Black Power in Brooklyn

Black Power took many different forms in Brooklyn, New York. Most often, historians turn to Brooklyn for examples of late-1960s Black militancy. During that time, in the midst of a city-wide public school teachers’ strike, the Ocean-Hill Brownsville section of Brooklyn became synonymous with divisive “identity politics” and strident forms of Black Nationalist politics. While much scholarly and popular attention focused on the public school “community control” movement as the expression of the Black Power Movement in Brooklyn, other important sides of the Black Power Movement also existed in the borough. I focus on three other significant types of Black Power that concentrated on economic development, political power, and the area’s cultural identification. These forms of Black Power emerged simultaneously with the more well-known aspects of Black Nationalism and played important roles over the next forty years of political, economic, and social life in Black Brooklyn. Long after community control movements faded from headlines, these other aspects of Brooklyn’s Black Power movement remained.