Title: The Black Power Movement and American Social Work

Author: Joyce Bell

Year of Publication: 2014

Thesis:
-Argues that the BPM had a great deal to do with increasing opportunities for Black people to enter professions, though by following two groups of Black social workers, she found that a class system quickly developed where Black professionals felt comfortable talking down to poor Black people. In essence, her large point is that NASBW is an example of how Black Power was able to enter institutions/work independently with black-run institutions (an understudied topic). Major results of BP: creation of professional associations “with a commitment to race politics” & changed social norms/how to deal with racism in the workplace. (174-5) “white resistance to relinquishing privilege—coupled with Black Power’s emphasis on repre- sentation and identity—in many ways paved the path to multiculturalism. “(175) BP benefits the Black middle class, but it signifies a “changing of the guard” rather than real structural change with respect to poor Black folk. Hegemony has a huge role in this study; it also harkens back to Robert Allen’s Black Awakening in Capitalist America.
Time: 60s-80s
Geography: U.S.
Organization:
Foreword by Jeffrey Ogbar
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 - Introduction: Race, Resistance, and the Civil Sphere
- Walker, whom she quotes on political, cultural, and organizational institutionalization, shows how movements attempt to get subsumed into mainstream
- exit or voice idea (leave or stay & try to be heard)
- Ogbar’s introduction goes back to Malcom X as the beginning of the Black Power Movement
- Key: black self-determination / integration not a “panacea”
- Black assertiveness not met with submissiveness but resentment.
- This books explores independent and within institution actions
Chapter 2 - Re-envisioning Black Power
Chapter 3 - Black Power Professionals
Chapter 4 - "A Nice Social Tea Party": The Rocky Relationship Between Social Work and Black Liberation
- Northern & southern struggles totally different - south still on integration (87)
Chapter 5 - "We Stand Before You, Not as a Separatist Body": The Techni-Culture Movement to Gain Voice in the National Federation of Settlements
Chapter 6 - "We'll Build Our Own Thing": The Exit Stratey of the National Association of Black Social Workers
Chapter 7 - Exit and Voice in Intra-Organizational Social Movements
Chapter 8 - Conclusion: Institutionalizing Black Power
Appendix 1: Methods
Appendix 2: Founding Dates of Black Professional Associations
Notes
References
Index
Type: Social History
Methods: Theory Guided Process Tracing (TGPT) (Essentially transparently revealing method to participants).
Sources: Social work archives, personal papers, oral histories
Historiography:
Keywords: “Intra-organizational social movements’
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
Ogbar: “It was a merging of two seemingly irreconcilable beliefs—black nationalism and racial integration—that forged a new politics which permeated black America. Moreover, despite what historians and others have argued, it was Black Power, not the dream of a racially integrated America, that ultimately became a dominant expression among African Americans.” (xii)

“I argue, first of all, that bringing movements into organizations is a very movement-like process. I also find that Black Power was the central motivation and political lens for the creation of new racial practice within organizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Finally, I argue that the development of black professional associational life is a central outcome of the Black Power movement that has had long-lasting and broad implications in the professions.” (21)

Notes: