ABSTRACT
The Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was one of the most significant developments in the African American experience. Exploding across the United States, Black Power exhibited resistance and creativity, innovation and anger and posited itself as a regal force to redefine race relations in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Yet, for all of its accomplishments, Black Power has been excluded from mainstream memory and primarily has been neglected in the cultural landscape. This stands in stark contrast to the modern Civil Rights Movement which is celebrated and heavily memorialized throughout our cultural fabric. This creates a glaring paradox where, deeply embedded within the civil rights memories, are the resulting multiple movements that spawned in the aftermath—such as the Black Power Movement and the Red Power Movement to name a few. Quite frequently, these movements are strategically and intentionally disassociated from both civil rights work and civil rights memory, thus circulating through American memory in forms that are under continuous negotiation and debate. The goal of this chapter is twofold. First, I examine how the Black Freedom Movement is narrated and represented. Second, I examine the ways in which institutions such as museums reinterpret past historical events, thereby creating institutionalized collective memory.
