HIUS 161: Essay 3

This week’s texts discussed a variety of activist organizations representing political and racial minorities. The main idea I pulled from these was that the 1950s and 1960s saw various social movements struggle to replicate the success of the Black Panther Party in Northern California or the NAACP. Additionally, similar movements had difficulty unifying around a single idea, developing a scene that was more of a collection of activism than a strong, unified push.

In Lavender and Red, Emily Hobson covers the rise of gay liberation movements in Northern California. She aims to show how these movements predated the Stonewall Riots of 1969, which gave them a major boost into the public spotlight. This expansion in the late 1950s was driven by activists such as Carl Wittman, who wrote about the connections between racial and sexual oppression, called for support for various African American activist groups, and whose work would later develop into initiatives such as the Alpine Liberation Front. The comparison between gay and black experiences helps to exemplify how social movements looked to the Black Panther Party and NAACP for guidance on how to push back against their systemic oppression. Yet, despite this rise in unity, groups within what we now know as the LGBTQ+ community were not working together. Many saw their issues as separate, and only after major events like Stonewall do we see a more unified front.

This idea of unity is further developed by Jason Ferreira in All Our Relations. He discusses the activism of native americans going into the 1970s and beyond, with the famous “capture” of Alcatraz as a symbol for white colonizing and the taking of land. Ferreira talks about native activists who attended classes held by the Black Panthers to learn about activism, as well as their similar use of stunts meant to put their issues on full display to the world. What was most important to Native American movements was the idea of a collective national identity and self–determination, after much of their culture, autonomy, and agency were stripped away by the United States government. Again, what becomes clearer throughout these readings is the lack of connection between different native groups. They had not developed a specific community in large cities, as they had only recently begun moving off reservations, making it difficult for them to connect with other native groups.

The Black Panther Party also worked closely with Latino groups in San Francisco and beyond, including the Puerto Rican Young Lords in Chicago. As Bloom and Martin explain in Black against Empire, while other minority groups struggled to create united fronts, the Black Panthers and the Young Lords made great progress working together. They focused on “direct action tactics” with an “anti-imperialist edge,” intended to provoke confrontation with the government and law enforcement. They knew this kind of interaction would create publicity and change. Yet, even as these groups identified that their oppression came from both racial and class-based discrimination, they were slow to create a movement based on class. Huey Newton believed that white revolutionaries didn’t suffer the same racial injustice, and though he suggested methods for them to aid the Black Panther movement, they didn’t work together directly. This distinction between movements demonstrates the scattered and unorganized nature of some of the social movements in the early 1970s, as their lack of unity and collective movement gave them significantly less influence.

Lastly, we discussed the emergence of abortion and privacy rights movements in Leslie Reagan’s Crossing the Border. Unlike other movements that struggled to unify, the women involved in securing abortion rights saw “multiracial and cross-class support” for their efforts. As Reagan describes, similar to the Black Panther movement and other African American activists of the time, they focused heavily on educating their members in “feminist health and political education” so they could better contribute to the cause. This emphasis on educating is reminiscent of the Civil Rights activists who were taught how to protest and speak out effectively, and demonstrates their influence on then and later minority activist movements. Additionally, the women’s movement for abortion access was able to support its members in obtaining these important procedures while fighting for legislation, allowing them to build support.

Overall, this week’s readings were a great introduction to activism in the 1960s and beyond, and it was especially interesting to read about the connections, or lack thereof, between groups in different cities and states.