Black nationalism

People switch things up.

Okay, so as we said, black nationalism is the belief that black people should pursue political, territorial, economic, and cultural sovereignty.

It was largely happening in America and the Caribbean at a moment where nationalist movements were happening across the world.

France, Italy, and Germany had nations.

Everybody was getting a nation.

And like all nationalisms, it's formed in contrast.

And in this case, black nationalism was shaped in contrast with American white nationalism.

And it makes them in direct opposition to each other, yes, but also working from the same premise.

Yeah

... of, of, of, uh, Black nationalism.

I w- I guess I wouldn't call MLK a Black nationalist, but s- that sort of movement, the set of movements in the civil rights movement.

Um, so Elijah Muhammad gets rounded up along with 125 other Blacks who were arrested in the United States for resisting the draft and also encouraging, uh, seditious behavior.

And ultimately, uh, in the end, the incarceration of a lot of the leaders of this movement closed the history, but it did not wipe up any of the influence.

And so very few people know about this today, but if you go and you dig through government archives and gr- some great books, uh, you, you could find a hell of a thread, uh, that connects Japanese Black...

Japanese nationalism and Black nationalism during World War II.

Made me wonder about how much infiltration they were able to go.

There was the Holiness and Pentecostal revival sweeping through Black churches in the South with, like, a real intense focus on Old Testament law and living very biblically.

There was also a rising Black nationalism and a hunger to prove Black people were a distinct people with a great and ancient past.

There was even Black Freemasonry, which had a deep fascination with secret ancient lineages, and all of this is happening, right? So with that in mind, this isn't the start of, like, a few men coincidentally had, like, the same weird dream in a time where everything was normal.

No, like, so many powerful currents were already moving in this direction of Black people in America trying to understand their identity and trying to basically reclaim heritage that was taken from them from the horrors of slavery, and that idea, like, we are Israel, is not an unusual thing to come out of that.

...

Black Nationalist, uh-

Mm.

Yeah

Right.

By 1920, she is fully immersed in the Marcus Garvey movement, embracing Black nationalism and economic independence.

She later relocates to Harlem, having initially intended to emigrate to Africa, actually, and she immerses herself in the most radical political currents of the era.

And when Farmer's book details her time in Harlem, it notes that Moore became deeply involved in the Civil Rights Congress, and she joined the Communist Party.

She fought for reparations long before it was a mainstream discourse.

Decades before.

She fought for Black nationalism, and she carved out space specifically for Black women's liberation within those movements, and she did not stop.

She lived to be ninety-eight years old, passing away in 1997.

But those five primary ones are the ones I look at as a system that I study to help build a foundation for how I think about collaging a system for creating Afrofuturism.

But it's all rooted in this Afro-surreal kind of thinking, but the politics of that may come from, the politics of that come from Black nationalism, Afrocentricity, and some other belief systems that, once again, as a teenager, I'm becoming more and more connected to.

But all of this culture and much of African, especially West African thinking, or even Black American thinking, These areas are not separated to us.

I think it is a more European concept to compartmentalize these things.

There's a joy that comes out of that, too.

But also I am tapping into all of those things that fueled the inspiration for the work.

I'm going into the utilizing 12 jewels, the igusa saba, the five primary elements of hip hop, Afro centrist, the black nationalism.

I'm looking at those all of those traditions.