Abstract
The black freedom movement has been incorporated into the official history of America. Politicians routinely invoke it, as do advertisers. Students learn about Dr. King and Rosa Parks in grade school, and most people know who Malcolm X was, even if they do not know much about him. Streets in hundreds of cities and towns are named for these famous Americans. Many historians and movement veterans feel that a sanitized version of the black struggle is taught, such as the ubiquitous posters for Black History Month in fast-food restaurants, but even this popular narrative is a vast improvement over how black people were rendered invisible while Jim Crow prevailed until the 1960s.
We are not free. We do not make choices. Our choices are made for us; we are the poor. For those of us who live on reservations these choices and decisions are made by federal administrators, bureaucrats, and their “yes men,” euphemistically called tribal governments. Those of us who live in non-reservation areas have our lives controlled by local white power elites. We have many rulers. They are called social workers, “cops,” school teachers, churches, etc. … They call us into meetings to tell us what is good for us and how they’ve programmed us, or they come into our homes to instruct us and their manners are not always what one would call polite by Indian standards or perhaps by any standards. We are rarely accorded respect as fellow human beings.
—Clyde Warrior, President, National Indian Youth Council, “We Are Not Free,” February 2, 1967
The Asian American Political Alliance is an organization formed this year for the purposes of redefining the Asian American role, historically and contemporarily, in this country; of exposing and destroying the glaring myths concerning orientals; working to eliminate the insidious racism which permeates all levels of this society.
—Asian American Political Alliance leaflet, San Francisco State College, Fall 1968
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage, but also of the brutal “Gringo” invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan, from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility and our inevitable destiny. … Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggle against the foreigner “Gabacho” who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. … We are Aztlán.
—National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, March 1969
1. We want self-determination for Puerto Ricans, liberation on the island and inside the United States.
2. We want self-determination for all Latinos.
3. We want liberation for all Third World people.
4. We are revolutionary nationalists and oppose racism.
5. We want equality for women, down with machismo and male chauvinism.
6. We want community control of our institutions and land.
7. We want a true education of our Afro-Indio culture and Spanish language.
8. We oppose capitalists and alliances with traitors.
9. We oppose the Amerikkkan military.
10. We want freedom for all political prisoners and prisoners of war.
11. We are internationalists.
12. We believe armed self-defense and armed struggle are the only means to liberation.
13. We want a socialist society.
—Young Lords Party, “13 Point Program and Platform,” 1969
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A Selected Bibliography
On the Native American struggle, there is an excellent and accessible narrative in
Paul Chatt Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: The New Press, 1996). It is fleshed out by the articles and documents in the definitive collection edited by
Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., Joane Nagel and Troy Johnson, Red Power: The American Indians’ Fight for Freedom, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). For a contemporary sense of this movement’s early days, before AIM, see
Stan Steiner, The New Indians (New York: Harper and Row, 1967) helpful.
Carlos Munoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (London: Verso, 1989) is a politically acute account by a veteran who is also a scholar. More recently,).
Ernesto Chavez, “Mi Raza Primero!” (My People First!): Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966–1978 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) offers the first focused local study of Chicanismo from a historian’s perspective. Other scholarship, mostly by political scientists, includes
Armando Navarro, La Raza Unida Party: A Chicano Challenge to the U.S. Two-Party Dictatorship (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000)
Ignacio M. Garcia, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos Among Mexican Americans (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), and
Juan Gomez-Quinones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940–1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990).
For the Puerto Rican movement, start with
Andres Torres and Jose E. Velazquez, eds., The Puerto Rican Movement: Voices from the Diaspora (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). The arresting photo-diary
Michael Abramson, Palante, Young Lords Party (New York: McGraw Hill, 1971) is a great accompaniment, however, to understanding this movement that remains little known outside of the New York area. The major primer to the Asian American movement is a collection of documents and reflections, edited by
Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu, Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2001).
William Wei, The Asian American Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993) is a scholarly summary, though it misses many major developments.
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© 2005 Van Gosse
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Gosse, V. (2005). Red, Brown, and Yellow Power in “Occupied America”. In: Rethinking the New Left. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-8014-4_10
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