The Defeat of Black Power: Civil Rights and the National Black Political Convention of 1972

by Leonard N. Moore

For three days in 1972 in Gary, Indiana, eight thousand American civil rights activists and Black Power leaders gathered at the National Black Political Convention, hoping to end a years-long feud that divided black America into two distinct integrationists and separatists. While some form of this rift existed within black politics long before the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his death―and the power vacuum it created―heightened tensions between the two groups, and convention leaders sought to merge these competing ideologies into a national, unified call to action. What followed, however, effectively crippled the Black Power movement and fundamentally altered the political strategy of civil rights proponents. An intense and revealing history, Leonard N. Moore’s The Defeat of Black Power provides the first in-depth evaluation of this critical moment in American history.

During the brief but highly charged meeting in March 1972, attendees confronted central questions surrounding black people’s involvement in the established political reject or accept integration and assimilation; determine the importance or futility of working within the broader white system; and assess the perceived benefits of running for public office. These issues illuminated key differences between integrationists and separatists, yet both sides understood the need to mobilize under a unified platform of black self-determination. At the end of the convention, determined to reach a consensus, officials produced “The National Black Political Agenda,” which addressed the black constituency’s priorities. While attendees and delegates agreed with nearly every provision, integrationists maintained their rejection of certain planks, namely the call for a U.S. constitutional convention and separatists’ demands for reparations. As a result, black activists and legislators withdrew their support less than ten weeks after the convention, dashing the promise of the 1972 assembly and undermining the prerogatives of black nationalists.

In The Defeat of Black Power, Moore shows how the convention signaled a turning point for the Black Power movement, whose leaders did not hold elective office and were now effectively barred access to the levers of social and political power. Thereafter, their influence within black communities rapidly declined, leaving civil rights activists and elected officials holding the mantle of black political leadership in 1972 and beyond.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

216 pages, Hardcover

Published February 15, 2018

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting but odd book. It offers a blow-by-blow history of the March 1972 National Black Political Convention (NBPC) and the year and a half of meetings that led up to it. The NBPC - held early in the Spring of what would turn out to be President Nixon’s re-election year - was held in Gary, Indiana, and was the largest gathering of black integrationists, black nationalists, and black elected officials in the era. The hope and goal of the NBPC leaders was to unify the black community across these and other divisions and distill a common policy agenda for which all black Americans could strive.

What makes the book odd is Moore’s thesis: that the failure of the BNPC to meet achieve its goal was inevitable because black nationalists, while strong on rhetoric and vision, lacked organizing capacity and boots on the ground and couldn’t either hold black elected officials to a vision or deliver policy change themselves. To the extent that is true, it raises the question, why structure this book as a blow-by-blow narrative history, because the details don’t really matter. Moreover, Moore doesn’t ask whether a different outcome on key decisions before or at the convention would have resulted in a different historical outcome.

Another interpretation of the history that Moore presents could identify at least two choices that could have led to the BNPC having greater impact than it did. The first would have been for the organizers not to decide in January to hold the convention in March, but rather to schedule it for late spring or summer. Moore says the organizers felt pressure to move fast in hopes of influencing the Democratic and perhaps the Republican convention platforms. But a slower path would have allowed not just more time to get the logistics right, but also more time to negotiate compromises between the nationalists and integrationists. And, depending on when the event happened in relation to the parry conventions, it could have eased the pressure for the NBPC to take a position on the presidential candidacy of Rep. Shirley Chisholm, a source of division and distraction at the March meeting.

A second possible inflection point was the decision to accept resolutions from the floor with no guardrails on what could be proposed and no time to defuse any resolutions that would push participating interests past their walk-away points. As a result, two such resolutions were offered and adopted - one by black nationalists opposing busing to integrate schools, and one calling for the dis-establishment of Israel. The first drove the NAACP and other integrationist organizations out of the tent; the second drove out black elected officials. By June, the Congressional Black Caucus issued their own policy agenda that salvaged what they thought workable and wise from the NBPC’s National Black Political Agenda but left the rest to die from neglect. (The two floor-driven resolutions were not the only problem - other pre-negotiated resolutions might eventually have driven a renunciation of the Agenda by the black electeds - but Moore’s account points to the busing and Israel resolutions as the trigger for failure within weeks of the convention).

The Defeat of Black Power has some idiosyncrasies and flaws. Moore’s writing is strait-forward, but every important fact he says twice. It’s not clear why, and it isn’t a problem of general redundancy. It appears deliberate: the substantive repetition are usually two paragraphs apart. More problematically, Moore has two running biases through the book. He dislikes Shirley Chisholm, viewing her as ego-driven and more concerned about women’s issues than black issues. It’s possible that Moore doesn’t mean that he personally views Chisholm this way, but that key contemporaries did - he does sometimes attribute the views to contemporaries - but he’s not clear about that. Second, Moore states that white media wanted to undermine and discredit the NBPC, as shown by the fact that journalists and outlets covered divisions within the convention between integrationists snd nationalists, or around specific resolutions. I don’t doubt there was plenty of racism in white coverage of the NBPC, but there are simpler explanations for stories about tensions at the convention. Journalists cover drama and look for stories that will offer unique insights. Of course they were going to report on divisions between various factions because that made for colorful news - and the diversity of black opinions was clearly itself an important story about the NBPC.

One final thought: the convention created a structure to carry on its work, the National Black Political Assembly. Moore’s account deals with this almost as an afterthought, noting that it met in 1973 and 1974, and that those meetings lacked fireworks but drew a lot of “‘school teachers, students, librarians, workers, parents, welfare recipients, postal clerks, reporters, waitresses, maids, and executives,’ who were more interested in gaining political power in their local communities than anything else.” He says the Assembly faded away by the end of the 1970s. But for Moore’s underlying thesis - that the black nationalists had vision but lacked skills and capacity to deploy - the story of the Assembly is actually pretty important: it must have revealed what happened when ordinary black Americans, many likely mobilized by calls to action and Black pride, started to engage with the political process. Without any real analysis of the Assembly, it’s hard to know what might have been. Still, the book does provide an interesting narrative of the lead up to the convention and the convention itself.

[Colby Woodis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book taught me a lot about the diversity of thought and belief in the Black community. Amiri Baraka and Carl Stokes are compelling figures that come alive through the pages, and I’d like to explore their lives more.

The accounting is strong, and Moore clearly knows his history. I’m left wondering what may have happened if the powers that be decided on a longer planning timeline to implement the NBPC, instead of the 3 months they had to pull it together.

Could there have been a different outcome? Would there may have been a more sustained structure? We will never know, but it is interesting to consider.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly informative and covered a period of history I never knew existed. Many of the issues at play (black nationalist vs black moderates) (vote or not vote) etc still exist. It is a-shame seeing history repeat itself so soon.

[Langston Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing about this book is that I actually learned about something that I didn’t know happened. The National Black Political Convention of 1972 is lost history that we should all know about.

[Mills College Library]

323.1196 M8229 2018