John Watson (activist)

Last updated

John Watson became editor of The South End, the daily student newspaper of Wayne State University, in 1968, transforming the paper into a public resource "with the intention of promoting the interests of impoverished, oppressed, exploited, and powerless victims of white, racist monopoly capitalism and imperialism" (first editorial by Watson in Sept. 26, 1968). As member of both the Black Panthers and the Detroit-based Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), John Watson represented the American black liberation movement at the international anti-imperialist conference organized in December 1968 in Italy.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Huey P. Newton</span> Founder of the Black Panther Party (1942–1989)

Huey Percy Newton was an African American revolutionary and political activist who founded the Black Panther Party. He ran the party as its first leader and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.

A black panther is a colour variant of any Panthera, particularly of the leopard and the jaguar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stokely Carmichael</span> Trinidadian activist with American citizenship (1941–1998)

Kwame Ture was an American organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad in the Caribbean, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending the Bronx High School of Science. He was a key leader in the development of the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and last as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fourth International Posadist</span> Trotskyist faction founded 1962 by J. Posadas

The Fourth International Posadist is a Trotskyist international organisation. It was founded in 1962 by J. Posadas, who had been the leader of the Latin America Bureau of the Fourth International in the 1950s, and of the Fourth International's section in Argentina. Between their split from the International Secretariat of the Fourth International in 1962 and Posadas' death in 1981, Posadists developed a strain of communism that included several fringe ideas, which brought them into conflict with more mainstream left-wing groups.

Fredy Perlman (1934–1985) was an American author, publisher, and activist. His best-known work, Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, retells the historical rise of state domination through a poetic investigation the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Arts Movement</span> 1960s–1970s art movement

The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black power movement</span> African-American social, political & cultural movement in the United States

The black power movement or black liberation movement was a branch or counterculture within the civil rights movement of the United States, reacting against its more moderate, mainstream, or incremental tendencies and motivated by a desire for safety and self-sufficiency that was not available inside redlined African American neighborhoods. Black power activists founded black-owned bookstores, food cooperatives, farms, media, printing presses, schools, clinics and ambulance services.

James Forman was a prominent African-American leader in the civil rights movement. He was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. As the executive secretary of SNCC from 1961 to 1966, Forman played a significant role in the Freedom Rides, the Albany movement, the Birmingham campaign, and the Selma to Montgomery marches.

The New Communist movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution. The movement, according to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.

The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) was an organization of African-American workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation's Dodge Main assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Protests of 1968</span> Worldwide escalation of social conflicts

The protests of 1968 comprised a worldwide escalation of social conflicts, which were predominantly characterized by the rise of left-wing politics, anti-war sentiment, civil rights urgency, youth counterculture within the silent and baby boomer generations, and popular rebellions against state militaries and bureaucracies.

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) formed in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. The League united a number of different Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs) that were growing rapidly across the auto industry and other industrial sectors—industries in which Black workers were concentrated in Detroit in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The formation of the League was an attempt to form a more cohesive political organ guided by the principles of Black liberation and Marxism-Leninism in order to gain political power and articulate the specific concerns of Black workers through political action. While the League was only active for a short period of time, it was a significant development in a time of increasing militancy and political action by Black workers and in the context of both the Black liberation and Marxist-Leninist movements in the United States.

The Black Workers Congress (BWC) was created on December 12, 1970 in response to a manifesto written by the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (League). The BWC would be a separate organization that would be used to expand the League across the United States. The BWC was also used to coordinate Revolutionary Union Movement and Black Workers caucuses.

Black power is a political slogan and a name which is given to various associated ideologies which aim to achieve self-determination for black people. It is primarily, but not exclusively, used by black activists and other proponents of what the slogan entails in the United States. The black power movement was prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s, emphasizing racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture, promote and advance what was seen by proponents of the movement as being the collective interests and values of black Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Panther Party</span> US black power organization (1966–1982)

The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

<i>Revolutionary Suicide</i> 1973 autobiography by Huey P. Newton

Revolutionary Suicide is an autobiography written by Huey P. Newton with assistance from J. Herman Blake originally published in 1973. Newton was a major figure in the American black liberation movement and in the wider 1960s counterculture. He was a co-founder and leader of what was then known as the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self-Defence with Bobby Seale. The chief ideologue and strategist of the BPP, Newton taught himself how to read during his last year of high school, which led to his enrollment in Merrit College in Oakland in 1966; the same year he formed the BPP. The Party urged members to challenge the status quo with armed patrols of the impoverished streets of Oakland, and to form coalitions with other oppressed groups. The party spread across America and internationally as well, forming coalitions with the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cubans. This autobiography is an important work that combines political manifesto and political philosophy along with the life story of a young African American revolutionary. The book was not universally well received but has had a lasting influence on the black civil rights movement.

The International Marxist Group (IMG) was a Trotskyist group in Britain between 1968 and 1982. It was the British Section of the Fourth International. It had around 1,000 members and supporters in the late 1970s. In 1980, it had 682 members; by 1982, when it changed its name to the Socialist League, membership had fallen to 534.

The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms and the rejection of traditional family values, social order, and gender roles. The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals. However, many have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.

Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) was a Marxist-Leninist, black nationalist organisation which was active from 1962 to 1968. They were the first group to apply the philosophy of Maoism to conditions of black people in the United States and informed the revolutionary politics of the Black Power movement. RAM was the only secular political organization which Malcolm X joined prior to 1964. The group's political formation deeply influenced the politics of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and many other future influential Black Panther Party founders and members.

Revolutionary nationalism is a name that has been applied to the political philosophy of many different types of nationalist political movements that wish to achieve their goals through a revolution against the established order. Individuals and organizations described as being revolutionary nationalist include some political currents within the French Revolution, Irish republicans engaged in armed struggle against the British crown, the Cần Vương movement against French rule in Vietnam, the Indian independence movement in the 20th century, some participants in the Mexican Revolution, Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascists, the Autonomous Government of Khorasan in 1920s Iran, Augusto Cesar Sandino, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement in Bolivia, black nationalism in the United States, and some African independence movements.

References