Black Power, Nineties Style

“A TORCH has been passed,” declared Reverend Benjamin Chavis in July, in his first speech as the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Chavis, 45, had in mind the passing of the civil-rights leadership from the old guard to his generation. After he spoke of black empowerment and the new political muscle of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Chavis walked over to where the CBC’s chairman, Representative Kweisi Mfume (D., Md.) was seated, and the two men embraced. The moment, said radical columnist Earl Caldwell in the New York Daily News, symbolized a “bonding between the two most powerful groups of the black community: the oldest and largest civil-rights group and the new 39-member congressional caucus.” Caldwell credits Chavis and Mfume with the most significant change in black leadership since the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

In mid September, the leadership flaunted its militancy with its public embrace of Nation of Islam’s Minister Louis Farrakhan—a separatist, anti-white racist, and anti-Semite—at the CBC’s annual legislative meeting. Before a huge audience, Mfume announced a “sacred covenant” between the CBC and Farrakhan on legislative concerns; Chavis rhapsodized about “the spirit of unity”; and Reverend Jesse Jackson placed race above ideology, asserting that “People with different points of view can still have unity on racial issues.” By embracing Farrakhan, the NAACP and the CBC snubbed white liberal House Democrats. “I represent the people of Baltimore, not the people of the Hill,” Mfume shrugged.

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Minoo Southgate

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“A TORCH has been passed,” declared Reverend Benjamin Chavis in July, in his first speech as the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Chavis, 45, had in mind the passing of the civil-rights leadership from the old guard to his generation. After he spoke of black empowerment and the new political muscle of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Chavis walked over to where the CBC’s chairman, Representative Kweisi Mfume (D., Md.) was seated, and the two men embraced. The moment, said radical columnist Earl Caldwell in the New York Daily News, symbolized a “bonding between the two most powerful groups of the black community: the oldest and largest civil-rights group and the new 39-member congressional caucus.” Caldwell credits Chavis and Mfume with the most significant change in black leadership since the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

In mid September, the leadership flaunted its militancy with its public embrace of Nation of Islam’s Minister Louis Farrakhan—a separatist, anti-white racist, and anti-Semite—at the CBC’s annual legislative meeting. Before a huge audience, Mfume announced a “sacred covenant” between the CBC and Farrakhan on legislative concerns; Chavis rhapsodized about “the spirit of unity”; and Reverend Jesse Jackson placed race above ideology, asserting that “People with different points of view can still have unity on racial issues.” By embracing Farrakhan, the NAACP and the CBC snubbed white liberal House Democrats. “I represent the people of Baltimore, not the people of the Hill,” Mfume shrugged.