Black nationalist self-help rhetoric surges when civil rights declines

Evidence

The black Baptist convention movement formed part of an emergent black nationalism that resonated throughout the African American population and invoked feelings of racial pride and self-determination. Studies of black nationalism reveal that calls for racial solidarity and self-help have recurred throughout American history and especially during periods of declining civil rights and hence widespread black disillusionment with American “democracy.”? This was especially true in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As race relations worsened in the post-Reconstruction years, the resurgence of racial doctrines of self-help, uplift, black pride, economic solidarity, and other forms of collective action found spokesmen as ideologically far apart as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Optimism about civil rights and political inclusion yielded to cynicism. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 244

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader reading on how oppressed groups pivot from external appeals to internal self-help during backlash—echoes dynamics in the reader’s other materials on respectability politics. — connects to: Black nationalism persists as a latent force that recurs during crises; The Comintern adopted self-determination to pre-empt a resurgence of Black nationalism. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1054; Black Power emerged as a demand born of failed freedom struggles — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 996 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Black nationalism persists as a latent force that recurs during crises #corroborates (0.90)
• Black Power emerged as a demand born of failed freedom struggles #exemplifies (0.82) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 996
• The Comintern adopted self-determination to pre-empt a resurgence of Black nationalism. #expands (0.78) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1054
• Black nationalism is a stage to be transcended toward universal consciousness #complicates (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1387
• Segregation and violence pushed the black church toward collective self-help #corroborates (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 241