights
Movement with its emphasis on the segregated American south was
supplanted by the ideology of Black Power that was located more in urban
northern and western cities.
8
Lastly, Fuller identifies a “black mystique”
which is an intangible, but essential, part of black experience and artistic
production. In a word, black people have “style.” His long list of blacks
with “style” includes the Modern Jazz Quartet, football player Jim Brown,
“Satchel” Paige, Adam Clayton Powell, Ralph Ellison, and Duke Ellington,
among others.
9
It is important to note that Fuller only lists heterosexual
black men. The black aesthetic, predicated on the hipness of black people

106
is epitomized, it seems, by urban black male swagger and a
heteronormative ideal.
10

Many of the artists involved in the Black Arts Movement used
language to develop a black community, demand full freedom, and
articulate a subject position that was different from, and independent of,
the white mainstream U.S. society. Thus the Black Arts Movement
writers’ use of alternative spellings, “jazz rhythms,” new literary styles and
language not sanctioned by the American literary establishment or
tradition, and alternative themes enabled a defining of self through
rhetoric previously closed to black people. For example, in Haki
Madhubuti’s poem “Re-Act for Action (for brother H. Rap Brown)” the
arrangement of words on the page resonates with the African American
speech style of call and response in which the audience responds to the
speaker in both verbal and non-verbal ways:
11

re-act to animals:
cage them in zoos.
re-act to inhumanism:
make them human.
re-act to nigger toms:
with spiritual acts of love & forgiveness
or with real acts of force.
12

The repetition of “re-act to” and the pushing the “answer” to the next
indented line draws the reader into the poem. The reader follows the
poem down to the second stanza that is presented more traditionally
(without indented lines) until the final lines:

107
in accordance with yr/acts & actions:
human acts for human beings

By indenting “human acts for human beings” Madhubuti emphasizes the
line. This is the crux of the poem – that black people must force whites
(and “negroes” whom Madhubuti distinguishes from blacks) to act
human. The consequences for ignoring this admonishment are made
clear in the final stanza:
re-act
NOW niggers
& you won’t have to
act
false-actions
at
your/children’s graves.

He argues that life, literally, is on the line. If the reader fails to “re-act,”
children – their children – will die. Madhubuti’s hyphenation of “re-act”
(instead of “react”) emphasizes the agency of black people. Rather than
“react” as an act dependant upon a prior action (by whites) “re-act” tells
the reader to act again, stressing the will and power of black people to
control their lives. The urgency is futher emphasized by the short lines
and the capitalization of “NOW.” Madhubuti’s poem is a directive – one
can imagine it spoken rather than written – to black people to take
control. His dedication to H. Rap Brown further connects the poem to
political action.
Following Fuller, Amiri Baraka’s “Nationalism Vs Pimp Art” (1969)
also outlines the origins and purposes of the Black Arts movement. As

108
one of the most vocal, prolific, and widely published and read authors of
the movement, Baraka’s vision of the Black Arts movement has often been
the vision. For Baraka, the nationalist purpose of black arts is obvious.
He states: “for Black people it was (is) critical that we begin to focus on
National Liberation, the freeing of one nation (culture) from the
domination of another.”
13
Baraka, like Fuller equates a national or
communal identity with cultural production. Baraka links the black
struggle for liberation in the United States with the larger struggle for
liberation by people of color in Africa and other parts of the Diaspora. He
argues against colonialism (and for viewing American blacks as colonized
people): “To free the nation is at the same time to free the culture, i.e., the
way of life.”
14
We hear in this statement echoes of Franz Fanon whose
books The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks became
required reading for many of the artists and activists of the Black Power/
Black Arts era.
15
Revolutionary nationalist groups such as the Black
Panther Party asserted that black people represented a colonized nation,
separate from and dominated by white America. This was particularly
evident in their attitude towards the police, whom they viewed as an
occupying force (like an army) in black communities and their calls for
dismantling the capitalist system that relied upon the exploitation of
black labor. Cultural nationalist groups like the Us Organization
concentrated on cultural (practical, artistic, theological) ideas, borrowing

109
heavily from African cultures in order to fashion an Afrocentric paradigm
around which black people could construct and understand their lives.
16

According to Fanon, colonization destroys the native peoples’ sense of
themselves and of their history. Therefore, part of the decolonization
process must include the reclaiming of culture and history. However, this
is not enough. Fanon states:
The colonised man who writes for his people ought to use
the past with the intention of opening the future, as an
invitation to action and a basis for hope. But to ensure that
hope and to give it form, he must take part in action and
throw himself body and soul into the national struggle . . .
you must collaborate on the physical plane.
17

It is therefore hardly surprising that the writers and other artists of the
Black Arts/Black Power movement saw their work as part of the activist
struggle and participated by joining or forming organizations, attending
rallies, giving speeches and building institutions.
Baraka does not couch his call for nationalism in academic terms.
Instead, he states outright (and sometimes with vulgarity) the necessity of
black art. This in itself is a move away from the acceptable standards of
critical and creative writing established by Euro-American hegemony.
However, like Fuller, he seems unaware or unconcerned that this
heteronormative and patriarchal stance is actually in keeping with the
Euro-American traditions he claims to dismantle. Following Kimberle
Crenshaw, I assert that Baraka (and others) were in some ways bound by
the structures of oppression in which they were operating. This is true of

110
both the men and women involved in the Black Arts Movement.
Therefore, Baraka’s seemingly uncritical adoption of misogynist rhetoric
can perhaps be understood as part of the system in which he was located.
That is, a patriarchal system that devalued (and de-masculinized in some
respects) black men. According to Gerald Horne, black people as a race
have traditionally been feminized. In Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising
and the 1960s he asserts that:
Nationalism generally can have negative consequences for
women... Part of the “liberation” proclaimed by many black
male nationalists . . . was the “right” to emulate the
patriarchy of the Euro-American community. The black
nationalism that ultimately detonated in Watts was not just
a reaction against white racism; it was also a reaction
against the historic and stereotypical notion that blacks
were the “female” of the races: subordinated, subordinate,
dominated, timid. Through black nationalism a slice of race
cum gender privilege could be reclaimed by means of a
sometimes brutal masculinity that, after all, was normative
among other races and ethnicities . . .
18

If Horne is correct, the assertion of hypermasculinity by Baraka,
while not excusable or acceptable, is understandable. The problem lies in
constructing a liberation movement that does not step back and look fully
and critically at its political and rhetorical platforms in an effort to not
reproduce some of the systems of oppression that it is attempting to
dismantle.
19
Women members of the Black Power/ Black Arts movement
would push gender issues to the fore, rightfully demonstrating that racial
and gender oppressions are linked and must both be deconstructed.

111
Baraka states that the white “revolution” (the anti-establishment
hippies for example) was a “great deluge of nakedness and
homosexuality.” He continues, saying that blacks should not be deceived
by “revolutionary” whites: “Just because the slavemaster has long hair
and smokes bush does nothing to change the fact that he is and will be the
slavemaster until we, yes, free ourselves.”
20
Here Baraka invokes some of
the divisive language and ideology of the greater U.S. society, namely,
homophobia. Situating homosexuality as a white pathology, he feminizes
and delegitimates white society, masculinizes blacks and completely
ignores gay and lesbian black people. This is particularly problematic
given the number of gay and lesbian blacks who were part of the Black
Arts/ Black Power struggle, including Hoyt Fuller, Langston Hughes and
Audre Lorde. This became yet another site of critique for some of the
women members of the movement. At the same time, Baraka articulates
the crux of the Black Arts movement – to change black consciousness
(through art) in order to effect liberation.
Baraka’s poetry upheld his vision for black literature. One of his
most well-known poems, “Black Art,” (1969) links his vision to Fuller’s
call for a masculinist and “hip” black poetry. The first stanza reads:
Poems are bullshit unless they are
teeth or trees or lemons piled
on a step. Or black ladies dying

112
of men leaving nickel hearts
beating them down. Fuck poems
and they are useful, wd they shoot
come at you, love what you are,
breathe like wrestlers, or shudder
strangely after pissing. We want live
words of the hip world live flesh &
coursing blood. . .
. . .Black poems to
smear on girdlemamma mulatto bitches
whose brains are red jelly stuck
between ‘lisbeth taylor’s toes. Stinking
Whores! We want “poems that kill.”
21

The poem calls for poetry to act; to exist for a purpose other than
beauty: “Poems are bullshit unless they are/teeth or trees or lemons
piled/on a step.” Poetry, for Baraka, has work to do in the world. It must
speak the truth of the (black) poet’s existence and describe life (“teeth,”
“trees,” “lemons”) in explicit detail. No subject is taboo (“black ladies
dying/of men leaving. . .”). Beauty (the breath of wrestlers) can and must
exist in poetry (as in life) alongside a “shudder/ strangely after pissing.”
Indeed, Baraka’s use of vernacular and vulgarity (“pissing,” “fuck,”
“come”) brings the poem to street-level, to the masses, so to speak. This

113
is not a poem for academics. The rhythms, language choices and spelling
(“wd” for “would”) force the poem off the page and into the realm of
orality. It is an admonition and a plea, spoken or yelled, at the audience.
If we can assume Baraka is the speaker, he wants (and says “we”
want) “poems that kill.” Importantly, Baraka juxtaposes “poems that kill”
against the alternative which is represented by “girdlemamma mulatto
bitches . . .Sinking Whores!” His invocation of Elizabeth Taylor, widely
considered to be one of the most beautiful white women in the world, is
not coincidental. As Taylor represents the epitome of white female beauty
and desirability, the “mulatto bitches” are inferior copies, fit only to be
“stuck/between ‘lisbeth taylor’s toes.” Mulatto women thus cannot
represent black people or Black Power. They are, in fact, as much of an
enemy as white women (like Taylor). Perhaps worse, mulatto women are
traitors to the black race (in a way Taylor can never be) and Baraka
sexualizes them as “stinking whores,” perhaps a reference to their
ancestry which has resulted in their mulatto racial status. It is possible
that Baraka is alluding to black women who have had sexual relationships
with white men and thus produced mixed-race offspring.
22
In Baraka’s
construction, mixed-race people (women in particular) fall outside the
black community that Black Power and the Black Arts Movement are
trying to create and define. When one considers that much of the Black
Power rhetoric posited women as the culture-bearers (in their ability to

114
literally give birth to black babies who would pass on the culture), it is not
surprising that mulatto women (whose racial allegiance is suspect) are
accorded such harsh treatment.
23

His personal desire for poems that act (violently) is part and parcel
of the Black Arts Movement’s desire for such poems. This poem thus
functions not just as an individual example of self-expression but a call to
the audience to join a collective. A black community is implied by
Baraka’s repetition of the word “we.” The community is simultaneously
being defined by and constituted by this poem and in Baraka’s
construction. However, women – particularly mixed-race women – are
left out of this community.
The second stanza tells the audience exactly whom the poetry is
supposed to kill. He writes that “we” want “Poems that wrestle cops into
alleys/ . . . /[set] fire and death to/ whities ass/ . . ./ There’s a negroleader
pinned to/ a bar stool in Sardi’s eyeballs melting/in hot flame.” Thus the
target of such poetic violence is not just the Euro-American establishment
that oppresses black people but the ineffectual or traitorous black leader
“kneeling between the sheriff’s thighs/ negotiating coolly for his people.”
Finally, Baraka calls for an end to love poems “until love can exist freely
and/cleanly.” Yet this poem also can be read as a love poem. His next
lines admonish black people to “understand/that they are the lovers and
the sons/of lovers and warriors and sons/of warriors/ Are poems & poets

115
&/ all the loveliness here in the world.” Baraka’s own love for black
people is evident here as is his desire for black people to love themselves,
although he is still tied to a male-centered black identity; black people are
“sons” and “warriors.” The term “lover” here is ambiguous at best and
can be read as either male or female (or both). In addition, he is calling
for the recognition of a history that is larger than the history of black
people in the United States. He invokes a warrior history that may be
linked to an African history and signals an internationalist stance by
stating that black people are “all the loveliness here in the world.”
His invocation of an imagined world beyond the U.S. borders
continues in the final stanza as he writes “We want a black poem. And a/
Black World./ Let the world be a Black Poem/ And Let All Black People
Speak This Poem/ Silently/ or LOUD.” His capitalization of “Black
World,” “Black Poem” and “Black People” at the end of the poem
reinforces the importance of blackness as a signifier and a common
denominator under which people of African descent in the United States
can organize themselves. But further, Baraka links black people in the
U.S. to people of African descent in other parts of the world. It is by
speaking this poem (“Silently or/ LOUD”) that the community is formed.
Thus the world becomes the poem just as the poem is born of the world.
This is the action the poem must invoke – the call to community, self-
love, and the violent overthrow of the status quo of racism and self-hate.

116
The writers of the Black Arts movement viewed their writing as part of an
activist political struggle for the liberation of black people and their art,
particularly poetry, was an integral part of the Black Power movement.
24

Men, Conquest and Power: Masculinist Rhetoric in Chicano
Nationalism

For Chicanas, the concept of Aztlán be came a crucial framework
for discussing a home or homeland. As with the men in the movement,
Chicanas used Aztlán to create an alternate historical homeland, one
denied under U.S. imperialist conquest. Rather than simply being
absorbed into the U.S. social and political order, adherence to the theory
of Aztlán gave all Chicano/as a sense of history and place that predated
Anglo invasion and functioned similarly to Africa for African Americans.
One major difference, of course, was that Aztlán encompassed lands still
occupied by Chicano/as and thus functioned as a domestic homeland.
25

While African Americans had a geographic and historical distance from
Africa, Chicano/as had a geographic and present connection to the land
encompassed by Aztlán. Indeed, as we shall see later, this was a basis for
asserting a national sovereignty and making claims for independence
from the United States.

117
Aztlán did not, however, represent an uncomplicated space for
Chicanas. Constructed as a male-dominated space and used to stake
claims of masculine dominance over both land and people, Aztlán left
little room for Chicanas to forge identities outside of the patriarchal
structure. The language of El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán is clear in its
masculinism:
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its
proud historical heritage but also of the brutal "gringo"
invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and
civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came
our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and
consecrating the determination of our people of the sun,
declare that the call of our blood is our power, our
responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.

We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which
are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our
brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant
the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to
the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious
frontiers on the bronze continent

Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a
people whose time has come and who struggles against the
foreigner "gabacho" who exploits our riches and destroys
our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in
the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation.
We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the
world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in
the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free
pueblos, we are Aztlán.
26

The repetition of the words “brother” and “brotherhood” effectively ignore
any claims Chicanas may have for Aztlán or their place in the struggle for
the liberation of Chicano people as a whole. As has been demonstrated,

118
there are specific reasons for privileging racial/ethnic identity in this
context. Whatever the justifications, Chicanas were still left trying to
insert themselves in a space that was rhetorically constructed to exclude
them on a basic level.
One of the major ways Chicanas reacted against this exclusion was
through their writing. By constructing alternate spaces in literature,
Chicanas opened not only Aztlán but the struggle for Chicano/a liberation
to be more inclusive and, ultimately, to better serve all Chicano people. In
particular, Chicana feminists and lesbians pushed the movement to
consider alternate readings of Aztlán, history and struggle. Of primary
importance, of course, was Gloria Anzaldúa and her concept of
borderlands. Borderlands theory both describes a geographic space
(where two cultures – Anglo and Mexican – meet) but also a metaphoric
space of boundary crossings and hybridity (akin to what Crenshaw would
term “intersectionality”). The borderlands is described by Anzaldúa:
The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the
Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before
a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two
worlds merging to form a third country – a border culture.
Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and
unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing
line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a
vague and undetermined place created by the emotional
residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of
transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its
inhabitants.
27

119
Anzaldúa’s borderland is thus the geographic space of the U.S.-Mexico
border but also a metaphoric, emotional space. Both are occupied by “the
prohibited and forbidden.” She tellingly does not say it is occupied by
Chicano/as. The resistance to narrowing the inhabitants of the
borderlands to a specific racial/ethnic group leaves open the border as a
territory that can be occupied by people marginalized on a number of
fronts. For Anzaldúa, and many of the women of the Chicano movement,
the occupants of the borderlands include women, feminists and lesbians
as they are “prohibited and forbidden” under prevailing constructions of
the Chicano nation as posited by such frameworks as El Plan Espiritual de
Aztlán.
The place of women within the Chicano movement is complicated
by the particular identities of the women in question. It is not enough to
say the Chicanas resisted patriarchy within the movement (however true
that may be), we must also be mindful of the ways in which individual
Chicana’s identities operated and influenced the ways in which they
responded to the movement as a whole. Thus, as Carbado would argue in
another context, at stake was not simply the Chicana’s status identities as
Chicanas (that is, as racialized women) but also their performance
identities – the particularities of each women’s identity and how it is/was
enacted publicly. In other words, while all women in the Chicano
movement may have had to contend with patriarchy, women who further

120
identified as lesbian or feminist (or both) faced particular challenges both
within and outside the movement.
Veronica Cunningham expresses various issues facing her as a
Chicana. The poem begins by discussing the people who have offered
compliments to her; compliments which are “meant/ to share/ a thought/
or a feeling/ of comfort/ and usually/ they failed.”
28
They fail precisely
because they refuse to acknowledge who she is on a variety levels:
you’re lucky
you don’t look Mexican.
you don’t act
like a girl.
you can make something
of yourself.
you don’t have
to tell anyone
you’re a lesbian.
The compliments that negate who she as a racialized, gendered, sexual
being are not compliments at all as they require masking her identity.
She can thus “pass” as Anglo or straight, which is seen by others as
positive and useful. But like more traditional narratives of racial passing,
Cunningham’s passing (if she chooses to engage it) is fraught with self-
denial, half-truths and outright lies.
29
Such denials may make her life

121
easier (and undoubtedly easier for those who are uncomfortable with her
as a Mexican lesbian woman), but what is the cost of denial? She ends the
poem in this way:
ever since
i kan
remember
i have shuddered
when someone
attempted
to crown me
with privileges
that
only demanded
of me
to deny
my (sex-
sexuality-
color-
class-
culture-) self
if i kant
live

122
this life
as i am
why live it
at all
The denial causes a visceral, involuntary reaction (“shuddered”) of
revulsion and shaking off of the “crown” that has falsely been placed upon
her.
30
The list of things being denied purposely stands out – despite being
placed in parentheses. Each item (sex, sexuality, etc.) stands on its own
line except the first and last, which are bracketed by the words “my” and
“self.” The identifiers are thus singular and part of the cohesive whole
that is “herself.” The hyphens between them further link each item to the
next, in effect forcing the reader to see each not separately but as one long
word and one multifaceted identity. The use of the lowercase “i” further
opens the poem. It may or may not be Cunningham speaking. And if it is,
she may not be speaking just for herself but for all women who have
similarly been “crowned” with false compliments that rely on self-
negation and denial. Tellingly, she does not end with the expected
question mark but with no punctuation at all (although punctuation does
appear elsewhere in the poem). The final thought then is neither a
question nor a strong declarative statement. It lingers somewhere in
between (perhaps in a border space?) and it is left to the reader to
interpret and assign meaning.

123

The Violence of Revolution: Women’s Bodies as Sites of
Conquest

Both African American women and Chicanas had to contend with
issues of patriarchy and violence within their movements. While it is true
that the Black Arts Movement has often been described as male-oriented
in part because much of the critical literature regarding it centers Amiri
Baraka and other male writers of the period. Similarly, Black Power
organizations such as the BPP have often been labeled as anti-female and
hyper-masculine. However, the importance of women to the Black Power
struggle cannot be overstated. The same can be said of the Chicano
Movement and the influence of Chicanas who determined to force a
dialogue that included issues particular to the lives of women within their
communities. For women in both movements, however, very real threats
to their well-being existed regardless of their positions in the
organizations.
For example, some black women were able to gain positions of
power within the Black Power movement. The most striking example is of
course Elaine Brown – poet, song-writer and the only woman to become
Chairperson of the Black Panther Party. Her autobiography, Taste of
Power: A Black Woman’s Story, chronicles her growing up and rise within

124
the BPP.
31
Alongside the tales of community-building and government
violence, is an unvarnished exposé of the violence within the Party itself.
Not limited to abuse against women at the hands of men, the moments of
cruelty she relates are nonetheless harrowing. Some incidents are fairly
benign, such as having to wait to eat until the men were served because
(she and a friend were told), “ ‘our Brothers are our warriors. Our
warriors must be fed first, Sisters.’ ”
32
Others, however, left her deeply
shaken. Although she is herself whipped, she seems far more disturbed by
the beating of Regina Davis who was Ericka Huggins’s assistant at the
Black Panther School. Regina was beaten so severely that she was
hospitalized and left with a broken jaw.
33
The “reprimand,” sanctioned by
Huey Newton, was unsuccessfully challenged by Brown and Regina’s
beating became one more reason for her to eventually leave the Party.
Brown writes that she was not alone in this shift in perception of the BPP:
The women were feeling the change, I noted. The beating of
Regina would be taken as a clear signal that the words
“Panther” and “comrade” had taken on gender
connotations, denoting an inferiority in the female half of
us. Something awful was not only driving a dangerous
wedge between Sisters and Brothers, it was attacking the
very foundation of the party.
34

One of the strategies employed by men in the Black Arts/Black
Power movement was to rhetorically place women in the position of
“Queen” or, more specifically, “African Queen.” Some women challenged
this positioning, contending that the rhetoric did nothing to stop the

125
violence perpetrated upon black women’s bodies by black men who still
called “African Queens.” Audre Lorde’s poem “Need” is a primary
example. As Lorde explains:
Need was first written in 1979 after 12 Black women were
killed in the Boston area within four months. Someone had
to speak, beyond these events and this time, yet out of their
terrible immediacy, to the repeated fact of the blood of Black
women flowing through the streets of our communities – so
often shed by our brothers, and so often without comment
or note. Or worse, having that blood justified or explained
away by those horrific effects of racism which we share as
Black people.
35

Lorde’s poem is a response to specific events during a particular time but
is meant to call attention to an ongoing pattern of violence against women
at the hands of black men. Crucially, she refuses to accept “racism” as a
reason or justification for this intra-racial violence. The damaging effects
of racism, and the emasculation of black men that some scholars and
writers have argued has resulted from centuries of racism, are not reasons
to violently attack black women.
36
Lorde’s poem vividly demonstrates the
fallacy of this thinking:
(Bobbie)
Borrowed hymns veil a misplaced hatred
saying you need me you need me you need me
a broken drum
calling me Black goddess Black hope Black
strength Black mother

126
yet you touch me
and I die in the alleys of Boston
my stomach stomped through the small of my back
my hammered-in skull in Detroit
a ceremonial knife
through my grandmother’s used vagina
37

By beginning with the name of one of the murdered women in Boston
(“Bobbie”), Lorde at once lets Bobbie speak for herself and forces her
reader to acknowledge the humanity – the individual human being –
whose life was taken. The poem is not about nameless, faceless “Black
women” but specific women – the mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts of all
black people. The Black Power/Black Arts rhetoric of the “African Queen”
is here represented by “Black goddess/Black hope/Black strength/Black
mother” and Lorde deftly shows that none of these lofty titles are enough
to stop brutal violence against black women.
The next stanza refutes the idea that black male power must be
accomplished through black female submission:
(Bobbie & Pat)
Do you need me submitting to terror at nightfall
to chop into bits and stuff warm into plastic bags
near the neck of the Harlem River
they found me eight months swollen

127
with your need
do you need me to rape in my seventh year
bloody semen in the corners of my childish mouth
as you accuse me of being seductive.
38

Here again Lorde invokes the names of murdered women. She asks if
(black men) “need” black women “submitting to terror” in order to fell
like men. How deep is this need? Are no women safe? This stanza,
couple with the previous one, seems to suggest no black female is safe
from this violent need – not grandmothers, not pregnant women, not
children. And the blame for this lies with the women/female children (“as
you accuse me of being seductive”) not with them men who commit the
crimes. Section IV begins with a few pivotal lines:
(Poet)
I am wary of need that tastes like destruction.

(All)
I am wary of need
that tastes like destruction.

With these lines Lorde inserts the voice of the poet along with the voices
of all black women, in effect creating a chorus that repeats the line. The
break after “need” in the second version emphasizes that final word so

128
that not only are black women “wary of need that tastes like destruction”
they are “wary of need” in general. The violence against black women at
the hands of black men who claim to worship them as “Black goddess” has
bred mistrust between the genders. There is, in fact, no unity possible as
long as the situation continues. She writes, “(Poet) Who learns to love
me/from the mouth of my enemies/ walks the edge of my world/ a
phantom in a crimson cloak. . .” Thus, even if some of the blame can be
put on the effects of racism, she (the Poet) still holds black men
accountable for their actions. As long as they continue to behave
violently, they can never be part of her world; they remain on the “edge”
as “phantom.” Lorde explains in her preface that:
As I began writing the poem, there flooded through me all
the pain and waste of the Black women’s deaths that I had
read and heard about in the previous months during my
travels and how if we were to progress as Black people, we
could no longer hide this womanslaughter behind a smoke-
screen of nation-building. For we cannot build a Black
nation upon the blood of Black women and children,
without all of us, men and women, being the losers as Black
people. It is as simple and as complex and as terrible as
that.
39

Lorde explicitly challenges the leaders and members of the black
community – including Black Power/Black Arts activists – to
acknowledge the places where the rhetoric and practice of struggle against
white oppression leaves black women and children vulnerable to a variety
of assaults. As the men were fashioning a new world and new black
aesthetic based on racial solidarity and hypermasculine militancy, Lorde’s

129
poem serves as a reminder that unless oppression within the black
community is also challenged, the freedom gained will be incomplete.
Like African American women, Chicanas have been “defining
themselves at times in tandem with and at times in opposition to the
overall struggle.”
40
Chicanas in the movement understood the ways in
which struggle based on racial solidarity could be productive and the ways
in which this formulation often excluded the particular needs of Chicanas
as women. Violence at the hands of men was not endemic just to the
black community; the Chicano community has also struggled with issues
of violence. Chicana writing reflects these problems. Tey Diana Rebolledo
and Eliana S. Rivero assert that:
In literature, Chicanas’ world perspectives are shaped and
determined by their immediate female kin and the values
they embody, and in addition male figures seem to take a
secondary place. Seldom do the father and grandfather
appear in a teaching or nurturing role. . . In quite a few
cases, the father figures appearing in poetry and prose are
not only authoritatively repressive, they are frankly abusive.
A common father image is that of a drunk returning home
late at night, hitting, screaming, disturbing the peace . . .
41

The fathers in Chicana literature take out their frustrations on the women
(and girls) in their households. Thus, the women rely on each other for
comfort and support. Still in the wider culture, Chicanas are relegated to
second-class status. As Cherríe Moraga writes in “What Does it Take?:
For Sally Gearhart upon the death of Harvey Milk:”
42
In the first section
she writes:

130
The martyrs they give us
have all been men
my friend, she traces her life
through them a series of assassinations
but not one, not
one making her bleed . . .

But the deaths of our mothers
are never that public
they have happened before
and we were not informed.
Women do not coagulate into one
hero’s death; we bleed
out of many pores, so constant
that it has come to be seen
as the way things are.
43

While the murder of Harvey Milk caused widespread public outrage, the
deaths of women (including many lesbians and Chicanas) hardly warrants
a mention. Like the black women killed and forgotten in Boston and
other cities in Audre Lorde’s poem, the women Moraga writes about live
lives of suffering so often that their suffering and deaths become invisible.

131
Verónica Cunningham’s “A Woman was Raped” is even more
explicit in its indictment of the violence Chicanas (and other women) face
at the hands of men. She begins:
a woman
was raped
by her father
yesterday
and she was only
thirteen
44

Like the young girls attacked in Audre Lorde’s poem, neither youth or the
supposed protection of family are enough to keep this woman safe. But
the danger they are in is more widespread than just the danger of rape.
Cunningham continues:
they have been
violated
by more
than a penis
they’ve suffered
by the law
with policemen
in the courts
in society

132
inside themselves
with guilt
or shame
because
people believe
the victim
should be
blamed
Thus the violence of rape and assault is not limited to the actual acts but
extends past the moment of assault. Violations continue as women
victims are blamed for their victimhood, for inciting the violence visited
upon them. Women in the Black Arts and Chicano movements wrote
against this way of thinking and challenged the status quo by turning the
rapist (rightfully) into the criminal, not the woman who invited or allowed
the rape.
Women’s bodies – their purpose and uses – therefore become a
battleground. At stake is the sovereignty of the landscape of a woman’s
body as an individual and as women collectively. Do women have a right
to police the borders of their own physical beings? Do they have the right
to control when, where and with whom they share their bodies? And what
about women who chose not to allow men be sexual with them at all?

133
For many women in the Black Arts and Chicano movement,
lesbianism was an expression of a larger political project of self-
empowerment and feminist practice. One of the most outspoken and
candid lesbians of this era is of course Gloria Anzaldúa. Anzaldúa
explicitly links feminism and lesbianism with a shift in her consciousness
that extended into far-reaching areas of her life and work:
I know that I consciously chose women. During that period
of time, I consciously chose that I was going to love women.
If I was attracted to other beings, I was going to consciously
change that attraction by changing my fantasies. You can do
that: You can change your sexual preference. It’s real easy. .
. I started seeing things from the perspective of the
feminine. All my life, all the readings I’d done in literature,
religion, philosophy, psychology had always been male. So I
did a complete turnaround and chose feminist literature as
one of my areas. . .So I became a lesbian in my head first,
the ideology, the politics, the aesthetics. I started looking at
history differently; I learned that Christianity is based on a
female religion, the worship of the mother. Psychologically,
spiritually, philosophically, and politically – it was all
women.
45

For Anzaldúa, as for many of the women in these movements, feminism
and lesbianism were linked with a larger project of self-identity and
collective liberation. Further, it was through their writing that they were
able to negotiate the terrain between racial/ethnic nationalisms, feminism
and activism. As Anzaldúa commented when asked if she was purposely
making connections between the Chicano movement and feminism: “Yes.
I was thinking about connections, and writing was perfectly as the
center.”
46
The reception in the Chicano movement for feminist lesbian

134
Chicana writing (at least in Anzaldúa’s case) was chilly at best. She says
that, “The first things I sent out were to Chicanas and Chicanos. I started
feeling out Chicanos when I became a lesbian. They weren’t ready for that
kind of thing. The only group I thought receptive to my work was the
feminist community. . . In the feminist community, more parts of me are
allowed. It allows me to be Chicana, to be queer, to be spiritual. The
Chicano community does not accept queers.”
47
Like African American
women in the Black Arts/ Black Power movement, Chicana lesbian
feminists confronted deep-seated discrimination by other members of the
political movement.
In some ways we can understand the opposition to feminist
lesbians in the movements through the lense of Devon Carbado’s article
“The Fifth Black Woman.”
48
In this article, Carbado recounts the issues
facing some black women who desire to take action towards employers for
discriminatory hiring and promotion practices. Carbado argues that
some black women have a much harder time proving discrimination in
workplaces in which other black women have been hired and promoted
regularly. In his example, one black woman (the “fifth black woman”)
does not receive comparable treatment. This woman, unlike the others,
does not engage in certain activities such as playing golf or attending
cocktail parties and she (unlike the others) displays her ethnicity in
unmitigated ways (i.e. in the wearing of dredlocks instead of processed

135
hair). This woman believes that she is being discriminated against not
simply because of her blackness but because of the way she enacts her
blackness and individuality in the workplace. Carbado’s larger argument
is that present legal remedies are unable to redress this type of
discrimination under traditional racial discrimination law.
For the women in the Chicano and Black Arts/Black Power
movements, their gender wasn’t the only issue they had to negotiate.
Lesbian and feminist women also faced discrimination on the basis of
their politics and choice of sexual partners. Thus, while the Black Panther
Party, for example, voiced support for women’s rights and some women
were able to rise in the ranks of the Party’s hierarchy, discrimination
against women still existed.
49
Despite the fact that the BPP was the first
Black Power organization to openly support both women’s rights and gay
liberation
50
, Audre Lorde states in Sister Outsider:
Over and over again in the 60s I was asked to justify my existence
and my work, because I was a woman, because I was a Lesbian,
because I was not a separatist, because some piece of me was not
acceptable. Not because of my work but because of my identity. I
had to learn to hold on to all the parts of me that served me, in
spite of the pressure to express only one to the exclusion of all
others.
51

Emphasizing the multi-faceted natures of her experiences and identity,
Lorde indicts black politics and leaders but also “white America,” which
was

136
“. . . more than pleased to sit back as spectator while Black militant fought
Black Muslim, Black Nationalist badmouthed the non-violent, and Black
women were told that our only useful position in the Black Power
movement was prone. The existence of Black lesbian and gay people was
not even allowed to cross the public consciousness of Black America.”
52

Finally, she declares that “[t]hat is how I learned that if I didn’t define
myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for
me and be eaten alive.”
53
The violence done to women is therefore not
limited to physical assault but extends to psychological damage caused by
enforced silence and hostility towards some women for particular choices
they have made.
Additionally, some women were accused of not upholding the
nationalist projects of their organizations. Feminism and lesbianism were
often seen as antithetical to both African American and Chicano culture.
Many scholars have noted that for women of color, feminism has always
been problematic; even self-declared feminists such as Audre Lorde and
Gloria Anzaldúa have expressed deep reservations with feminism as
practiced by white middle-class women. The bind then is doubled: 1)
many African Americans and Chicano/as are suspicious of feminism and
lesbianism as being “a white thing” that divides their communities and 2)
feminists of color have not often found white feminism open to or
understanding of their particular subject-positions as women who are

137
also non-white. Nonetheless, feminism has offered these non-white
women a lense through which to view their lives.
By turning to women-centered understandings of the world, black
women and Chicanas have been able to gain insight into their own
particular identities that, while bound by race/ethnicity and class, are also
bound by gender and sexual orientation.
54
We can understand the
impetus for this holistic view by again acknowledging Kimberle
Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality.
55
Intersectionality requires us to
take into account all of the aspects of a person’s identity (gender, race,
ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, etc.) when considering how to remedy
injustice and develop public policy and law to protect individuals from
abuses and discrimination.
56
The women of the Black Arts and Chicano
movements were not necessarily trying to influence public policy or law
(although some were), but all were attempting to define themselves in a
way that made sense and took into account their various subject positions
(mother, woman, lesbian, writer, activist, Chicana, black, etc.) In defining
themselves, they did hope to help their respective communities (men and
women) as part of the larger struggles for liberation from Euro-American
domination. The struggle for self-definition – central to the Black Power/
Black Arts and Chicano movements generally – was thus particularly
salient and imperative for black women and Chicanas.

138
Chapter Three Endnotes

1
James Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the
1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005) 14.

2
Smethurst 14.

3
The Nation magazine published two articles, Hughes’s “The Negro Artist and
the Racial Mountain” and Shuyler’s “The Negro-Art Hokum.” Hughes argued
that black artists have an intrinsic quality that sets them apart from whites.
Shuyler, on the other hand, saw no difference between a black or white artist –
both were “Americans” and thus interchangeable. The writers of the Black Arts
Movement would tend to agree more with Hughes than Schuyler. Indeed,
Hughes was a patron and friend for some of the Black Arts writers.

4
Clark 12.

5
Hoyt Fuller, “Towards a Black Aesthetic” Within the Circle: African American
Literary Criticsm from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present ed. Angelyn
Mitchell (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1994) 199.

6
Fuller 202.

7
Fuller 204.

8
Here I am not advancing an argument that the Civil Rights movement and
Black Power Movement are completely distinct movements, unconnected to each
other. Indeed, as Chapter One argues, the Civil Rights Movement and Black
Power Movement were deeply connected, with Black Power growing out of Civil
Rights and involving many of the same activists. Really, both movements can be
described as “Civil Rights” movements. My use of “Black Power”, therefore,
mirrors the terminology used by those involved and also stands as a marker of
the real differences between the two eras (such as an emphasis on northern, urban
areas versus rural, southern ones; less emphasis on integration; and an increased
willingness to embrace separatism and black nationalist ideologies).

9
Fuller 205.

10
We can see this view at work today in much of hip-hop/rap. The dominance of
men in the genre, the anti-woman and homophobic content, and the valorization
of black male hypermasculinity and violence continue to have salience.

139

11
See for example Alessandro Durante, Linguisitic Anthropology: A Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell’s, 2001); Geneva Smitherman, Talkin that Talk: African
American Language and Culture (New York & London: Routledge, 1999);
Geneva Smitherman, Word from the Mother: Language and African Americans
(New York: Routledge, 2006).

12
Haki Madhubuti, “Re-Act for Action (for brother H. Rap Brown),” A Different
Image: The Legacy of Broadside Press, an Anthology ed. Gloria House,
Rosemary Weatherston and Albert M. Ward (Detroit: University of Detroit
Mercy Press/ Broadside Press, 2004) 153-154.

13
Amiri Baraka, “Nationalism Vs PimpArt,” Black Writers in America: A
Comprehensive Anthology ed. Barksdale & Kinnamon (New York: Prentice
Hall, 1997) 759.

14
Baraka 759 (italics his).

15
See Eldridge Cleaver, “On the Ideology of the Black Panther Party” in Target
Zero: A Life in Writing ed. Kathleen Cleaver (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2006).

16
Afrocentrism has gained popularity among many African Americans since its
development in the late-1960s. One of the most obvious popular manifestations
of Afrocentric thought is the naming (and renaming) of individuals to reflect an
African heritage (for example Mualana Karenga was born Ron Everett).
Afrocentrists also tend to wear “natural” (e.g. not processed) hair and African
clothing such as dashikis. Karenga is also the creator of the Christmas-
alternative holiday Kwanzaa. One of the first and foremost proponents of
Afrocentrism is Molefi Asante (born Arthur Smith). Importantly, Afrocentrism
also includes the theory that African American cultural production must be
viewed outside of the Euro-American paradigm. What is valuable, beautiful and
innovative in African American culture may or may not be thought of positively
using Euro-American criteria. The implications of this idea touch all areas of life
– from art and literature to family structure and education. As Director of the
Africana Studies Department at Temple University, Asante has developed
Afrocentrism and taught successive cohorts of young people to study and employ
the Afrocentric paradigm. Karenga and Asante have both published widely. For
more on Afrocentrism see: Asante and Karenga, Handbook of Black Studies
(New York: Sage Publications, 2006); Asante, Race, Rhetoric and Identity (New
York: Prometheus Books, 2005); Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1998); Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge
(New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990); Asante, The Painful Demise of

140

Eurocentrism (New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2000); Asante, Afrocentricity
(New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2003). See also Ronald L. Jackson and Elaine
Richardson eds., Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to
Contemporary Innovations (New York: Routledge, 2003).

17
Franz Fanon, trans. Constance Farrington. The Wretched of the Earth: A Negro
Psychoanalyst’s Study of the Problems of Racism & Colonialism in the World
Today (New York: Grove Press, 1966) 187.

18
Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s
(Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia, 1995) 11-12.

19
See Kimberle Crenshaw. “Race, Reform and Retrenchment: Transformation
and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law,” Harvard Law Review Vol. 101,
No. 7 (May, 1988): 1331-1387.

20
Amiri Baraka, “Nationalism Vs PimpArt” Black Writers in America: A
Comprehensive Anthology ed. Barksdale & Kinnamon (New York: Prentice
Hall, 1997) 760 (italics his).

21
Amiri Baraka, “Black Art,” The Black Poets ed. Dudley Randall (New York:
Bantam, 1971) 223.

22
Much has been written about black women be subjected to the sexual advances
of white men, both during slavery and beyond. These relationships have most
often been characterized as unequal, with white men forcing black women to
acquiesce to their will. Traditionally, black men have not had the power to stop
the rape of their wives, daughters and mothers and the resentment they have felt
is most likely part of Baraka’s poem. Powerless to lash out against the white
men, he may be transferring his anger to the product of the union, namely the
mulatto offspring. It is crucial that he is only angry at mulatto women; mixed-
race men do not raise as much ire. Thus, there is a complicated combination of
racial animosity and misogyny being expressed. One wonders if his personal life
is also in evidence here. Baraka (prior to the Black Arts Movement, when he
was known as LeRoi Jones) was married to and had children with a white
woman. As he began to embrace Black Power politics, he divorced his wife and
left her with the children. It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to
psychologically analyze Baraka’s motives but certainly this poem presents some
interesting questions about his motives.

23
This, in my opinion, is one of the major failings of the Black Power Movement
and black nationalism more generally. The exclusion of mixed-race people from

141

the construction of blackness is especially problematic when one considers the
fact that racial purity is notoriously difficult to ascertain and in the case of
African Americans, nearly 400 years of contact with Europeans and Native
Americans has produced a population is almost entirely made up of mixed-race
people. This idea will be taken up again in Chapter Four.

24
Kathleen Cleaver, statement at Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writer’s
Dissecting Globalization conference, New York University, 2004.

25
Mexico itself also functioned as a homeland for some Chicanos of this era.

26
http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/mecha/archive/plan.html. El Plan also listed
seven organizational goals, very much like the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point
Program. See also Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical
Activism in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

27
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco:
Aunt Lute Books, 1987) 3.

28
Veronica Cunningham, “ever since,” Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of
Chicana Literature eds. Tey Diana Rebolledo and Eliana S. Rivero (Tuscon:
University of Arizona Press, 1993) 101.

29
By “traditional narratives of racial passing” I am referring to the literature
surrounding African Americans passing as whites.

30
The “crown” may also be a reference to Christianity and thus may signal a
rejection of the Catholic constraints placed on her as a woman, that often only
left women two choices for their identities: the virgin or the whore.

31
Elaine Brown, Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (New York: Anchor
Books, 1993).

32
Brown 109.

33
For the account of Regina Davis’s beating, see Brown 444-445.

34
Brown 445.

35
Audra Lorde, Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices (New York: Kitchen
Table Press, 1990) 3.

142

36
We can also ask whether racism justifies violence against other women, for
example Eldridge Cleaver’s assertion in Soul on Ice that his rape of white women
was a political act. For a critique of this idea see Angela Davis, Women, Race
and Class (New York: Vintage, 1981).

37
Lorde 12.

38
Lorde 13.

39
Lorde 4.

40
Teresa McKenna, Migrant Song: Politics and Process in Contemporary
Chicano Literature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997) 110.

41
Rebolledo and Rivero 109.

42
Harvey Milk (1930-1978): the first openly gay elected official (San Francisco
City Supervisor), murdered in 1978. For more information on Harvey Milk see
http://www.lambda.net/~maximum/milk.html. Sally Gearhart: openly lesbian
activist, educator and writer. For more information see
http://www.sallymillergearhart.net/.

43
Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years (Boston: South End Press, 2000)
57.

44
Cunningham 152-53.

45
AnaLouise Keating, Gloria E. Anzaldúa: Interviews/Entrevistas (New York:
Routledge, 2000) 116.

46
Keating 48.

47
Keating 53-54.

48
Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati, “The Fifth Black Woman,” Journal of
Contemporary Legal Issues Vol. 11: 701-729.

49
For example Elaine Brown as Chairperson of the Black Panther Party.

50
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American
Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

143

51
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (California: The Crossing Press, 1984) 143.

52
Lorde 137.

53
Lorde 137.

54
This is absolutely not to suggest that the men of these movements or white
feminists are not bound by the same issues. I here am emphasizing the self-
awareness that some black women and Chicanas have exhibited in this area.
Their awareness is precisely what sets their writing and activism a part from
either racial/ethnic nationalist movements or (white) feminism.

55
Crenshaw’s theory comes after the end of the eras presented in this dissertation
however it is important to note that just because the women of the Black arts and
Chicano movements did not name “intersectionality” does not mean that they
weren’t engaging in the practice. Indeed, one may argue that Crenshaw is
indebted to the work of these earlier scholars and writers for laying the
groundwork for what would become “intersectionality.”

56
See Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex:
A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and
Anti-Racist Politics,” Feminist Legal Theory, ed. D. K. Weisberg (Philadelphia:
Temple UP, 1989) 57-81.

144

Chapter Four
Mixed Race / Mestizaje: The Place of Mixed-Race
People in Ethnic/Racial Nationalist Movements

The place of women and of mixed-race people within the Black
Power/Black Arts and Chicano movements presents a particularly
interesting point of conversation. By linking women and mixed-race
people I do not mean to ignore mixed-race men, however, women writers
of this era – particularly lesbian and/or feminist women – offer some
meaningful critiques of ethnic/racial nationalism that presupposes a
homogeneous population. What is most interesting here are the
differences between the responses of black women and Chicanas to this
issue within their movements. For many in the Black Arts/Black Power
movement (male and female), old notions of blackness still held true.
Just as the larger society created a rule of hypodescent, blacks themselves
often subscribed to this idea and used it forge community between blacks
of varying social and economic classes, as well as geographic locations and
genders. Chicano/as, on the other hand, had a long history of identifying
as a mixed-race population that was deployed in very specific ways during
the Chicano Movement. Language use and an adherence to “barriology”
thus became signifiers of the new Chicano consciousness.

145
The Black Power/Black Arts movement, predicated as it was on a
“new black aesthetic,” often reinscribed oppressive language and
ideologies that caused divisions within the movement. In Liberation,
Imagination and the Black Panther Party (2001), Kathleen Cleaver and
George Katsiaficas demonstrate the ways in which the Black Panther
Party made attempts at eradicating all forms of oppression, both within
and outside the Party. Cleaver says that the women in the BPP were
fighting to end “the legal, social, psychological, economic, and political
limitations still being imposed on our human rights, and on our rights as
citizens. That was the context in which we fought to remove limitations
imposed by gender, clearly aware that it could not be fought as a stand-
alone issue.”
1
Katsiaficas’s essay on the 1970 Revolutionary People’s
Constitutional Convention also seeks to dismantle the myth that the BPP
was unaware, and unwilling to do anything about, gender discrimination.
At the 1970 convention, members from a wide variety of liberation
groups, including the Black Panthers, Brown Berets, feminists and gay
activists, assembled to draw up a new constitution based on equality and
true freedom for all people. While Katsiaficas is clear that some things
(like the use of the word “man” to mean all human beings) were still in
place, the event, which boasted perhaps 15,000 in attendance, made great
strides in calling for an end to all forms of oppression. Cleaver and
Katsiaficas both argue that there were attempts to bridge the gap between

146
different kinds of oppressions, even among the most militant groups.
However, as the autobiographies of some of these women indicate, this
across-the-board fight for equality was uneven and for some women, their
experiences in the Black Power Movement were marked by gender
discrimination, even as they fought for racial and ethnic liberation.
2

Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter published a poem in The Black
Panther that typifies the position of many men towards women in Black
Power movement.
3
He immediately takes the stance of a male protector
of fragile womanhood, although he’s careful to place blame on a force
outside himself:
I must confess that I still breathe
Though you are not yet free . . .
Forgive my cowards heart . . .
For I have just awakened from a deep
deep, sleep
And I be hazed, and dazed, and scared
His love for black women (in this case black mothers) is emphasized by
his overwhelming sadness as he recounts the life black women are made
to endure:
BLACK MOTHER I curse you drudging
years the rapes, heart-breaks, sweat

147
and tears . . .
You cried in pain, I turned my back
Although he acknowledges that he (and by extension black men in
general) have failed to protect black women from emotional and physical
harm, he does not seem to acknowledge the role black men have
performed in causing some of the harm. His own (and black men’s)
chauvinism and gender oppression barely registers. Instead, Carter
seems to equate the oppression he experiences with that black women
face. In language that calls to mind a chivalric past he writes:
But I swear on siege night dark and
gloom
A rose I’ll wear to honor you, and
when I fall the rose in hand you’ll be
free and I a man
For Carter, it appears that the black man’s role is to “honor” black
women and provide protection against the conditions that oppress them
both. The particular nature of black women’s suffering – and the ways
that black made adherence to patriarchy is complicit in their oppression –
is left out of the poem. While the poem purports to celebrate black
womanhood/motherhood, it instead celebrates black male strength. The
true hero of the poem is not a black woman but a black man who has
“awakened” to his manhood and vows to fight gallantly forever more for

148
the “honor” of black women. Black men and women in this construction
are not even the partners in revolutionary struggle. In Carter’s poem,
men engage in struggle on behalf of black women. The women do not act
but are only acted upon (violently) as victims until they are rescued by
their chivalrous men.
Despite these poems and statements, it is clear that commitment of
black women to the Black Power and Black Arts movement cannot be
questioned. Former Black Panther Don Williams has stated that the BPP
often had more female than male members and that the women were
instrumental in the success of many of the BPP’s programs such as the
Free Breakfast Program. He recalls that, “it was the women who were on
the phones getting groceries for families, food for the breakfasts and
things like shoes and clothes.” In addition, the women often acted as the
voice of reason, moderating disputes between the men: “It was the women
who brought a certain semblance of civility to the movement.” Although
the outward appearance of the BPP was deeply masculine and there were
issues arising around patriarchy and misogynist behavior, that the BPP
(Williams remembers) did work to create equality between its female and
male members. However, Williams notes, in the 1960s and early 1970s all
Americans (not just radical blacks) were entrenched in a traditional set of
values that did not recognize equality between the sexes. While the BPP
openly supported women’s rights, for example, the type of work open to

149
women within the organization was often in keeping with patriarchal
notions of “women’s work.” Williams’s own example (women working
with the Free Breakfast Program) is an example. While on the one hand
women were elevated to positions of relative power (and a few to supreme
power), on the other hand many of them found themselves working
within organizational structures that were far from gender-neutral. Thus,
the BPP’s efforts were not always consistent or successful. Some men
supported the liberation of women; some did not. Yet those who did
support women often reprimanded their comrades who did not and some
women were able to engage in a variety of ways on a somewhat equal
footing with the men.
4

Cheryl Clark also argues that women writers’ involvement was
crucial to the struggle. She states that “[b]lack women were key poets,
theorists, and revolutionaries during the era of the new black
consciousness movement of the late twentieth century.”
5
While she
acknowledges the ways in which the black male members of the
movement did not always welcome the women poets (“because of the
‘race’s’ race to manhood”), she demonstrates the ways in which women
poets such as Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez and Audre Lorde not only
upheld the Black Arts Movement nationalist, anti-racist project but also
critiqued the patriarchal tendencies of some its male members. Many of

150
the women would later attempt to define a new black female aesthetic in
response to the issues raised in movement.
Interestingly, during the movement many of the women wrote
poems for and about black men.
6
Such poems often were written for the
women’s lovers (past lovers, would-be lovers) and position the women as
helpers for the men as they (the men) struggle for liberation. For example,
Sonia Sanchez’s short poem “black magic” celebrates the physical, sexual
love between the speaker of the poem and her man:
magic
my man
is you
turning
my body into
a thousand
smiles.
black
magic is your
touch
making
me breathe.
7

While one may be tempted to dismiss the poem as a “love” poem
(in the derogatory sense perhaps held by Baraka) rather than a

151
“revolutionary” poem, we must consider the ways in which Sanchez is
expressing an individual sexual identity traditionally reserved for men.
First published in 1969, the poem declares the need for sexual
gratification for the (black) woman speaker. She expresses a longing to be
with the man who turns her body “into/ a thousand/ smiles.” Rather than
being the passive recipient of the man’s affections, she states her desire
outright hoping, one might argue, that he would read the poem and
respond favorably. Sanchez thus turns centuries of beliefs about black
women’s sexuality on their heads. In her poem there is no evidence of an
asexual “mammy” or a whoring “jezebel.”
8
Instead, the speaker is a
(black) woman deeply in love (or at least lust) with one man, her man.
Declaring this love publicly in a poem is also an effort to end the silence
surrounding the true nature of black love. Not only does she counter the
jezebel and mammy stereotypes, she publicly affirms black love and
sexuality as positive, rather than negative, aspects of black life.
9

Elsewhere, Sanchez’s poems express the necessity of black men
and women to depend upon one another. Usually, it is the black woman
who is waiting for the black man to “get it together.” Rather than being
the leaders of the revolution, the men are depicted as confused and bit
behind the women in their evolution. In “to all brothers” she critiques
black men who are swayed by “grey chicks”
10
who “hang you up/. .
./parading their/tight asses/in front of you.”
11
The poem ends with the

152
speaker stating “yeah./brother/this sister knows/and waits.” The speaker
of the poem believes that black men are weak when confronted with
“grey” women who throw themselves at them.
Like many other Black Arts writers, such as Baraka, Sanchez refers
to mixed-race (mulatto) women as “grey chicks.” Thus she is invested in
the same essentialist notions of blackness that her contemporaries
espouse. “Grey chicks” are not only racially suspect, they are politically
suspect as well. “Blackness” stands in both as a marker of racial
difference (and solidarity) but also as shorthand for political solidarity.
“Black,” in this era, was often contrasted with “Negro” and marked a
political leaning that was different from the politics of the Civil Rights era
“Negroes” like Martin Luther King, Jr. “Grey” (as a signifier of mixed-
raceness) is another way that the boundaries of blackness were policed
from within. As noted in my discussion of Baraka, such constructions of
black identity refuse to acknowledge the mixed-race heritage of most
African Americans. Further, this essentialized blackness supports
theoretical assumptions of racial purity and the racist idea of the rule of
hypodescent.
12
Her anger seems not to be directed at the men but at the
women who seduce the men either by stating their intentions (“some will
say out/right/baby I want/to ball you”) or by declaring a false racial pride
(“while smoother/ones will in/tegrate your/blackness”). The speaker of
the poem – a real black woman – waits for the man to come to his senses.

153
The speaker thus adheres to an essential or authentic blackness that is at
least partially based on biology. The implication in the poem is that the
black man will eventually realize the error of his ways and return to an
authentic blackness characterized by his love for black women.
This poem, then, places racial solidarity above any gender
solidarity that might be possible between women. Indeed, gender
solidarity between “grey” and black women is foreclosed in this poem
because they are 1) competing for black men and 2) the black woman does
not trust “grey” women. The black woman views the “grey” women as
opportunists who take black men away from black women (their true
mates) by any means necessary – including disingenuous racial solidarity
with the black men. This point of view refuses to view the world from the
subject-position of the “grey” women. Instead, the only authentic (black)
people in the poem are the black man and black speaker and it is their
racial solidarity that binds them together.
This construction of blackness is further complicated by white
America’s response to black people. The long history of treating lighter-
skinned blacks differently (read: better, at least in some cases) than
darker skinned blacks has been internalized by black people themselves.
Although there is certainly room for debate on the issue, it is the
perception of privilege for light-skinned blacks that drives poets like
Baraka and Sanchez. As H. Rap Brown explains:

154
Color is the first thing Black people in america become
aware of. You are born into a world that has given color
meaning and color becomes the single most determining
factor of your existence. Color determines where you live,
how you live and, under certain circumstances, if you will
live. Color determines your friends, your education, your
mother’s and father’s jobs, where you play, what you play
and, more importantly, what you think of yourself.

In and of itself, color has no meaning. But the white world
has given it meaning – political, social, economic, historical,
physiological and philosophical. Once color has been given
meaning, an order is thereby established. If you are born
Black in america, you are of the last order. As kids we
learned the formula for the structure of american society:

If you’re white,
You’re all right.
If you’re brown,
Stick around.
But if you’re black,
Get back, get back.
13

This thinking, while obviously exposing a deep psychological trauma
caused by racism, also serves a political purpose. Nationalism based on
race has been a very powerful uniting force for people of African descent
in the United States. As far back as the abolitionist movement, organizing
around race has been a strategy for uniting blacks of various social and
economic classes to fight the common (white) oppressor. However useful
this strategy may have been (or may continue to be), it does foreclose

155
participation by people of African descent who do not chose to identify
solely as “black.”
The poetry of the Black Arts/ Black Power movement made clear
that “black” was the only acceptable identifier. As a source of race pride,
it was an invaluable tool to combat the denigration of blackness present in
the wider society.
14
However, this totalizing identification bounded the
movement – poets, activists, and the general public – in terminology and
ideology that was at least in part an internalization of the racist society.
Further, when calling people of African descent to action, the label “black”
forced a choice based not on political sympathies but on phenotype and
the supposed biology of race. For example, many poets (male and female)
wrote poems for the younger generation of black people. Nikki Giovanni’s
“Poem for Black Boys” (1967) is typical in its concentration on young
black males as the leaders of the next wave of the revolution.
15
The
speaker begins by asking “Where are your heroes, my little Black ones?”
and then gives them examples to live up to:
You should play run-away-slave
or Mau Mau
These are more in line with your history

Ask your mothers for a Rap Brown gun
Santa just may comply if you wish hard enough

156
Ask for CULLURD instead of Monopoly
DO NOT SIT IN DO NOT FOLLOW KING
GO DIRECTLY TO THE STREETS
This is a game you can win
In this way Giovanni’s speaker exchanges traditional (Euro-
American) heroes for those from the history of people of African descent.
Rather than invoking American heroes such as George Washington or
even Abraham Lincoln, Giovanni draws on the tradition of black
resistance to oppression through admonishing children to “play run-
away-slave.” She forces her readers to view themselves as part of an
international struggle for liberation by referencing the Mau Mau who
fought for Kenyan independence from Britain throughout most of the
1950s.
16
In keeping with the dominant ideology of the Black Power
movement, the speaker rejects the non-violence of Martin Luther King
and advocates the militancy of Black Power. The poem espouses a very
particular form of blackness – one in which there is no room for the
ambiguity that a mixed-race person may embody. Like Fuller, Giovanni’s
speaker sees the revolution in the streets. Violent action recurs in the
poem as the speaker stresses that the black boys:
Play Back-to-Black
Grow a natural and practice vandalism . . .
Also a company called Revolution has just issued a

157
special kit for little boys called Burn Baby
I’m told it has full instructions for how to siphon gas
and fill a bottle
Here the speaker invokes the aesthetic style of Black Power
(natural hair styles) and the actions of black revolutionaries (vandalism
and Molotov cocktails). Thus, not only is one to act the part of a
revolutionary, one must also look the part. The actions are not viewed
here as criminal acts, but as part of a liberation struggle. The poem
implies is that the violence done to black people must be answered in kind
and that such action is both necessary and justified. Sit-ins and marches
will not lead to liberation but burning things down will. Like Baraka’s
work, Giovanni’s poem exists as part of this revolutionary action and
therein resides the value of the poem itself. Giovanni writes:
And this poem I give is worth much more than any
nickle bag
or ten cent toy
And you will understand all too soon
That you, my children of battle, are your heroes
You must invent your own games and teach us old ones
how to play
We can hear echoes of Baraka’s admonishment that “poems are
bullshit unless they are /teeth or trees or lemons piled/ on a step.”
17

158
Baraka’s “nickel hearts” are now “nickel bags” and where Baraka wanted
“poems that kill,” Giovanni wants her readers to do the killing. Further,
she underscores the violent history of black people in the United States
with the phrase “my children of battle” although it is not clear whether the
battle to which she refers is the battle of whites against blacks (racism) or
the battle being waged against white supremacy by black people. Nor
does she indicate a timeframe for the battle, suggesting that it is ongoing
and therefore will pass to the next generation. Finally, while Giovanni
uses the term “children,” the title clearly states that she addresses this
poem to “black boys.” So, one might ask: what is the role of black girls?
Are they to write poems to inspire the boys? Are they to wait, like the
speaker in Sanchez’s “to all brothers,” for the black boys to grow into men
and claim them as their partners? Also, who are the “old ones” at the end
of the poem? Giovanni (if she is the speaker) places herself within this
group so it must be made up of both women and men. If this is true, why
are females excluded from the young generation of revolutionaries? Her
poem specifically links revolutionary action (and violence) to masculinity.
Although Giovanni is herself positioned within the liberation struggle, the
paradigm of male-centered leadership and activism still operates in this
poem. There is simply no room in her poem for a self-identified mixed-
race person. Mixed-race must be subsumed under the banner of “black”
in order for the mixed-race person to be involved in the action of the

159
poem. Once again, the rule of hypodescent rules and black over-rides any
other racial/ ethnic identification. The active participants she is
attempting to reach are self-identified black males, for whom (one
assumes) the choice to be part of the revolution is straight-forward and
self-evident.
Chicano/a poetry of the era addresses the idea of mixed-race very
differently. A mestizo consciousness was embraced that not only
acknowledged Spanish ancestry but also indigenous and (sometimes)
African ancestry. However, even within this new consciousness, a racial
hierarchy developed. African ancestry was often all but ignored while
indigenismo was upheld. Connections to an indigenous history and
culture were part of a larger nationalist argument based on the conquest
of northern Mexico by the United States. As the indigenous people of the
annexed land, Chicano/as could stake a claim to sovereignty, as evidenced
in El Plan de Aztlán.
The acknowledgement of a mixed heritage did not, however, mean
that all people of Mexican descent were automatically included in the new
consciousness. In addition to the hierarchy based on racial background,
there existed a hierarchy linked to one’s supposed to connection to (or
distance from) the “real” Chicano community – the barrio community of
many major cities. To that end, knowledge of barriology became a
signifier of inclusion. As Raúl Homero Villa explains, “barriology was a

160
playful but serious promotion of the cultural knowledge and practices
particular to the barrio.”
18
Rather than relying on a knowledge of the rural
space common to other Mexican American movements for social and
political change, such as Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers,
barriology was based in a knowledge of the urban landscape and the
segregated barrios in which many Mexican Americans were forced to
live.
19
The Con Safos magazine and artist collective even produced a
“Barriology Exam” which asked such questions as:
What does the barrio sidewalk mechanic utilize to support
his car above ground?
What is the single greatest cause of interruptions in street
games?
20

The ability to answer such questions correctly could earn one a “Ph.D. in
Barriology” and prove one’s allegiance to – and inclusion in – the
Chicano community represented by the barrio. Fluency in barriology is
linked to a mestizo consciousness that was borne of conflict, conquest,
resistance, violence and struggle. It signals a knowledge of historical and
present injustice as well as the various resistances to these injustices. It is
also linked to the supremacy of an indigenous identity. According to
Rafael Pérez-Torres:
An emphasis on a Mexican context in understanding
Chicano mestizaje leads to a kind of litmus test for ethnic
identity. The somatic manifestation of “Indianness”
becomes the marker of one’s identity . . . Within an essential

161
nationalist discourse, Chicanismo is measured by the color
of the skin and the details of physiognomy. Clearly, this
position can easily translate into other non-racialized areas:
the test of ethnic identity can be tied to one’s linguistic skills
– fluency with code-switching, bilingualism, slang – one’s
clothes, one’s taste in music, economic condition, place of
domicile, nationality, etc. Chicano/a ethnic identity
becomes essentialized, premised on meeting quite specific
physical or social conditions.
21

In this way Chicano/as who adhere to this particular ethnic identity police
the boundaries of the community. Writing against the essentialized
identity, Chicana poets, as Pérez-Torres asserts, represent bodies as sites
“where linguistic, familial, racial, and cultural vectors cross.”
22
In other
words, Chicana writers – perhaps in particular Chicana lesbian and / or
feminist writers – embody and write from a place of intersectionality.
This contrasts with the indigenismo of the Chicano movement. Cherríe
Moraga writes that:
Chicano Nation is a mestizo nation conceived in double-
rape: first, by the Spanish and then by the Gringo. . . in the
late sixties, there was no room for Chicano ambivalence
about being Indians, for it was our Indian blood and history
of resistance against both Spanish and Anglo invaders that
made us rightful inheritors of Aztlán.
23

However, Chicanas (including Moraga) did contest the male-centric
construction of Aztlán and the binding gender roles inscribed by an
adherence to a “traditional” mestizo way of life. They rejected a rejection
of Anglo supremacy that was predicated on a patriarchal supremacy
within the movement. For these women, mestizo consciousness included

162
ambivalence in so far as ambivalence created space for redefinition,
questioning and for making alliances with feminists, gays and lesbians,
and other groups with whom they shared interests.
For example, Lydia Camarillo’s poem “Mi Reflejo” reimagines an
indigenous history so that the women of that history are no longer traitors
and victims, but heroines and activists. She begins by addressing Spanish
(and Anglo?) invaders:
Who goes there?
It is I.
Don’t you recognize me?
You made me your prostitute,
Me hiciste tu esclava,
Conquistaste y colonizaste mi gente.
Me hiciste la “Vendida.”
24

Quickly, however, the mood of the poem shifts. Camarillo’s speaker
asserts herself:
I have come to pay your dues,
I have come to FREE my people.
I AM MALINCHE.
Thus the indigenous Mexican woman traditionally blamed for aiding the
Spanish conquistadores takes her revenge – and avenges herself in the
process. In a linguistic move that may be accusing a long-ago foe or may

163
refer to contemporary discrimination both from within as well as from
outside the Chicano community, she writes:
Don’t you remember me?
Your chauvinism impedes my inner growth
. . .
you smashed all women’s hopes
you destroyed my life.
In this poem, Camarillo resurrects several denigrated women of Mexican
American mythology and history, giving them new life, new voices and
agency in a contemporary moment. In addition, she code-switches by
using both Spanish and English signaling an inclusion/exclusion from
both Spanish and Anglo cultures. What she creates is a new cultural
space, a borderlands where the doubly-colonized speaks to both
colonizers in their language. Despite using Spanish and English, the
effect is to create a poem that is both part of and not part of either culture.
Instead, it is a singularly Chicana space – woman-centered, bilingual.
Don’t you know me?
I am the mother of my people.
I am the symbol of fertility,
pride,
strength,

164
beauty,
and wisdom.
The mixed-race nature of the people is thus a source of strength rather
than diminishment. The women who are the “mothers” of the people pass
their strength to subsequent generations, regardless of conquest and
exploitation. In fact, the enduring nature of that strength can only be
proven through conflict.
In this way, Camarillo (and other Chicana poets) are linked to
some of the poetry produced by African American women. Giovanni’s
“Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)” is one example. Although
adhering to an essential blackness, here Giovanni links blackness directly
to Africa as a homeland, not unlike the linking of Chicana foremothers to
pre-conquest Mexico or Aztlán. From the first stanza, Giovanni asserts
the strength of black womanhood and evinces a sense of humor not
always apparent in Black Arts writings.
I was born in the Congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred
years falls

165
into the center giving divine perfect
light
I am bad
25

The speaker of the poem (assumed to be a black woman) is thus
situated within the African continent and is, in fact, pan-African as she
moves between the Congo (Central Africa) and the Fertile Crescent (North
East Africa/Egypt). Not only is this her home, she is responsible for the
most enduring legacies of the Egyptian culture: the Sphinx and the
pyramids. The speaker is immortal. Although the Egyptian culture that
produced these monuments hasn’t existed in thousands of years, she
claims that she was there and that she is responsible for bringing them
into being. In this way, Giovanni gives the black woman speaker (and all
black women) a history and heritage that stretches far beyond the history
of the Unites States, which is a history replete with slavery, racism and
subjugation. In addition, the imperialism of the U.S. and Europe are no
longer the dominant narratives of Africa, the Middle East or even Europe.
Instead, the speaker of the poem (clearly an African) predates European
and U.S. intervention and, in fact, is far more powerful than either.
Perhaps European and U.S. forces dominate Africa today but her
achievements are still visible thousands of years later. In later stanzas,
the very landscape is her creation. Given the backdrop of real-world
African independence movements, this poem may also signal a

166
resurgence of African sovereignty and African control of Africa’s future.
She also invokes U.S. black vernacular speech by saying her design of the
pyramid was “tough” and that she is “bad.” Thus Giovanni signifies
solidarity with African American culture as well as African history and
liberation struggles.
26
She continues, writing:
I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
The female speaker is now divine, having drunk “nectar with allah”
and all-powerful, able to control the weather and create rivers. Further,
she is the mother of Nefertiti who was the mother-in-law of Pharaoh
Tutankhamun and some scholars believe she may have ruled Egypt
herself under an assumed name. She is also widely believed to have been
exceptionally beautiful. The beauty of the speaker derives then both from
her association with Nefertiti and her own divinity and power.
Nowhere in this poem does Giovanni elevate a male presence
above that of the black female speaker. Even as the speaker discusses her

167
son, she reasserts her own power. She says, “For a birthday present when
he was three/ I gave my son hannibal an elephant/ He gave me rome for
mother’s day/ My strength flows ever on.” Even the military prowess of
Hannibal and his ability to sack Rome is secondary to his mother’s
strength. The poem reaches a peak in the fifth stanza when Giovanni
writes, “I turned myself into myself and was/ jesus/ men intone my loving
name/ All praises All praises/ I am the one who would save.” The divinity
hinted at in earlier stanzas is now explicit. The female speaker’s gender is
now called into question, as we know Jesus to have been male. Perhaps
more intriguingly, she calls into question the gender of Jesus who, it
seems, is an incarnation of a female goddess. Men, who have created a
male god in their own image, “invoke [her] loving name,” without
recognizing the female source of their god. Finally, the short last stanzas
reinforce the super-natural qualities inherent in the black female speaker:
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended
except by my permission

I mean . . . I . . . can fly
like a bird in the sky . . .
The image the reader is left with is of a strong, divine, powerful
female who is in control of the world and of her own image. She is neither

168
subject to male patriarchy nor racist stereotypes. Giovanni thus creates a
black female image that encourages black women to understand
themselves as part of a longer history in which they were active agents
rather than passive victims. She inspires self-confidence and dignity.
27

The role of racial essentialism in these nationalist movements is
clear. Used as a platform for uniting diverse populations, race has long
been enacted in the service of liberation struggles. The place of mixed-
race people in the movements is less clear. Unless the mixed-race person
of African descent disavows their mixedness in favor of a singular black
identity, they seem to be left out of the discourse and struggle altogether.
For Chicano/as the situation is different due to the acknowledged mestizo
heritage of the Chicano/a community. Yet even here, certain
constructions of hybridity are privileged over others. An indigenous
heritage is privileged over an African one; a barrio sensibility is privileged
over a mainstream urban identity and male-centered symbols are favored
over woman-centered ones. The work produced by women in the Black
Arts/Black Power and Chicano movements sometimes challenged and
sometimes upheld these notions. Subsequent literary movements, such
as the multiculturalism that characterized the 1980s and 1990s altered
this landscape and opened a space for mixed-race women of color to enter
the conversation without having to deny or ignore some parts of
themselves in the service of a pre-defined nationalist discourse.

169

Chapter Four Endnotes

1
Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas, Liberation, Imagination and the
Black Panther Party (New York: Routledge, 2001) 123.

2
See for example, Elaine Brown Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story which
details many incidents of violence against women within the BPP.

3
Alprentice Carter, “In Honor of Mother’s Day” The Black Panther May 22,
1970. Carter was murdered along with John Huggins at the University of
California, Los Angeles on January 17, 1969 after an altercation at a Black
Student Union meeting involving members of Us Organization . Carter was a
founder of the Southern California chapter of the BPP. See Laura Pulido, Black,
Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2006); Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black
Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1997).

4
Don Williams, remarks made at “The Black Panther and Brown Beret
Movements: Connecting the Past to the Present,” University of Southern
California, February 20, 2007. Mr. Williams spoke of his involvement in the
Southern California chapter of the BPP and his remarks should be taken as his
recollection of his personal involvement, not necessarily as a reflection of the
BPP as a whole.

5
Cheryl Clark, “After Mecca”: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement
(New Jersey: Rutgers University, 2005) 1.

6
There may be many reasons that women wrote poems for men. In a movement
that was, in part, an attempt to recapture a supposed loss of masculinity (an
emasculation purported to have resulted from slavery and matriarchy), both men
and women were perhaps attempting to reinscribe certain notions of patriarchal
power. However, as Sanchez demonstrates, it is also possible that women were
reacting against the male-centered poetry written by men. That is, some women
wrote poems that centered men however within the poems existed a critique of
male dominance. The men in many of these poems fall short – they fail to live
up to the promises of co-revolutionaries, co-creators of a new world order, and
co-producers of the next generation of black revolutionaries.

7
Sonia Sanchez, “black magic,” The Black Poets ed. Dudley Randall (New
York: Bantam, 1971) 233.

170

8
The Mammy and Jezebel are archetypal figures for African American women.
Both images are highly racist. The Mammy is an overweight, very dark-skinned
domestic black woman (originally a slave) who serves her white family with
unflagging loyalty. Mammy subverts her own needs (indeed, she is not thought
to have any) for the white family. She has no sexual life; all her energies go into
providing food and comfort for her masters. Jezebel, on the other hand, is a
beautiful (often lighter-skinned) young woman who is driven by her sexual
appetites. She seduces men of both races (white and black) but her supposed
seduction of white men was used to justify the raping of black women by white
men, particularly during slavery. See Gloria Wade-Gayles, No Crystal Stair:
Visions of Race and Sex in Black Women's Fiction (New York: Pilgrim Press.
1984); Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge,
Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman,
1990); K. S. Jewell, From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond: Cultural
Images and the Shaping of U.S. Social Policy (New York: Routledge, 1993);
Deborah Gray White, Ar'N't I A Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South
(New York: Norton, 1999).

9
In a society where black women are routinely dismissed as sexually
promiscuous and black men as sexually violent (as rapists), Sanchez’s poem
takes on further importance and power. Love is one emotion not generally
associated with African Americans – a denial of humanity and trivialization of
the emotional lives of black people that dates back at least as far as the founding
of the nation. See, for example, Thomas Jefferson Notes on the State of Virginia
1785 (New York: Penguin, 1998).

10
Both Sanchez and Baraka use “grey” to denote mixed-race or mulatto people.

11
Sonia Sanchez, “to all brothers,” The Black Poets ed. Dudley Randall (New
York: Bantam, 1971) 231.

12
The rule of hypodescent is often known as the “One-drop Rule.” Instituted as
a way to keep black people in subjugation, it states that any person with “one
drop” of “black blood” is by definition a black person. This rule is never applied
in the reverse (that is, a person with “one drop” of “white blood” is never defined
as white). Obviously problematic are the notions that race 1) exists and is
quantifiable and 2) is contained in the blood. This would have far-reaching
implications, including the enslavement of mixed-race people, the Jim Crow
subjugation of people who were only partially (and perhaps not phenotypically)
of African descent, racial passing, and the prohibition of blood transfusions
between people of different races. Although we now know that race is a social

171

construct and not a biological one, the rule of hypodescent is slow to disappear.
It is present in everyday speech (“the black community”) and is often still
promoted by black nationalists.

13
H. Rap Brown, Die Nigger Die! (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2002) 2.

14
For example, James Brown’s “Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud!”
became a rallying cry for many of this generation, as was the phrase “Black is
Beautiful.” Even Jesse Jackson’s “I Am Somebody” campaign touched a nerve
for people of African descent who responded to the very powerful rhetoric of
hope, beauty and self-worth inherent in such sentiments. My claim here is not
that this rhetoric wasn’t useful or even necessary but I want to call attention to
the ways in which some people of African descent might be put off by, or left out
of, these racially-based constructions of community and activism.

15
Nikki Giovanni, “Poem for Black Boys” The Black Poets ed. Dudley Randall
(New York: Bantam, 1971) 325.

16
“Mau Mau,” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Online at
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9051470/Mau-Mau. Accessed June 2007.

17
Amiri Baraka, “Black Art,” The Black Poets ed. Dudley Randall (New York:
Bantam, 1971) 223.

18
Raúl Homero Villa, Barrio-Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano
Literature and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000) 7.

19
Barriology, it can be argued, privileges urban knowledge over rural knowledge
thus centers the urban experiences of many Chicanos.

20
Villa 9.

21
Pérez-Torres, “Chicano Ethnicity, Cultural Hybridity, and the Mestizo Voice,”
Mixing Race, Mixing Culture ed. Monika Kaup and Debra J. Rosenthal (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2002) 165.

22
Pérez-Torres 181.

23
Cherrie Moraga, “Queer Aztlán,” in Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and
Society ed. Francisco H. Vázquez and Rodolfo D. Torres (New York & Oxford:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003) 262.

172

24
Camarillo “Mi Reflejo,” in Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana
Literature. ed. Tey Diana Rebolledo and Eliana S. Rivero (Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 1993) 268.

25
Nikki Giovanni, “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why),” in The Women
and the Men (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1975) 19-20.

26
Given the internationalist perspectives of several Black Power organizations
(notably the Black Panther Party), it is not a stretch to read Giovanni’s poem
within the context of African struggles to throw off colonialism.

173

Conclusion

Many of the women writers who came out of the Black Arts and
Chicano movements would subsequently develop new literary, rhetorical
and theoretical strategies that refocused emphasis away from black and
Chicano males and centered black and Chicana women’s experiences.
For example, the Black Arts Movement helped poet/playwright
Ntozake Shange redefine her identity as an artist. After the Black Arts
Movement, she dedicated herself to working with women of color (both
U.S. black women and others). She argued for a movement towards a
black women’s aesthetic in a 1979 interview in Black American Literature
Forum. Therein she asserted that:
[t]he same rhetoric that is used to establish the Black Aesthetic, we
must use to establish a women’s aesthetic, which is to say that those
parts of reality that are ours, those things about our bodies, the cycles
of our lives that have been ignored for centuries in all castes and
classes of our people, are to be dealt with now.
1

She argues that women may have to create or embrace female
symbols as part of this new women’s aesthetic: “Using male-identified
symbols,” she says, “and myths to talk about ourselves. That’s
ridiculous.”
2
Shange was not the only black woman to reach this
conclusion. Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker, for example,

174
each articulated similar sentiments and developed creative and critical
texts in response to this issue.
Barbara Smith’s 1979 essay, “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism”
argues that the particular invisibility of black women in U.S. society
requires a specific critique of black women’s literature. Such a critique
understands the particular ways black women are excluded from
mainstream America, traditional (white) feminism and the discourses of
black nationalism posited by black male leaders. While Shange made her
argument from the creative writer’s perspective, Smith argued as a
literary critic and community activist. It is clear that both arguments are
linked. Not only do black women need to create and resurrect black
female myths, those who critique the writers must do so from a place of
ideological understanding, knowledge of and respect for the lives of black
women. This is, of course, precisely what Fuller argued in 1968 in terms
of developing a cadre of black literary critics.
Shange and Smith were not alone in this struggle. Other women
such as Audre Lorde were deeply influenced by their experiences during
the Black Arts/Black Power era. As Lorde states in Sister Outsider (1984):
Over and over again in the 60s I was asked to justify my existence
and my work, because I was a woman, because I was a Lesbian,
because I was not a separatist, because some piece of me was not
acceptable. Not because of my work but because of my identity. I
had to learn to hold on to all the parts of me that served me, in
spite of the pressure to express only one to the exclusion of all
others.
3

175
Emphasizing the multi-faceted natures of her experiences and identity,
Lorde indicts black politics and leaders but also “white America,” which
was “. . . more than pleased to sit back as spectator while Black militant
fought Black Muslim, Black Nationalist badmouthed the non-violent, and
Black women were told that our only useful position in the Black Power
movement was prone. The existence of Black lesbian and gay people was
not even allowed to cross the public consciousness of Black America.”
4

Finally, she declares that “[t]hat is how I learned that if I didn’t define
myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for
me and be eaten alive.”
5
Here, Lorde anticipates Kimberle Crenshaw’s
theory of intersectionality. Intersectionality requires us to take into
account all of the aspects of a person’s identity (gender, race, ethnicity,
class, sexual orientation, etc.) when considering how to remedy injustice
and develop public policy and law to protect individuals from abuses and
discrimination.
6
The struggle for self-definition – central to the Black
Power/ Black Arts movement generally – was thus particularly salient and
imperative for black women.
For some black women (in this case, black women writers), the
Black Arts/ Black Power Movement provided an arena in which to create
and to struggle for liberation but also foreclosed activism and artistic
production that did not fit the proscribed parameters set up by its male
leaders. Black women writers such as Shange, Lorde, Walker, Smith and

176
others would take the lessons of the Black Power/ Black Arts movement,
the lessons of the (white) feminist struggle and attempt to fashion artistic
and critical texts that encompassed the multiplicity (or intersectionality)
of being black, female, mother, lesbian, etc. in late 20
th
century United
States.
Alice Walker’s womanism, in particular, challenged the separatist
nature of much of the Black Arts movement, at least as envisioned by men
like Fuller and Baraka. In “Some Implications of Womanist Theory”
(1990), Sherley Ann Williams comments: “Womanist theory is, by
definition, ‘committed to the survival and wholeness of entire people’
female and male, as well as to a valorization of women’s works in all their
varieties and multitudes.”
7
Just as various aspects of human identity
cannot be dissociated, womanist theory, as well as black feminist
criticism, cannot be divorced from the broader writing and reading of
African American literature. According to Williams, who is paraphrasing
Elaine Showalter, feminist criticism “challenges the fundamental
theoretical assumptions of literary history and criticism by demanding a
radical rethinking and revisioning of the conceptual grounds of literary
study that have been based almost entirely on male literary experiences.”
8

Womanist theory and black feminist theory likewise revise African
American and mainstream white literary histories and criticisms. Thus,
the contribution of such writers and theorists extends beyond providing a

177
new way to read black women’s writing and indeed offers new inroads
into our understanding of African American literature, whether written by
men or women.
For Chicanas, their involvement in el movimiento and with other
political movements altered the way they thought of themselves and
positioned themselves within their communities and the larger U.S.
context.
9
As previously discussed, Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory
opened a new way of conceptualizing Chicano/a culture and the forces
exerted both on and by Chicano/as and Anglo America. Further,
Anzaldúa and others rewrote and revisioned Mexican myths from a
Chicana feminist perspective thereby empowering Chicanas in new ways.
As Anzaldúa states:
There are certain myths – the stories of Coatilcue, la
Lllorona, la Chingada, la Virgen de Guagalupe, and
Coyolxauhqui, the moon goddess – that I associate
with women. I want to take these figures and rewrite
their stories. The figures we’re given have been
written from the male patriarchal perspective. . .The
dominant patriarchal culture betrayed these female
figures. . . First of all the indigenous males sold out
their goddesses by driving them underground, by
making them bad, by making them insignificant. The
contemporary Chicano and Mexican culture has done
the same thing by making one woman, la Chingada,
responsible for the loss of the indigenous tribes to the
Spanish conquerors. . . Making a connection between
all these oppressions and figures . . . helps me
formulate theories about where the oppressions
connect and where I can create empowering ways . . .
10

178
Anzaldúa thus expresses a form of intersectionality (“connection between
all these oppressions and figures”) that is specific to the Chicana
experience.
11
Like Shange, she links symbols and mythology to women’s
empowerment and activism. Cherríe Moraga also values women-centered
myth-(re)making and connects this to a larger issue of nationalism.
However, Moraga’s nationalism differs significantly from the nationalism
of the Chicano Movement: “As a Chicana lesbian, I know that the struggle
I share with all Chicanos and Indigenous peoples is truly one of
sovereignty, the sovereign right to wholly inhabit oneself (cuerpo y alma)
and one’s territory (pan y tierra).”
12
By (re)writing themselves into the
history and culture of Chicano/as, these women (and others) create a
basis for empowerment and self-identity that significantly counters
dominant masculinist constructions of Chicanas and Chicano/a history.
The contributions, then, of women who were involved in the Black
Arts/ Black Power and Chicano movements of the 1960s and 1970s is
obviously far-reaching. Exploring the experiences and writings these
women allows us to understand not only the long-lasting influence of the
movements but also the evolution of the American literary canon and its
attendant criticism. Perhaps more importantly, in the contemporary era,
we are faced with a myriad of challenges to equality, citizenship, and
freedom both from within the U.S. and abroad. We may be able to learn
from the successes (and failures) of the Black Arts/ Black Power

179
movement how to develop strategies to combat the fear, insularity and
separatism that have begun to characterize much of public life in the
United States post- 9/11.

180
Conclusion Endnotes

1
Blackwell, Henry, “An Interview with Ntozake Shange,” Black American
Literature Forum, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Winter, 1979): 136.

2
--- 136.

3
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider. (California: The Crossing Press, 1984) 143.

4
--- 137.

5
--- 137. It is important here to note that Carmichael and others dispute the
nature of his comment that “the only position for a black woman in the
movement is prone.” In Carmichael’s autobiography, his collaborator Michael
Thelwell recounts the statement of one of the women who was present at the
time. Mary King asserts that Carmichael’s statement was made late one evening
when the activists were unwinding “with a gallon of wine . . . seeking humor to
salve the hurts of the day.” It was during a series of jokes that Carmichael was
making that he uttered the notorious phrase. According to King, most people
(herself included) promptly forgot the statement until reporters got wind of it and
it hit the media. Certainly no one at the time thought he was serious or took
offense. King and another woman (Francesca Poletta) actually contacted the New
York Times just before Carmichael’s death and admonished them not to reprint
any of the statement when they wrote his obituary. For a full account of the
incident, see Carmichael & Thelwell, 430-435 and Mary King’s autobiography
Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. (New
York: William & Morrow, 1988).

6
See Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A
Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and
Anti-Racist Politics,” Ed. D. K. Weisberg Feminist Legal Theory. (Philadelphia:
Temple UP, 1989) 57-81.

7
Sherley Ann Williams, “Some Implications of Womanist Theory,” Reading
Black, Reading Feminist, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Meridian, 1990)
70.

8
--- p. 69.

9
Many women were not only involved in the Chicano Movement but also with
feminist, anti-Vietnam war and multiracial movements.

181

10
AnaLouise Keating, Gloria E. Anzaldúa: Interviews/Entrevistas (New York:
Routledge, 2000) 219-221.

11
Anzaldúa further argued that identities were unstable and shifting: “There are
many personalities and subpersonalities in you, and your identity shifts every
time you shift positions.” Thus intersectionality also means that sometimes race
is at the forefront of identity, sometimes class, sometimes sexual orientation all
depending on the context in which one is operating. This argument can also be
extended to groups, making the idea of racial or ethnic solidarity a fallacy given
the shifting identities of the groups at large and the individual subjects within the
group. See Analouise Keating,“Writing, Politics, and las Lesberadas: Platicando
con Gloria Anzaldúa” Chicana Leadership ed. Yolanda Flores Niemann et.al.
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2002) 120-143.

12
Cherrie Moraga, “Queer Aztlán,” Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and
Society, ed. Francisco H. Vázquez and Rodolfo D. Torres (New York & Oxford:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003) 272.

182
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation examines the work of women writers in the Black Arts and Chicano movements during the years 1965-1978. I argue that understanding the intersectional nature of the women's experiences is crucial for understanding their literary output. Further, I argue that Chicanas and African American women of this era challenged homogenous notions of community and racial identity and that we can trace the development of the Third World feminism and multiculturalism that came to the fore in the 1980s to this earlier period. Thus, this study also impacts the way we conceptualize identity formation and the creation of the literary canon. Investigating the ways in which these women integrated nationalist and feminist rhetoric and activism in their work is crucial for a full understanding of this critical period in U.S. history. At stake is an understanding of how Chicana and African American women in the United States have formed identities and communities

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Asset Metadata

Creator Ryder, Ulli Kira (author)

Core Title "As shelters against the cold": women writers of the Black Arts and Chicano movements, 1965-1978

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program American Studies and Ethnicity

Degree Conferral Date 2008-12

Publication Date 10/27/2010

Defense Date 08/27/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Black Arts movement,Black Power,borderlands theory,Chicano movement,civil rights,feminism,intersectionality,nationalism,OAI-PMH Harvest,racial identity formation,Third World feminism,womanism

Place Name USA (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor McKenna, Teresa (committee chair), Johnson, Dana (committee member), Sanchez, George J. (committee member)

Creator Email uryder@gmail.com,uryder@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1698

Unique identifier UC1310038

Identifier etd-Ryder-2415 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-121009 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1698 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Ryder-2415.pdf

Dmrecord 121009

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Ryder, Ulli Kira

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu