Who is Afraid of Black Power?

This edition of the Ujima WIRE, written by Cierra Peters (our Director of Culture, Communications, and Enfranchisement) examines Black Power–and its aesthetics–from a nuanced perspective, tracing its ideological lineage backward beyond the mid-20th-century struggle for civil rights and militant resistance. Black Power is best understood as part of a long historical continuum—one in which African Americans have consistently fought not only for artistic, political and economic sovereignty but also for control over historical narratives.

Elizabeth Catlett, Black Unity, 1968, cedar, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, photography by Edward C. Robison III.

We are beautiful—but there is more work to do, and just being beautiful is not enough.

— Larry Neal

On the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, within the Contemporary and Modern Art wing, I noticed a sphinx’s nose displayed on a shelf in the gift shop. Nearby, ten rooms were dedicated to Flight into Egypt, offering a distorted yet compelling lens into the history of Egyptophilia within Black America and across the global African diaspora. I studied the nose with interest: I couldn’t tell if I was intrigued or disgusted. A Nas lyric swam into the forefront of my consciousness: Shot off their nose to impose, what basically/still goes on today, you see. In a later conversation, a colleague reflected, “There are tens, if not hundreds, of conversations happening within the exhibition.” What I saw on the shelf in the gift shop, a disembodied and decontextualized nose, reflected a deep ambivalence to the very real stakes faced by Black artists and communities reaching for Africa, from the time of Meta Warrick Fuller through to contemporary artists like Eric N. Mack and Lauren Halsey. This tension calls to mind the precarious position of early 19th-century Black scholars and artists who dared to claim ancient Egypt as their inheritance—at a time when Egypt stood as both a beacon of Black excellence and a cornerstone of the white cultural imagination of civility. By foregrounding the 19th-century engagement with Egyptology, we can see how notions of Black Power—often associated with militancy, separatism, and Afrocentrism—has always contained intellectual, cultural, and historical dimensions that stretch across time and geography.

In the early 19th century, African Americans turned to Egyptology as a means of intellectual and cultural reclamation, positioning ancient Egypt as both a symbol of Black greatness and a refutation of white supremacist narratives. For Black thinkers like David Walker and Martin Delany, the grandeur of Egypt was not merely an abstract source of pride; it was a strategic intervention in an ongoing historical dispute. To claim Egypt was to challenge not only the dehumanizing narratives of American slavery but also the very foundations of Western historiography, which sought to erase African contributions from world history.

Egypt became a battleground for racial meaning: to white historians, it was proof of Western civilization’s timeless superiority (circularly: because it was not Black, it was great; and because it was great, it was not Black); to Black intellectuals, it was evidence of Africa’s historical grandeur and a counterpoint to the racist assumption that Blackness was synonymous with primitiveness and servitude. This ideological struggle would reverberate across time, shaping the intellectual foundation of later movements for Black self-determination—including Pan-Africanism, the New Negro/Négritude movement, and ultimately, Black Power. This re-narrativization re/places Africa from the margins to the center of history, and placed Black people at the center of our own world: a world in which we could claim membership amongst both royalty and laborers; a world in which we stood, and stand, as people with a past, and thus a future; a world in which power and movement were ours to hold.

An Evolution of Black Power

“Black Power” is often reduced to a set of iconic figures—Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, and the speeches of Kwame Ture. However, its ideological breadth extends far beyond these familiar images. Black Power was not just about militancy or separatism; it was a complex movement centered on sovereignty, labor radicalism, political independence, and cultural self-determination. It sought to dismantle systemic racism, economic exploitation, and cultural hegemony, envisioning a world where Black communities could exercise autonomy over their political, economic, and cultural futures.

The first recorded use of the term “Black Power” in a political context dates back to 1954, when Richard Wright, the celebrated novelist, published Black Power, a travelogue and analysis of decolonization in Ghana. Wright employed the term to describe the process of African nations asserting self-determination in the face of European colonial rule. In Wright’s usage, “Black Power” was primarily about political sovereignty and cultural reclamation, reflecting his engagement with Pan-Africanism and anti-colonial thought. However, his use of the term did not carry the same militant, grassroots connotations that it later would in the United States, where it became synonymous with resistance to white supremacy and demands for political and economic justice.

In the American civil rights movement, the term gained widespread prominence on June 16, 1966, when Kwame Ture, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), invoked it during the March Against Fear in Mississippi. Ture declared:

“This is the twenty-seventh time I’ve been arrested—I ain’t going to jail no more! The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over. What we gonna start saying now is Black Power!”

This declaration marked a pivotal shift from the language of integration and nonviolence toward a more assertive call for self-determination, racial pride, and political empowerment. Ture’s speech symbolized a rejection of the gradualism and assimilationist strategies that had characterized the mainstream civil rights movement. Instead, it embraced a radical politics of liberation that emphasized Black autonomy, community control, and cultural pride.

Following Ture’s speech, “Black Power” became a rallying cry for movements advocating economic justice, community control, and resistance to white supremacy. It catalyzed a new wave of activism that resonated far beyond the American South, inspiring global movements for Black liberation. Organizations such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, exemplified the multi-dimensional nature of Black Power. The Panthers’ platform addressed systemic issues like police brutality, housing inequality, education, and economic exploitation.

The ideological foundations of Black Power were profoundly influenced by Pan-Africanism and Négritude, two intellectual movements that articulated a transnational consciousness. These movements provided the philosophical and aesthetic frameworks that shaped Black Power’s emphasis on political sovereignty, cultural autonomy, and self-determined identity.

Pan-Africanism, as both a political and cultural movement, emphasized the unity of African peoples across the diaspora, advocating for solidarity against colonialism, imperialism, and racial oppression. Its ideological roots can be traced to the anti-colonial writings and activism of figures such as Henry Sylvester Williams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Kwame Nkrumah. Pan-Africanism posited that the liberation of African nations and the cultural revival of African diasporic communities were interconnected struggles.

Négritude, on the other hand, emerged as an aesthetic and cultural movement in the 1930s among Francophone African and Caribbean intellectuals, including Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon Damas. Négritude rejected colonialist ideologies that dehumanized Black people and negated African cultural contributions. It sought to reclaim Black identity by affirming African cultural heritage, history, and aesthetics. Through poetry, literature, and philosophy, Négritude emphasized the psychological and cultural liberation of Black people by valorizing African traditions, languages, and cosmologies.

As a precursor to Black Power, Négritude provided the cultural and aesthetic framework for reclaiming Black identity through self-definition and cultural pride. It established the formal grounds for Afrocentric aesthetics that celebrated Blackness as a source of beauty, creativity, and intellectual power. This cultural assertion directly influenced the Black Arts Movement (BAM) in the United States, which drew on Négritude’s emphasis on cultural reclamation to create a distinctly Black aesthetic rooted in African American cultural traditions. BAM’s insistence on producing art that was functional, collective, and revolutionary echoed Négritude’s commitment to cultural resistance and decolonization.

Both Pan-Africanism and Négritude emphasized the importance of historical consciousness and cultural memory in the construction of individual and collective identity. This diasporic consciousness linked African American liberation movements with global anti-colonial struggles, reinforcing the transnational solidarity essential to Black Power’s political and cultural vision.

Strategies:

Beyond political activism, Black Power redefined the cultural landscape. It was a movement that recognized the power of cultural production as a means of resistance and liberation. The Black Arts Movement (BAM), widely considered the cultural arm of Black Power movement, exemplified this cultural strategy. Founded by Amiri Baraka in Harlem, BAM sought to create a Black aesthetic that was politically engaged, culturally affirming, and unapologetically radical. It challenged the Eurocentric standards of beauty, art, and literature that had long been used to justify Black inferiority. For centuries, Western visual culture entrenched racial hierarchies by depicting Blackness as inferior, primitive, and dangerous. These portrayals were not merely incidental but were central to legitimizing systems of racial oppression, as they provided ideological justification for exploitation, violence, and social exclusion.

Black Power activists recognized that dismantling white supremacy necessitated a direct challenge to these visual and ideological constructs. They consciously crafted a counter-hegemonic visual language rooted in cultural pride, effectively subverting prevailing stereotypes while affirming Black identity.

This counter-narrative strategy was not just aesthetic but deeply political, as it aimed to destabilize the epistemological foundations of white supremacy. The development of an aesthetics of Black Power was an act of cultural sovereignty. This strategic use of aesthetics was not accidental; it was a deliberate effort to redefine Black identity for Black people, challenging essentialist and pathologizing representations by asserting complex, dynamic, and self-determined identities.

Larry Neal was one of the principal architects of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), which he described as the “aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept.” As a poet, playwright, essayist, and cultural critic, Neal used art and literature to advance the ideological goals of Black Power, emphasizing the inseparability of politics and aesthetics. Alongside Amiri Baraka, Neal co-founded BAM in the mid-1960s, envisioning it as a cultural revolution that would redefine Black identity, aesthetics, and political consciousness.

In his seminal essay, “The Black Arts Movement” (1968), Neal argued that Black art must be functional, collective, and revolutionary. It could not only be about beauty or entertainment; it was about liberation; further, in “Any Day Now: Black Art and Black Liberation,” Neal argued that Black artists must reject the Western notion of art as an isolated, apolitical practice. Instead, they must create art that speaks to the lived experiences, struggles, and aspirations of Black communities.

He insisted on creating a distinctly Black aesthetic that rejected Eurocentric standards of beauty, form, and content, arguing that Black art must be rooted in African American cultural traditions, drawing on the rhythms of jazz, the oral storytelling of the Black church, the improvisation of the blues, and the political urgency of protest poetry. He urged Black writers to abandon traditional narrative structures and experiment with language, form, and voice to create literature that was uniquely Black and revolutionary.

Black Power aesthetics were also strategically employed to mobilize political action. Activists and artists were acutely aware of the affective power of visual culture to inspire emotional responses, shape public opinion, and galvanize political movements. By embedding political ideology within culturally resonant forms—such as music, theater, poetry, and visual art—Black Power activists created an insurgent cultural framework that communicated complex political messages in accessible, emotionally resonant ways. This cultural insurgency transcended the limitations of traditional political rhetoric, reaching audiences who might have been alienated by conventional activism.

For example, Emory Douglas’s political illustrations in The Black Panther newspaper were decorative but also pedagogical, designed to educate readers about systemic racism, state violence, and economic exploitation. By visually narrativizing political struggles, these illustrations made complex political ideologies comprehensible and emotionally compelling. Likewise, the music of James Brown, Nina Simone, and The Last Poets used rhythm, lyricism, and vernacular speech to inspire political consciousness, transforming popular culture into a platform for radical education and mobilization. These cultural interventions were strategic acts of political education, transforming aesthetics into a form of ideological training that prepared communities for political resistance.

The Last Poets, formed in Harlem in 1968 against the backdrop of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, utilized spoken word poetry set to African drumming as a mode of political insurgency. Their lyrical content confronted systemic racism, state violence, and capitalist exploitation with unflinching candor, articulating a revolutionary critique of American imperialism. Drawing on African oral traditions and vernacular speech, The Last Poets reclaimed linguistic agency, transforming poetry into a performative act of resistance. Their rhythmic delivery and potent social commentary not only challenged hegemonic cultural narratives but also laid the conceptual and aesthetic groundwork for hip-hop as a politically conscious art form.

Sun Ra, a pioneering jazz composer and visionary Afrofuturist, constructed a radical aesthetic that subverted Western temporality by linking ancient African civilizations to speculative futures. Through his cosmic philosophy and mythopoetic narratives, Sun Ra challenged the linear constructs of Eurocentric history, positing Black identity as transcendent and temporally unbounded. His performances with the Arkestra were multi-sensory cultural interventions, characterized by avant-garde jazz compositions, theatrical costumes, and space-themed iconography. These performative spectacles enacted an epistemological rebellion against colonial frameworks, envisioning an alternative ontology of Blackness rooted in cosmic liberation and spatial mobility.

Similar to the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances of the 1920s, this movement was meticulously organized and strategically funded, creating its own institutions and systems of patronage and cultural support to maintain creative autonomy. One of the primary methods of financing Black Power aesthetics was through community fundraising and membership dues. Organizations like the Black Panther Party relied heavily on contributions from members and supporters to fund their cultural and political initiatives. The Black Panther newspaper became a critical fundraising tool, sold on street corners and at community events as both a political education vehicle and a revenue generator. At its peak, The Black Panther sold 250,000 copies weekly, with all proceeds reinvested into the movement. These funds supported the production of cultural materials, including posters, pamphlets, and educational literature, thus sustaining a continuous cycle of political education and cultural resistance.

Institution-Building

Independent Black cultural institutions were also instrumental in organizing funds and maintaining narrative sovereignty. Third World Press, founded by poet Haki Madhubuti (then Don L. Lee), became a significant platform for Black literary voices, publishing works by Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sonia Sanchez. Funded through community donations, book sales, and events, Third World Press provided revolutionary writers with a platform free from the ideological constraints of white-controlled publishing houses. Similarly, Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press published political poetry and literature, financed through a combination of book sales, community support, and educational programming. These independent institutions created alternative networks of artistic patronage, allowing Black artists to maintain creative control while advancing the ideological and cultural aims of Black Power.

Toni Morrison strategically leveraged her roles as an editor, writer, and cultural critic to create space for Black voices, including Muhammad Ali, Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas, Gayl Jones, and Huey P. Newton. Morrison was also part of a powerful yet often under-discussed collective of Black women writers and intellectuals who came together in the 1970s and 1980s, including June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Ntozake Shange. These women were not just contemporaries; they were cultural comrades who strategically used literature, poetry, and public discourse to advance the ideological and cultural aims of Black Power while simultaneously critiquing its limitations regarding gender and sexuality.

Larry Neal understood that cultural revolutions required institutional infrastructure. In 1965, Neal co-founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BART/S) in Harlem with Amiri Baraka. Larry Neal understood that cultural revolutions were collective endeavors. He was deeply involved in building intellectual and artistic networks that connected poets, playwrights, musicians, and activists across the Black Arts Movement and Black Power Movement. He collaborated with Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Gil Scott-Heron, and The Last Poets, among others, to create a cultural ecosystem that was politically radical and artistically innovative. Neal co-edited Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968) with Amiri Baraka, a seminal collection that featured poetry, essays, and plays from key figures of the Black Arts Movement. The anthology became a blueprint for revolutionary Black literature, providing a platform for emerging writers who challenged white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism through art. By curating and publishing this anthology, Neal ensured that Black radical thought was documented, preserved, and accessible to future generations.

Who’s Afraid of Black Power?

The aesthetic rebellion of Black Power fundamentally transformed the cultural landscape, challenging white supremacy not only through political activism but through a radical redefinition of identity, beauty, and historical memory. By strategically disrupting dominant narratives, mobilizing political consciousness, and forging collective identity, Black Power aesthetics articulated a revolutionary Black visuality that refused subordination and invisibility. This visual insurgency destabilized the cultural logics through which whiteness maintained its hegemony, confronting the epistemological foundations of racial hierarchy. Yet, even as these aesthetics subverted hegemonic narratives, they were met with aesthetic fear—a visceral reaction to the assertion of Black sovereignty and cultural autonomy.

Central to this fear was the radical act of Black visuality, which, as Nicholas Mirzoeff theorizes, constituted a challenge to the “right to look” embedded within Western visual regimes and reflective of deeper anxieties about the destabilization of racial power dynamics.

However, this aesthetic fear was also accompanied by a paradoxical fascination, leading to the spectacularization and commodification of Black Power aesthetics. White-controlled cultural industries appropriated and repackaged the aesthetics of Black rebellion—raised fists, Afros, and militant chic—as consumable symbols of countercultural coolness.

This dynamic reflects bell hooks’ concept of “eating the other,” wherein white culture eats Black aesthetics to signify rebellion and authenticity while preserving structural power relations. White capital absorbed the threat of Black Power as a spectacle, stripping it of its political potency and reducing revolutionary symbolism to aesthetic salables. As Guy Debord theorizes, this spectacle operates as a form of social control, transforming lived experiences and political resistance into images and representations that can be consumed without disrupting the existing cultural hegemony. In this way, the commodification of Black Power aesthetics functioned as a form of containment, allowing white supremacy to manage its fear through appropriation and consumption.

But, this legacy of aesthetic rebellion endures today, manifesting in contemporary cultural movements that continue to challenge hegemonic narratives. Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the Super Bowl exemplifies this ongoing tradition. Performing on one of the world’s largest stages, Lamar invoked an interior, community-facing symbolism and poetics reminiscent of this same spirit of Black aesthetic self-determination, juxtaposing imagery of militant defiance with lyrical critiques of systemic oppression. His performance was a strategic engagement with the spectacle, utilizing mainstream visibility to subvert apolitical narratives and assert a radical Black subjectivity. By manipulating the mechanisms of spectacle, Lamar’s performance offers us new questions: can aesthetic rebellion operate within dominant cultural institutions while challenging their ideological frameworks? Any artist—or organizer—committed to movement building and social change would recognize the strategic value of engaging in popular culture, even if only through coded messages. Black social and cultural movements have never sought to remain marginal. Therefore, it is imperative that we engage with multiple cultural registers simultaneously. For many of us, his performance reframes how radicality is understood, revealing that subversion is not confined to the margins but can occur within the very structures it seeks to dismantle.

In this context, it is imperative to recognize that contemporary acts of aesthetic rebellion are deeply rooted in historical legacies of resistance. The narrative of Black Power aesthetics is part of a longer historical continuum that traces its ideological and cultural lineage back to Pan-Africanism, Négritude, and Egyptophilia. By reclaiming ancient Egypt as a symbol of Black excellence, early Black intellectuals challenged colonial historiography and asserted a cultural sovereignty that prefigured the reclamation of Black identity central to Black Power. We must not discount these legacies, for they reveal that aesthetic rebellion is not merely about contemporary politics but about historical memory and cultural continuity. Black Power aesthetics are part of a global, transhistorical tradition. By understanding this continuum, we are invited to think through and engage in new forms of radicality that draw on ancestral legacies of resistance and world-building, and respond to our present condition.

Cierra Peters (she/they) is an artist and writer based in Boston, MA, and Brooklyn, NY. She is currently the Director of Communications, Culture, and Enfranchisement at the Boston Ujima Project, and an MFA candidate at Yale School of Art.