Ebbs and Flows

One thing which seems to occur and recur is a pattern of ebbs and flows.  In this case I'm thinking about race. In the 1950's the emphasis was on integration, the idea that our American problems would be cured by ensuring that all legal barriers to full participation.  Hence, the emphasis on civil rights.  This was building on the program of the NAACP.  The Black Muslims, the Nation of Islam, was separatist.

In the 1960s and 70's with Stokely Carmichael  and other leaders the Black Power movement emerged, with Malcolm X contesting with Martin Luther King.  As I remember it the issue was partly at least whether whites could be trusted, or wehther blacks would do better by strengthening the black community.  It may have been a reaction to what happened to black teachers and other professionals during integration.

While these lines of division seem to an outsider like me to have blurred over the 50 years since, I think we can still see those impulses working today. And this post at Boston 1775 shows them working then--black Congregationalists establishing their own church.