The following essay will examine certain aspects of the development of the highly heterogeneous "Black Power" movement in the United States; revealing a broader context of the struggle to obtain equal civil rights. My aim is to further an understanding of this controversial era by juxtaposing different approaches of several important political and artistic protagonists concerning the role of violence. I will argue that political, religious and artistic discourses were appropriated and interlocked by different agents in order to achieve their respective objectives.
As a somewhat arbitrary starting point, the year 1964 did not only witness the implementation of the Civil Rights Act in the United States, which put an official end to racial segregation - it also was the year that African American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, won the prestigious Noble Peace Prize. King was a man who opted for non-violent civil disobedience as a means to accomplish his aims, and encouraged his fellow African-American citizens to follow his example. As another enigmatic figure of the Black Power movement Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X, positioned himself in sharp contrast to King.
While in prison, Malcolm X had become a member of the Nation of Islam and had taken up a far more radical attitude. His aim was to empower black people by uniting them under the roof of Black Nationalism, which fostered independence and self-determination instead of a mere acceptance by and an integration into the dominant society. He believed that black people had not only the right to defend themselves, but also the moral obligation to end white supremacy "by any means necessary." This quote, which was coined by the French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre, was used by Malcolm X in a speech during the last year of his life. Violence was understood as a floating signifier: the fact that violence could be destructive and oppressive or productive and revolutionary signaled that its meaning lay in its context.
