E-mail a friendPeniel E. Joseph
original airdate August 15, 2006
A leading scholar of African American history, Peniel E. Joseph teaches history and Africana Studies at the State University of New York-Stony Brook. He's a frequent commentator on civil rights, race and democracy issues, and his work has appeared in The New York Times and The Chronicle Review. His book, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, reveals the way in which Black Power redrew the landscape of American race relations. Joseph earned his doctorate in American history at Temple University.
Peniel E. Joseph
Tavis: Peniel E. Joseph is an assistant professor of Africana studies at the State University of New York, Stonybrook. His new book is called 'Waiting Till the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America.' Professor Joseph, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Peniel E. Joseph: Nice to be here.
Tavis: Let me start with what for me is a rather obvious question. What America has to learn from the Black Power movement.
Joseph: Okay, good question. In terms of the Black Power movement, the legacy of it is all around us. I'm a professor of Africana studies at Stonybrook. Black studies was institutionalized during that Black Power era. When we think about Black identity and African American pride, we went from Negro to colored people to really Black people because of that Black Power movement.
The whole notion of culture and politics and identity is transformed in American society because of that Black Power movement. But even bigger than that, Black Power really talks about race, violence, Democracy, in an expansive way that really transformed American race relations.
Tavis: To that latter point, when you say that Black Power talks about Democracy in a transformative way, I get that. I'm not sure that everybody else does. What do you mean by that?
Joseph: Well specifically Black Power activists, what they did was ratchet up the call to transform American civil society. And by that I mean when we think about Civil Rights, Civil Rights in a way showed the best face of African Americans in terms of a patient face, at times, even a passive face. Black Power activists really mandated a change that transformed American society, and they did it in a very muscular way.
People talk about robust self-determination, but Black Power activists really advocated radical self-determination. And remember that word radical just means to go to the root. So Black Power activists said that this racist culture breeded degradation and violence and poverty upon African Americans. And that the antidote wasn't to really reform American society, it was to radically transform American society.
Tavis: The reason why I asked that question about Black Power and Democracy is because I think, again, as a professor here you're the expert, not me. But I think you understand, even, that when you talk about Black Power, that is like oxymoronic to the notion of, it's antithetical, I should say, to the notion of Democracy, I think, in the minds of most Americans, including a lot of Black folk.
Joseph: Well, yeah.
Tavis: You'd argue that? You disagree?
Joseph: Well, I'd say that's the perception.
Tavis: That's what I mean, exactly. In the minds of most people, yes.
Joseph: Yeah. But when we think about Black Power, Stokely Carmichael's call for Black Power, what Carmichael was really advocating was self-determination, where Black people had the will to control their own fate in American society and abroad. So when we think about Black Power in that way, Carmichael was talking about from Harlem to Haiti, from Birmingham, Alabama to Bandung, Indonesia.
Tavis: Okay, hold that thought for just a second. How does that notion of Black people controlling their own destiny, as advocated by Stokely Carmichael, differ than MLK? He's saying the same thing.
Joseph: Well, they're saying it in different voices. They're saying it in different temperaments, and they have different strategies and tactics. Martin Luther King, Jr. never ceases from advocating nonviolence. And when we think about Stokely Carmichael, what Stokely Carmichael talked about was transforming American Democracy really by any means necessary.
He talked about self defense; he talked about a third world global revolution. Talked about community control. And before Black people forming alliances with White people, really having a really robust self-determination within the Black community before reaching out to cross racial alliances.
Tavis: I wonder whether or not you think that even with a wonderfully written book like this you can ever get any real traction on a conversation about the value of, about the contribution of the Black Power movement, as it were, when again, because perception is reality, there are too many people, even now, who when they hear Black Power, they think violence.
Joseph: No, I think the conversation is being made. I think even when we think about the contemporary context, when we talk about the crisis of Black male youth, we talk about African American empowerment and self-determination, even your book, 'The Covenant with Black America,' is an extension of that conversation in a different form. Remember, Black Power is very diverse.
We had people who were in business suits and dashikis. (Laugh) The last chapter of that book is called 'Dashikis and Democracy.' So we have to remember that it's a very varied movement. So I think what we're seeing right now, one of the reasons why I'm proud of the book is really that it shows us a conversation in a period in African American history that we really actively remember to forget.
And that's what these Black men and women, and the people I'm thinking of, Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver, who really wanted to transform American society, and did so with dignity and compassion, but were passionate about helping Black people, and really helping the United States and the wider world.
Because remember, Stokely Carmichael says that Black Power is actually universal, but it's universalism in Black. Meaning that Black people would be considered human beings. And if we treat Black people well, then it's gonna really reverberate throughout the globe.
Tavis: Okay. Why, then, do we, to your brilliant point, remember to forget? If all of that is wrapped up in there, and if all of that empowerment and enlightenment and encouragement can come out of that, say nothing of these persons you mentioned a moment ago who came out of that movement, who are great Americans themselves, if all that is up in there, why do remember to forget?
Joseph: Black Power is really a Pandora's Box. We think about the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers really challenged American society by saying that the Constitution and Democratic principle weren't really being lived up to. So when we think about Black Power, it opens up a Pandora's box, where we had Black men who were really saying they weren't gonna take it anymore.
Stokely Carmichael was the United States' biggest anti-war advocate from 1966 to 1967, even before Dr. King's eloquent Riverside speech on April 4, 1967. So when you have somebody like Stokely Carmichael saying hell, no, we won't go. And remember, the Panthers are like surrealist painters, actually trying to will a world that they don't see in existence into being.
So this really upsets a whole lot of different people. The whole notion of Black pride and determination and talking about culture of racism also upsets a lot of people, too, including Black folks. I think we live in a context where even those of us who teach in Black studies, some of us forget the origins of Black studies. And the origins of Black studies, certainly in a macro sense, as DuBois and Carter G. Woodson. But in terms of being institutionalized at elite Ivy League universities and at state institutions and even Black schools, it's this Black Power movement.
Tavis: Is it ironic or something else, fill in the blank, for you, then, that out of this movement comes, in part, Black studies, African American studies, Afro-American studies, by any other name, the study of Black people, is it ironic for you, then, that out of this movement comes this discipline that now in many places, to your point, is under attack. Under attack at worst, not being supported at best, on campuses across the country?
Joseph: Yeah, I think on one level, there is an irony. Because of the fact that even when we think about Black Power and something like affirmative action, White women really benefit from affirmative action, and affirmative action is really part and parcel of a politics of accommodation on the part of the federal government when people are rioting in the streets.
Black Power activists called those rebellions. But remember, the first and largest first Black class at Yale is after the 1968 assassination of Dr. King. So even the federal government comes in to at least try to accommodate some of this, really politics of rage that was expressed by African Americans at the grassroots level, and really eloquently articulated by some leaders like Carmichael.
Tavis: I wanna go back to a point you made a moment ago, Professor, about - you referenced at least the crisis that Black men are facing today. We all recall just, what, weeks ago, 'The New York Times' ran that big front page story about the crisis of Black men. And then the 'Philadelphia Enquirer' ran a series about it, and then the 'Washington Post,' I saw, ran a big series. So everybody now is talking about the crisis of Black men.
But since you referenced Black men and that crisis a moment ago, I wonder what it is you think that Black men today, right now, these Black men who are caught up in this matrix, what is it that they could best learn? Are there best practices out of this movement that if implemented, if employed by Black men in this crisis, in this contemporary sense, they might find a way, we might find a way, to navigate our way out of this?
Joseph: Certainly. The number one word is discipline and self-determination. What's most fascinating to me about the characters in this book, from Malcolm X to Huey P. Newton to Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka, and then the women, Sonia Sanchez, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, are the disciplined self-determination that they all possess.
When we talk specifically about Black men, Dr. King said that our manhood comes from inside, not on the outside. What Black Power does is at least show an example of passionate, dignified, disciplined Black manhood. These are brothers and sisters who are really talking about education, who are reading; who knew that to understand Black history was actually to help transform the Black community. So it's definitely discipline.
Tavis: Discipline it is. That would be the word for the day. 'Waiting Till the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America,' by Peniel E. Joseph. I'm glad you disciplined yourself enough to get this thing done. I'm glad to have you on the program.
Joseph: Thank you.
Tavis: Nice to meet you. That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles, thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.
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