1966-1968 : Black Power, or when the Black uprising in the USA was heading towards social revolution...

Black Power : "Black power," a term borrowed from Richard Wright’s book, *Black Power*, written in 1945. A movement launched by Stokely Carmichael (head of the SNCC in 1967). Black Power is a radical movement that aims to overthrow white power in order to assert Black power.

Black Panther Party : Founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, under the name Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. It adopted a revolutionary orientation and claimed to be Marxist.

Nation of Islam : A political organization founded by Wallace Fard in 1931. It advocates separatism, emphasizes the "Africanism" of Black Americans, and Islam as a unifying force for Black people. Under the influence of Malcolm X, the party had nearly 40,000 "Black Muslims" by 1964.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) : A political organization, with Martin Luther King Jr. as its president, created by Black leaders in the South in 1957 following the success of the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama. This party fights for civil rights through nonviolence.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) : Founded in April 1960 in Atlanta, Georgia, by students who supported sit-in protests, this party emerged as the leading advocate for civil rights. In late 1968, it abandoned its nonviolent principles and changed the meaning of its "N" to promote Black nationalism, becoming the Student National Coordinating Committee.
The socio-political context of the Black Power movement

Two events occurred during the summer of 1966 that would profoundly influence the development of the Black movement ; at first glance, they seem to have nothing in common, but in fact, they were both responses to the oppression of Black people, and in the deeper dialectic of history, they were indeed linked. The first took place on a very hot summer day in June in Mississippi : James Meredith, the first Black graduate of the University of Mississippi, was undertaking his famous "March Against Fear" through his home state. The march was followed by FBI agents, journalists, photographers, sympathizers, and Stokely Carmichael.

He had just been elected president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and he knew Mississippi, a particularly odious symbol of Black oppression. He had firsthand knowledge of the state of material destitution and political servitude that, despite the so-called civil rights laws, remained the dominant characteristic of the lives of Black residents of that state. He also knew about white violence in that same state—violence of which Meredith was a victim soon after the start of her audacious march. Carmichael also knew that parades and marches had not changed, and could not fundamentally change, these conditions of existence. He and other SNCC leaders had for some time been searching for more effective and direct ways to launch the assault on this monolithic structure of exploitation that seemed impregnable and impervious to all moral argument. They believed they had found a solution in the idea of ​​Black political power. Willie Ricks, another SNCC leader present at Meredith’s march, reduced the phrase to two words : Dark Power. They were powerfully expressive and could become a living formula ; Carmichael and Ricks would soon prove it.

The media seized upon the new slogan, treated it as sensational news, and carried it across the country to the ears of a panicked American public. (...)

The second event, though equally important, received far less attention and did not give rise to hysterical discussions ; except for specialists, it was considered quite ordinary. In fact, it was a speech by McGeorge Bundy, president of the immensely wealthy Ford Foundation, at the annual banquet of the National Urban League in Philadelphia, and there was nothing to make headlines about. Bundy declared that the Ford Foundation had decided to contribute to the achievement of "full equality for all Black Americans." His audience was not surprised, as the Foundation had for some time been working to improve higher education for Black people and had contributed to the League’s housing projects. (...) what the delegates of the Urban League, like the general American public, were unaware of, however, was that the Ford Foundation, which was already playing a leading role in the neo-colonialist penetration of the Third World, was preparing to carry out a similar penetration into the militant Black movement. (...)

The situation of the Black movement in the summer of 1966 was dominated by three main factors : a) the civil rights movement had reached a stalemate and, in its wake, was followed by urban revolts provoked by the state of stagnation of the ghettos ; b) the new leaders, such as Robert Williams and Malcolm X, who had been the pioneers of a still embryonic nationalist movement, had been broken, one by forced exile, the other by assassination before they could set up mass political organizations ; c) the Vietnam War and other events in the Third World were giving Black activists in the USA more and more to think about.

As for the first factor, the non-violent, Southern-centered civil rights movement had reached a dead end. In countless cities, activists and tens of thousands of Black people had hopefully engaged in numerous demonstrations and marches, had allowed themselves to be brutalized, beaten, imprisoned, even killed, and had followed the calls of moralistic leaders who had invited them to "love the enemy" and "turn the other cheek" because all this suffering would one day lead to freedom.

After several years of intense struggles marked by numerous deaths, it became clear in the summer of 1963 that a renewed effort was needed to bring about this long-awaited day of freedom. Activists spoke of marching on Washington and blocking the city until Black people achieved full equality. But this momentum was quickly neutralized by the Kennedy administration and the coalition of liberals and unionists within the Democratic Party, who considered the Black electorate their property. Thus, the March on Washington, with its 250,000 participants, became a summer picnic in honor of John Kennedy and his Civil Rights Act ; Black people were invited to find the answer to their prayers there.

(…) As for the bill, it was finally passed in 1964. On paper, it ended racial discrimination in electoral procedures, certain public places, certain jobs, and the school system. But the problem with this law, as with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, was its implementation. Black people who felt their civil rights had been violated had to initiate a long and complicated legal process to obtain redress. (…) In short, these delays, this slowness, taught Black people and their leaders that a law means nothing if it is not effectively enforced. (…) The federal government had the power, but it needed the support of Southern reactionaries, who held several committee chairmanships in the Senate and the House of Representatives. From then on, the civil rights laws simply became further proof of this well-known truth : that American democracy is subject to the economic and political interests of those who truly hold power.

In 1964, the experience of the Mississippi Democratic Party for Liberty (MFDP) provided further confirmation. (...) In Mississippi, where the Democratic Party branch was racist, the activists of the SNCC believed they could challenge and defeat it by creating a parallel political structure, thus winning at the National Convention in Atlantic City. By proclaiming their loyalty to the national leadership, unlike the "regular" delegation, the MFDP dissidents believed they could have the racist delegation expelled and achieve a victory in the democratic struggle for change. But the party, needing support in the South, reverted to racism and rejected the dissidents. Another bitter lesson for the Black movement. The Black civil rights movement failed not only because of these setbacks, (...) but also because of the bourgeois nature of the movement. (…) As proof, he did nothing to improve the living conditions of the poorest segments of the Black population. (…)

The explosion began in 1964 with the Harlem riots and other uprisings in 14 cities, and it continued throughout the country with the "hot summers" of the 1960s. These uprisings were spontaneous and unorganized, but they followed an internal logic. Attacks and looting were primarily directed against the properties of white merchants who exploited the Black community : this was the case in Harlem, and later in Watts. In essence, Black people were reclaiming the goods that had been stolen from them in the form of underpaid labor and exorbitant prices.

Through this kind of action, these rioters, who were far from being a tiny minority, rejected the leaders of the civil rights movement and demonstrated the need for new leaders capable of leading the fight against oppression, poverty, and subjugation, and who could truly speak for the majority of Black people. But the emergence of such a new leadership would have constituted a direct threat to the established order, and the authorities could be expected to try to break it by any means necessary. Nonviolent demonstrations, a moral challenge to injustice, were not a threat to the established order, to the powers that be. But if Black people began to arm themselves, even for self-defense, then everything changed. An unjust social system must maintain a monopoly on the forces of repression. If this monopoly can be broken, one is not far from being able to break the system.

This is why a leader like Robert Williams, who in the late 1950s organized a Black chapter of the National Shooting Association in Monroe, North Carolina, could not be treated as a negligible adversary. (…) Williams was immediately attacked by the press, and the white liberals who supported the nonviolent civil rights movement turned their backs on him. (…) Williams first sought refuge in Cuba, where he remained for three years, and then in China. (…)

Malcolm X, to whom the ideological father of the Black Power movement is attributed, and in whom the exasperated masses of Harlem saw the new leader they had been waiting for, was assassinated just fifty weeks after officially breaking with the Black Muslims. (…) He was an activist, and this trait was the reason for his break with Muhammad (leader of the Black Muslims). In the 1960s, Black activists increasingly accused Black Muslims of talking a lot and doing nothing. The Black movement was growing ; it was no longer enough to loudly denounce the “white devils.” Yet, Black Muslims remained aloof from all forms of political and social action ; Malcolm, for his part, was beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of such a course. In his “Autobiography,” he acknowledges that at that time, he thought that “the Nation of Islam could have been even more useful to Black Americans if it had finally taken action.” But this conception clashed with the objectives of Muhammad and his lieutenants. Malcolm was suspended in December 1963, officially because of his controversial comment on the assassination of John Kennedy : "Chickens come back for more" (in other words, hatred boomerangs). But it soon became clear that the suspension was indefinite, and that Malcolm was no longer welcome among Black Muslims. In March 1964, he himself announced his definitive break with them. He declared that he was ready to fully commit himself to the national campaign for civil rights, because every local struggle "can only raise the level of consciousness of Black people."
From then on, he began to rebuild his entire ideology. He saw the necessity of Black unity for their struggle to be effective. He proclaimed himself an adherent of Black nationalism, which he defined as an autonomous movement of Black people for their freedom, their right to justice, and their equality. The central idea was that Black people should control the economic, political, and social institutions of their own communities, and he identified with the notion of self-determination.
After the split, Malcolm rejected separatist utopias, such as the idea of ​​returning to Africa or creating a Black state in America. But at the same time, he rejected integrationism, an empty phrase or attempt to integrate Black people into a declining white society. Unlike Black Muslims, who attributed the oppression of Black people to the wicked nature of the white race, Malcolm understood that it was the social structure that had been the cause not only of Black poverty but also of white racism. In a 1964 speech, he declared :“The system of this country cannot grant freedom to African Americans. It is impossible for this system—this economic system, this political system, this social system, in short, for this system. This system in its present state is incapable of granting immediate freedom to the Black people of this country.” (…)

While advocating for self-determination for Black people, he was aware that this goal could not be achieved within the framework of capitalism. Unlike some Black nationalists, he understood that it was in the interest of Black activists to fight for a radical transformation of American society as a whole, a prerequisite for effective self-determination. Otherwise, Black control of Black communities would in no way signify liberation, since these communities would themselves remain a subordinate part of a society founded on the exploitation of man by man. (…)

In a speech delivered in New York on April 8, 1964, he outlined the main features of this process as he saw it developing :

"So, when Black people today seek what America recognizes as their rights, and are subjected to the brutality of those who deny them, they are within their rights to do whatever is necessary to ensure their own protection. That’s what they did last night in Cleveland : to the police who pointed fire hoses at them and bombarded them with tear gas, they responded with a hail of rocks and bricks. Two weeks ago, in Jacksonville, Florida, a Black man who wasn’t even twenty years old threw Molotov cocktails at them."

Well, ten years ago, Black people weren’t doing this. The lesson to be learned is that today they are waking up. They used stones yesterday, Molotov cocktails today, and the day after tomorrow, anything they can get their hands on… Twenty-two million African Americans are ready to fight right now for their independence… I’m not talking about a non-violent struggle or a struggle where you turn the other cheek. Those times are over. They belong to ancient history.

And as if to ensure that his audience, mostly white, could not be misled, Malcolm added that the black revolt was turning into "a genuine black revolution" .

“The revolutionary struggle is never waged by turning the other cheek. Revolution is never founded on loving one’s enemies and forgiving offenses. The revolutionary struggle is never conducted to the tune of ‘We shall overcome.’ Revolution is the shedding of blood.” (…)

He did not live long enough to see the results of his actions. On the morning of February 13, 1965, his house was set ablaze with Molotov cocktails, but he and his family managed to escape unharmed. At the time, he attributed the attack to Black Muslims, but very quickly, he came to suspect other elements. He knew the true capabilities and limitations of Black Muslims. The following Sunday, these "other elements" achieved their goal and assassinated him during a meeting in New York. (…)

Malcolm X’s ideas could not be assassinated as he had been. The idea of ​​the necessary link between the struggle of Black Americans and the broader struggle of the Third World, in particular, was not going to vanish. (…) On January 6, 1966, the SNCC published a statement publicly opposing the Vietnam War and supporting the campaign against conscription. (…) However, on January 4, 1966, an SNCC activist, Sammy Younge Jr., was murdered in Tuskegee, Alabama, for wanting to use the restroom reserved for whites at a gas station. This event hastened the release of the already drafted statement (from the SNCC). “Sammy Younge was killed because American laws are not enforced ; likewise, the Vietnamese are being massacred because the United States, in its policy of aggression, refuses to enforce international law.” (…) We are in complete agreement with all those in this country who refuse to answer a call to arms that would force them to give their lives in support of an American aggression carried out in the name of this freedom which is nothing but a deception in our country ; we will give our support to all those who refuse to go and fight in Vietnam.

Finally, the declaration stated that "the creation of democratic structures throughout the country" was a valid, albeit illegal, alternative to conscription ; a few months later, the SNCC fully committed itself to resisting recruitment based on a nationwide action plan.

Such was the political context of the summer of 1966, the context of Stokely Carmichael’s initiatives. He was striving to inherit Malcolm X’s ideology and apply it under these conditions. But he still hesitated on his path, torn between reformism and revolution, unsure whether he would be a rebel or a Black revolutionary. This conflict was characteristic of the entire Black movement and foreshadowed the conflict that would soon erupt between these two types of Black activists. (…)

In any case, in a resounding article published in the "New York Review of Books" on September 22, 1966, Carmichael directly addressed the problem of power : how to attack and weaken oppressive white power and create against it the liberating force of Black power ? (...) The language was still cautious, but the revolutionary potential was evident. Since 1966, it has become clear that the revolt would necessarily be violent, because the defenders and propagandists of the mythology of property rights will not allow peaceful change. (...)

In 1966, at its Baltimore congress, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) adopted the slogan of Black Power. The unanimously adopted resolution declared :

“Black Power is the effective control and self-determination exercised by Black people in their own sectors.

Power means complete control of the economic, political, social, and educational life of our community, from top to bottom.

Exercising power at the local level is simply what other groups in American society have done to gain a share of initiative in the life of American society.

The summer of 1966 was as decisive a turning point for CORE as it was for the SNCC. Until then, CORE had been an integrationist movement that trusted in nonviolence to achieve its goals. (…) CORE experienced a period of eclipse during the development of the Civil Rights Congress, presided over by William L. Patterson, until 1951, then during the campaigns of Martin Luther King, and again at the beginning of the student sit-ins around 1960. But in 1961, after organizing the Freedom Marches in Alabama and Mississippi, it once again attracted the attention of the entire country, and its composition changed ; in 1963, for the first time, it had an absolute majority of Black members. This was because it was attracting many activists disillusioned with the NAACP. (…)

At its 1965 convention, whose central theme was the awakening giant, the black ghettos, CORE repealed the article in its statutes that prohibited all direct political activity. (…) The Black Power motion passed by CORE at the 1966 convention apparently abandoned the goal of integration that had been the movement’s objective (…)

While SNCC and CORE launched the Black Power slogan, the masters of white power had already begun to outline their counterattack. It wasn’t so much the slogan itself that had awakened them, but rather the internal situation that had already led to the radicalization of the Black movement, a situation characterized by the inability of the civil rights movement to prevent the continued impoverishment of Black people, and by the urban riots that followed. (…) The new answer began to emerge in this speech by Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy, delivered on August 2, 1966, at the National Urban League banquet in Philadelphia : “We believe that the full equality of all Black Americans is today the most urgent domestic issue, and we believe that the Ford Foundation must play its full part in this matter (…)” Thus, the Urban League was poised to become the most powerful, though least talked-about, organization to “manipulate” the progressive Black movement. From its ultramodern building on East 43rd Street in New York City, the Foundation engaged in funding and influencing numerous organizations, both moderate and radical, such as CORE, SCLC, the National Urban League, and the NAACP ; acting directly or indirectly through these and a few others, it hoped to channel the Black liberation movement and prevent urban uprisings. (…) It was under Bundy’s leadership, formerly the president’s special advisor on national security, and who, in that capacity, had been one of the principal promoters of the intervention in Vietnam, that the Foundation decided in 1966 to extend its activities to the Black movement. (…) In 1950, the Foundation, into which war profits had been invested, expanded, and its scope of action extended to the entire United States and 80 foreign countries. (…) In 1962, Dyke Brown, then vice president in charge of public affairs, could write that the Foundation "had moved from the realm of public administration to that of political life." Its programs, he added, "were increasingly tending toward programs of action, and no longer merely research," which implied that certain "political risks" had to be taken. (…)

And that is why, a year after Bundy’s aforementioned speech, she granted a substantial loan to CORE, a loan intended for "peaceful and constructive efforts" in the Hough district of Cleveland, which had been the scene of violent riots. That is also why, finally, she announced in September 1968 that she planned to invest $10 million to help foster Black capitalism.

In short, it has transformed into one of the most subtle and refined instruments of American neo-colonialism, including that which is exercised in the colony of the interior.

Bundy, when he took over the leadership after his time in the White House, was the ideal man for such a policy. (…) He had simultaneously supported Kennedy and Johnson’s policy of military intervention in Vietnam and the policy of maintaining contacts with the USSR. He was therefore very well prepared to work with Black organizations, including those that championed the slogan of Black Power (…)

In the fall of 1966, two pivotal events occurred for the Black movement. In September, there was the first attempt—not entirely conscious—to implement the doctrine of Black Power in a concrete situation. This concerned education, which in New York was in crisis. Parents in Harlem were demanding effective control of a school, IS 201. The other event took place on the other side of the country and went largely unnoticed : the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.

In January 1965, Malcolm X said , "I believe that there will ultimately be a conflict between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a conflict between those who demand liberty, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation… It is incorrect to characterize the Negro revolt simply as a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem. On the contrary, we see today a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, of the exploited against the exploiter."

As if to answer all those who believed or wanted to believe in an Obama, Malcolm X already responded : Malcolm : "You put the Democrats forward and the Democrats put you behind."

Chronological landmarks

1946 Supreme Court decision prohibiting segregation in public transportation.

1947 First Freedom Rides, demonstrations whose goal was to obtain the implementation of the Supreme Court decision of 1946.

December 1, 1955 : Rosa Parks, in Montgomery, Alabama, refuses to give up her seat to a white man, as required by law. This marks the beginning of a scandal and a foundational struggle.

February 1960 Greensboro sit-in (North Carolina), against segregation in a cafeteria, starting point of the civil rights movement.

August 28, 1963 : March on Washington with over 200,000 people. Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech in which he aspires to a united America, without segregation.

July 4, 1964 : The Johnson administration adopted the Civil Rights Act : from now on, the justice system could intervene to put an end to racial segregation in public places.

February 21, 1965 : Assassination of Malcolm X, in the middle of a meeting.

August 11, 1965 Watts riots, Los Angeles, which lasted a week (34 dead, 1071 injured, 400 arrests).

June 1966 Launch of Black Power by Stokely Carmichael.

October 1966 Foundation of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP).

December 4, 1967 : Luther King launches the Poor People’s Campaign.

February 12, 1968 : Beginning of the Memphis (Tennessee) garbage collectors’ strike.

March 18, 1968 : Luther King speaks to striking garbage collectors in Memphis.

March 28, 1968 : Luther King leads a demonstration in Memphis which is violently dispersed.

April 4, 1968 : The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Martin Luther King Jr. had said, "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, (...) seek reconciliation, justice, not victory." His death sparked a wave of riots in more than 125 cities. The government deployed 75,000 soldiers and National Guard troops, while 50,000 troops were placed on alert at military bases. The suppression of the demonstrations resulted in 46 deaths, 3,500 injuries, and 20,000 arrests. The Washington Post noted that, in the nation’s capital itself, the riot had mobilized 20,000 people, three-quarters of whom were Black workers. The mass of poor Black people was losing patience. She could no longer bear the unemployment, the discrimination in hiring, at school or in housing, the unsanitary conditions of the ghettos, the police brutality, nor knowing that many of them were dying every day in Vietnam, in a war for interests that were not their own.

A segment of Black Americans was becoming radicalized. The death of non-violent Martin Luther King at the hands of a white gunman vindicated those within the Black movement who concluded that nothing could be achieved without struggles, including violent ones, against a system that ruled through violence.

Radical Black nationalist organizations like Black Power and the Black Panthers were about to experience a surge in popularity. This radicalism among some Black people expressed their determination to end subjugation.

Attica prison

The Attica prison riots were uprisings of prisoners at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, United States, which took place between September 9 and 13, 1971.

The prisoners had demanded better living conditions, showers, resources for studying, and less censorship of mail and visits. At that time, they were entitled to one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper per month per person.[1] One of their simplest demands was to have unlimited access to toilet paper.

An initial request had been submitted by letter before any physical action was taken. Then, in response to rumors of the torture of two prisoners, the inmates revolted, taking forty-two guards and civilians hostage. The prisoners negotiated with a team of mediators who had been brought in and included Tom Vicker, a writer for The New York Times, James Ingram of the Michigan Chronicle, State Representative Arthur Eve, and other elected officials. A guard injured during the riot died in the hospital on Saturday, September 11.

Twenty-eight of the prisoners’ demands were accepted, but the demand for amnesty for the prisoners involved in the guard’s death was rejected, and any prisoner involved would be liable to the electric chair (ultimately, no death sentences were handed down). Negotiators from both sides requested the presence of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who refused to come, believing his presence would do nothing to resolve the conflict.

After a four-day riot, 211 New York State police officers stormed the correctional facility. The final toll was 10 guards killed (9 of whom died during the assault, killed by police weapons) and 29 prisoners (4 prisoners were killed by their fellow inmates, the other 25 by police).

The media reported that the prisoners had slit the throats of several of the hostages (one newspaper, for example, had headlined "I saw open throats") but this was contradicted by medical expertise.

The Attica riots drew media attention to the state of prisons in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. They also highlighted the racist nature of the American prison system and the fanaticism of its guards. Twenty-seven years after the riot, the State of New York was cleared of wrongdoing in a lawsuit brought by the families of the slain inmates, and in the fall of 2004, the State of New York finally awarded $12 million in compensation to the families of the deceased prison guards.

More than thirty long years have passed since that drizzly morning of September 13, 1971, when federal troops stormed Attica Prison in New York State. Our contributor Dénètem offers a sophisticated, insightful, and critical analysis of this revolt, one of the most significant among American prison populations, embodying a profound challenge to the US system of legitimation. After examining American prisons in their threefold dimension as zoos, factories, and concentration camps, he deciphers the revolutionary potential of the inmates’ defiance, which was on the verge of creating a counterculture, a training ground for a rejected youth yearning for a different world.

"Search and destroy"

The Attica uprising and its political significance cannot be understood without considering the context of near civil war in which it occurred. "The workings of the American justice system can be described as a ’search and destroy’ mission targeting Black youth" (Prisons of Misery, Wacquant). The police and even military harassment (in 1965, in Los Angeles : the violent repression of the Watts ghetto uprising) of Black American youth truly began in the 1960s, with the rise of the Black liberation movement.
The political assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X should not obscure the fact that members of the Black Panther Party were the primary targets of police repression. The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther still on death row, testifies to this relentless persecution. Faced with police brutality and racist violence, the Black Panthers saw themselves as resistance fighters : their black leather jackets and berets were a clear reference to the French Resistance. Ideologically, they drew as much from Mao’s Little Red Book as from Sartre’s existentialism or Frantz Fanon’s *The Wretched of the Earth*. In practice, they established not only armed self-defense groups (against police violence) but also a comprehensive social and cultural policy : "community survival programs" and free services such as clinics, schools, and transportation to prisons. Above all, this party distinguished itself from other Black organizations (sometimes highly nationalist and sexist, like the Nation of Islam) by its willingness to work in partnership with other progressive groups, such as pacifists (against the Vietnam War), gay and feminist movements (see the writings of Panther Angela Davis), and others.
Faced with the threat of a broad coalition of radical left-wing movements emerging, in 1969, FBI Director Edgar Hoover declared the Black Panther Party public enemy number one and launched a ten-year counterintelligence operation, codenamed COINTELPRO. Dozens of Panthers were killed in police-provoked shootings, and hundreds of members and sympathizers were imprisoned. By necessity, the Black Panthers were thus at the forefront of prison struggles. "The struggle in the prisons has become a new front of the revolution" (quoted by Michelle Perrot in *Les ombres de l’histoire*), declared George Jackson, one of the Panthers’ leaders. Jackson’s case is emblematic : sentenced to life in prison in 1961 for stealing $70 from a gas station, he developed his ideology in prison through reading Karl Marx, Adam Smith, Frantz Fanon, and other thinkers. In his writings, he called young people like himself, who had been denied access to education and employment, those forced to educate themselves in prison, the "intellectuals of the lumpenproletariat" (the unemployed, delinquents, and marginalized).
Prisons had indeed become veritable centers of political training for young Black Americans. Books like the Communist Manifesto and Mao’s Red Book were rewritten by hand in simplified language and used in basic literacy groups. Newspapers and a whole body of prison literature were produced by inmates, and manuscripts were smuggled to outside publishers. Jackson’s own book, The Brothers of Soledad (Folio, introduction by Jean Genet), circulated widely in American prisons, where it was eagerly sought after. The liberation of minds was to become a weapon against the oppressor. Jackson devoted all his energy to transforming the mentality of lost Black youth into that of Black revolutionaries, into political consciousness. “I was in revolt. I was in prison, looking around for something that would really enrage the guards. I discovered that nothing enraged them more than philosophy.” On August 21, 1971, using a pretext of an escape attempt, the guards at San Quentin, California, coldly murdered George Jackson. It was time to silence this hotbed of dissent…

“Hearing the rumble of battle” (in Discipline and Punish)

The death of George Jackson left a profound void, intense emotion, and a sense of revolt throughout American prisons. Although his death occurred in California, on the other side of the United States, it almost immediately triggered a spontaneous hunger strike, joined by a large number of inmates, at Attica Correctional Facility in New York. On September 9, 1971, the 1,500 inmates of cellblock D decided to escalate their actions by staging a riot : they took 40 guards hostage and quickly gained control of the facility. The situation at the Attica Federal Penitentiary had long been volatile. Attica represented the innermost circle of American prison hell : overcrowding, an ultra-disciplinary and punitive regime, appalling hygiene conditions, nonexistent medical care, and so on. Jackson’s death thus acted as the spark that ignited the powder keg. What reveals the determined, thoughtful and, in a way, legitimate nature of the rebellion of the prisoners in this prison is precisely the tone and content of the declaration made by the Attica Liberation Committee :
“We, the prisoners of Attica, seek to end the injustice suffered by all prisoners, regardless of race, creed, or color. The preparation and content of this document were established through the unified efforts of all races and social classes within this prison. It is established, and widely known, that the New York City Department of Correction has transformed institutions originally intended for the social correction of individuals into the concentration camps found in present-day America. Given that Attica Prison is one of the most classic examples of organized cruelty inflicted upon humanity, the following list of demands has been adopted. We, the prisoners of Attica, say to you, the self-righteous of society : the prison system that your courts ratify is the terrifying grimace of the paper tiger, the coward in power.” This manifesto is respectfully presented to society as a protest against the despicable and corrupt slave traders : the Governor of the State of New York, the New York State Department of Corrections, the New York State Legislature, the New York State courts, the courts of the United States, the New York State Department of Parole. And those who support this system of injustice. This list of demands will be presented to you. We are trying to act through democratic channels. We feel there is no need to dramatize these demands. (Excerpt from *Au pied du mur*, published by L’Insomniaque) Twenty-six demands follow, concerning : the right to education, the eight-hour workday, union rights, the ability to shower regularly, decent food, access to healthcare…

A popular support movement organized outside the prison. The Prisoners’ Solidarity Committee, a group founded the previous year by Youth Against War and Fascism, raised money and chartered buses so that prisoners’ families could travel to Attica. The Solidarity Committee also ensured that prisoners had access to legal aid by contacting lawyers and legal professionals. Members of the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, and other protest groups gathered around the prison to carry out various actions : demonstrations in support of the rebels, raising public awareness, and lobbying politicians. Negotiations were scheduled to begin on September 13. But on D-Day, the state sent nearly a thousand men—federals, National Guardsmen, assault troops—who, through a lightning operation of extreme violence (automatic weapons, grenade launchers, helicopters, etc.), managed to retake the prison in less than an hour. The assault left 43 dead, including ten hostages, and 200 wounded. Prison authorities claimed that the inmates had slit the throats of the ten hostages. But autopsies by forensic pathologists revealed that the hostages had not died from their throats being cut, but from wounds inflicted by gunfire from law enforcement ; a finding confirmed by the McKay Commission of Inquiry of the State of New York.

Two American television films depicting the riot were produced :

* in 1980 : Attica, by Marvin J. Chomsky, with George Grizzard,

* in 1994 : Against the Wall, by John Frankenheimer, with Samuel L. Jackson.

In addition, a documentary entitled Attica, also American, was made in 1974 by Cinda Firestone.

In 1964, three men disappeared without a trace in Jessup County, Mississippi. They were civil rights activists. FBI agents Rupert Anderson and Alan Ward were assigned to solve the case. Anderson was an experienced man, acting with diplomacy and determination. Ward, younger and impatient for results, behaved more roughly, deploying a large number of men who occupied the town. He publicly interrogated a Black man named Hollis, who was brutally beaten a few hours later. The town was gripped by a wave of violence : churches and houses burned.

Anderson continues the investigation using more subtle methods. His suspicions fall on Sheriff Stuckey and his deputy, Pell ; the latter is protected by his wife. The arsonists are arrested, but the all-white jury sentences them to derisory terms.

The atmosphere is toxic and explosive : a man is lynched, while Townley, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, incites hatred and violence. Mrs. Pell, the deputy sheriff’s wife, disgusted by these events, decides to speak out and reveals to Anderson the location of the bodies of the three missing men. Tilman, the mayor, begins to fear and provides information to the FBI, leading to the arrest of the culprits : Swilley, Cowens, Bailey, Stuckey, and Pell.

The film demonstrates the impossibility of fighting fascism through state and legal means... and other than through radical social mobilization.

The Symbol of the Unconquered / Oscar Micheaux, 1920s. Oscar Micheaux, playwright, theater director, and protester through image and words, was the first African American to denounce the plight of his fellow African Americans, particularly apartheid, an active and more than tolerated system at the time. Black people had gone from being slaves to servants, and all Hollywood productions were steeped in these ideals. Thus, to counter D.W. Griffith’s famous "Birth of a Nation," an apologia for the white nation and the Ku Klux Klan, Micheaux directed "Within Our Gates" (added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1992 for its historical significance). Following the same demonstrative approach, a few years later he directed the fictional film "The Symbol of the Unconquered," which highlights the difficulty of accepting oneself as a Black man in a country where you are killed for the color of your skin. Everything still remained to be conquered.
A major film.

The Bus / Haskell Wexler. 1963 : March on Washington : white people finally stand alongside Black people in a symbolic march for freedom and the abolition of segregation. A documentary on the road, with vivid framing, white hues, and the bittersweet scent of ideals confronted by reality, where we discover that committed white people still hold a certain naive and domineering view of their Black counterparts, where we finally understand why the Chinese, once fraternal, turned away from their former friends of color, and where we learn that the difference between Africans and Black people is merely a matter of nationality, but a fundamental one nonetheless. Decisive weeks for the advancement of ideas and the understanding of future movements.

Black Natchez / Edward Pinkus, David Neuman. While the Civil Rights Act was passed (1964), some regions saw the Ku Klux Klan reach record levels of popularity, and their crimes go unpunished. Black people suffered. They suffocated. Gathered in ghettos in Mississippi and elsewhere, they remained isolated in their demands. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), founded in 1909, was challenged in the 1960s. The Black population of Natchez was in turmoil, tensions were rising. The representatives, Charles Ever at the forefront, seemed too far removed from reality, too close to white people…insurrection was imminent but was averted, with a constant sense of disappointment and a simmering rage within each of them, marking the end of an illusion along with the end of the association.

Harlem Story / Shirley Clarke. 1963 : The rage simmering in the provinces is already present, in the heart of every Harlem kid waging fratricidal gang wars against other impoverished children. "The whites gave us their God but not their hands." This phrase, amplified by the assertion of black as the only dominant color, sets the tone for the film : A film in black, with a few wisps of white smoke—the smoke of drugs, the smoke of hope that vanishes. A dark film, where the gun ("the piece") becomes the only means of becoming, and of surviving. A jazz story at the limits of life.

Black Panthers / Agnès Varda. With the more or less acknowledged failure of peaceful organizations, the need for more offensive action seemed to be the order of the day for some. Bobby Seale, a young activist who had been close to the NAACP for a time, created the Black Panther movement in 1966 with Huey P. Newton (who was close to the ideals of Malcolm X). Two years later, a large part of the Black American population was won over by these new activists, who protected them from pigs (white police officers) and allowed them access to services from which they had previously been denied (education, healthcare, transportation, etc.).

1968 : Huey P. Newton is on trial, Agnès Varda is in Oakland. With her small, melodious, and impassioned voice, she offers us a fresh and insightful perspective on the most rebellious (and contested) movement of the era. The people speaking out are no longer older men in suits, but muscular, armed thirty-somethings in leather jackets and sunglasses, hands in their pockets but with well-structured minds—a new, more radical vision of the struggle, also expressed in concrete action. The observation : women are now on equal footing with men and are making their mark at conferences. The funk style is born…