Roots When Black activists first joined the
American anarchist movement, largely dominated by White men, they added perspectives of
anti-racism to the existing focus on
class struggle. Nascent Black anarchism was distinguished from White American and European anarchism due to the experience that Black anarchists had with
racism, which brought them to prominence within anti-racist social movements. Black anarchism highlighted the institutional racism within the white anarchist movement, which suppressed participation by Black people, and sought to build a movement that better represented Black people and drew from their experiences. , an early
social anarchist that advocated for black
self-determination and
armed self-defense Lucy Parsons developed a form of
social anarchism that concerned itself with both the
labor and
civil rights movements, as she considered racism to have stemmed from
capitalism. She drew attention to the intersectional oppression of people of color, including
widespread lynchings in the
Southern United States, which had previously been neglected by White anarchists. In
The Alarm, the newspaper of the
International Working People's Association (IWPA), Parsons publicised a lynching of thirteen African Americans that had taken place in
Carrollton, Mississippi. In her article, titled "The Negro", she discussed the poverty that many African Americans lived in, demonstrating the connection between racism and classism, and called on African Americans to resist their oppression through
racial uplift,
self-determination and
armed self-defense. Parsons' views on the dual racial and class oppression of African Americans led her to encourage them to join the socialist movement, as she considered that the dissolution of the state and the end of capitalism were necessary to create an anti-racist society.
Emergence from civil rights movement In the wake of
World War II, Black activists of the nascent
civil rights movement began to form links with
White American anarchists. This led to a notable influence of
anarcho-pacifism on the movement, with
Martin Luther King contributing to
David Dellinger's magazine
Liberation and
Bayard Rustin finding employment with the
War Resisters League (WRL).
Anti-authoritarian practices were subsequently adopted by civil rights organizations such as the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which
Paul Goodman allegedly described as an essentially "anarchist organization". Under the influence of
Ella Baker, who declared that "strong people don't need strong leaders", the SNCC was organized along a
decentralized and
grassroots structure, and remained independent of other civil rights organizations. Over time, Black anti-authoritarians grew increasing critical of the movement's leadership, the
Big Six, who they accused of
opportunism and
corruption. In a
class analysis of the movement,
Ojore Lutalo declared that the leadership didn't have the interests of all black people in mind: "Just look at how
they live today and look at how
we live." In reaction to the prevailing
liberalism of the civil rights movement, and its perceived failure to achieve
racial equality, the
Black power movement first came into being. The movement initially dedicated itself to electing Black people to political office and establishing
black nationalist groups, but later distanced itself from
integration and began to focus on ways to achieve
autonomy from the United States. Unlike
Black liberalism, which saw
racial inequality in the United States as having stemmed from
Social exclusion and
racial intolerance, the Black power movement considered inequality to be a product of institutional
white supremacy.
Development within the Black Panther Party In its "Ten Point Program", the
Black Panther Party (BPP) took a critical stance on the intersections between white supremacy and the
economic exploitation and
political repression of Black communities. Furthering this
intersectional analysis, many Panthers extended this into a critique of
patriarchy,
social stratification and the
state. The Panthers were also influenced in part by
anarchism, publishing
Sergey Nechayev's
Catechism of a Revolutionary and creating their own version of the
Diggers' free food distribution system, the
Free Breakfast for Children Program, which itself influenced the later work of
Food Not Bombs. The Panthers and other Black power organizations of this period upheld a
revolutionary form of
Black nationalism, advocating for autonomy from White society and for Black communities themselves to build that autonomy. During the late 1960s, violent clashes between Panthers and the police became more common, as the former became increasingly frustrated with a lack of progress on racial equality and the latter intensified political repression against Black activists, who became targets of
COINTELPRO. At the same time, corporations attempted to stem the radicalization of the movement by increasing funding for more
moderate organizations, such as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the
National Urban League (NUL). By the 1970s, declining membership numbers in the BPP and the "oligarchization" of the party leadership led to the
political polarization of its remaining members and the
radicalization of some towards armed struggle against the state. The party experienced a split, as the
Oakland-based
central committee reoriented itself towards
electoralism. Meanwhile, many of the party's autonomous groups throughout the country fractured along various different lines, with some becoming involved in
community organizing and moving towards anarchism. Drawing on
elite theory, some rank-and-file members began to see the party leadership as responsible for the party's decline, as the BPP was transformed from a "large decentralized, revolutionary organization" into a "small, highly centralized, reformist group" under the one-man rule of
Huey P. Newton.
Kuwasi Balagoon became increasingly disillusioned with the party's leadership structure, as the
central committee divorced itself from and dictated commands to other chapters around the country, without any internal
democracy. He adopted an anti-authoritarian analysis of the party, which he characterized as a "
hierarchy"; Balagoon believed that the party had declined due to its leadership's turn away from organizing towards fundraising, its top-down structure that stifled the rank-and-file, and the development of a quasi-capitalist class within the party leadership. Others, like
Martin Sostre, accused
Bobby Seale of
selling out and attempting to join the "
pig system".
Ashanti Alston himself expressed regret for his "uncritical acceptance" of the party leadership: "After all, what does it say about you, if you allow someone to set themselves up as your leader and make all your decisions for you?" Both Sostre and Alston believed that the party's
Marxist-Leninist orientation made it inclined towards political repression and intolerant of
spontaneity and
participatory democracy. At this time,
Eldridge Cleaver's
New York-based faction had split off from the party to establish the
Black Liberation Army (BLA). Many Panthers on the
East Coast, including the anti-authoritarians Ashanti Alston and Kuwasi Balagoon, joined Cleaver's BLA, which they intended to serve as the military wing of the Black power movement. Another organization that advocated for Black armed self-defence, the
Philadelphia-based
MOVE, even took up anarchist politics, favouring autonomous and
cooperative forms of living and upholding
animal rights and
environmentalism.
Growth of the tendency , one of the first Black activists to adopt anarchist philosophy One of the first Black activists to convert to anarchism was the African American bookstore owner
Martin Sostre, who was already considering anarchist ideas in the late 1960s. By 1972, he had begun studying sketches of
Mikhail Bakunin and
Peter Kropotkin, but remained cautious of introducing anarchism into the Black community, worrying that others would not be able to relate to them. Over the years, Sostre developed a critique of the BPP's Marxism-Leninism, which he considered to be a program for replacing ruling elites rather than improving freedom and equality. Anarchist ideas then spread through Black activist circles by
word of mouth. It was Sostre who introduced anarchist ideas to
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, who deepened his understanding of the subject during his time in prison in the early 1970s. Experiences with incarceration played a large role in radicalizing Panther activists towards anarchism, as time in prison gave them space to re-assess the movement's weaknesses. Ashanti Alston was himself introduced to anarchism by the Panther activist
Frankie Ziths, who wrote of Black activists' need to learn from the history of the
Makhnovshchina, lest they themselves be betrayed by White communist activists.
Ojore Lutalo was likewise introduced to critiques of Marxism by Kuwasi Balagoon, who considered Marxism to be ineffective for organizing Black communities and opposed its tendency towards
bureaucracy and political repression. Lutalo himself became convinced of the efficacy of
consensus decision-making, believing that people had the capacity to govern themselves without being ordered to by individuals or organizations with political power. Drawing from this attitude, Alston summed anarchism up as "power to the people where it stays with the people". While this group was united by their identification with anarchism, their individual perspectives on racial identity influenced their adoption of different labels for themselves. In his book
Anarchism and the Black Revolution, Ervin described this new group as "Black anarchists", although this label wasn't universally adopted. Balagoon and Lutalo self-identified as "New Afrikan anarchists", emphasising their identity as Africans rather than "African Americans". Alston himself took the label of "anarchist Panther", under which he published a magazine during the early 21st century.
Entry into the anarchist movement , one of the leading figures of black anarchism in the 1990s Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, American anarchist organizations began to take up the
anti-racism of the Black power movement, culminating in 1990, with the establishment of the
Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, which itself included Black anarchist members such as Ashanti Alston and Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin. However, following their entry into the American anarchist movement, Black anarchists found that their ideas on anti-racism were rejected by many White anarchists. Black anarchists struggled to achieve representation within the movement, which they felt emphasised the pressing need for intersectional analysis within anarchism. Balagoon was particularly critical of White American anarchists for their lack of understanding of white supremacy and racism, as well as their opposition to national liberation movements. Alston himself argued that White American anarchists were ignorant of the African American experience with white supremacy, which damaged their ability to be effective anti-racist allies. The
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation resisted Ervin's efforts to establish autonomous working groups for people of color, with some leading members accusing him of "separatism". To Ervin, the reluctance of white anarchists to allow people of color their own spaces had stifled their interactions and even culminated in expressions of racism and condescension, resulting in him feeling out of place in the "overwhelmingly White, middle-class, and for the most part, pacifist" movement. Despite this, Ervin continued to advocate for Black anarchism and attempt to establish spaces for anarchist people of color, believing that African and Latin American people would inevitably come to "constitute the backbone of the US anarchist movement in the future." The Black anarchist movement's approach to anti-racism, which drew on the BPP's earlier targeting of racist institutions, contrasted with majority White anti-racist organizations such as
Anti-Racist Action (ARA), which focused on opposing overt manifestations of racism and white supremacy such as the
Ku Klux Klan. Black anarchists were critical of the ARA for its focus on overt racism as opposed to institutions of structural racism, as well as its
racial color blindness. Despite these issues, many anarchist organizations began to draw on some of the BPP's earlier tactics, establishing
Copwatch and
Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) networks to respectively oppose police brutality and support
political prisoners. Over the years, anarchists increasingly noted commonalities between their own principles and those of the black power movement, including their shared advocacy of
people power and
mutual aid.
Contemporary movement During the 1990s, Black anarchists established their own organizations, such as the
Black Autonomy Network of Community Organizers (BANCO) and the
Federation of Black Community Partisans (FBCP), which gained chapters throughout the country and introduced anarchist approaches to movements against
racial inequality in the United States.
Greg Jackson also published the newspaper
Black Autonomy, which over its four-year run introduced more people to Black anarchist ideas and publicised news of police brutality and urban insurrections. Black anarchists also participated in the
Anarchist People of Color (APOC) movement, which brought together African, Asian and Latin American anarchists throughout the United States. APOC collectives provided
safe spaces (described as a
quilombo by
Pedro Ribeiro) for its members to provide each other with solidarity and strategize on anti-racist initiatives, away from the prejudices of the White majority anarchist movement. ==Worldview==