Black Solidarity Day Turns 50

Black Solidarity Day Ad
Black Solidarity Day Ad, 
New York Amsterdam News, October 18, 1969

The 50th anniversary of Black Solidarity Day was observed on November 4, 2019, with an event called the Citywide Unity Program, held at the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office Building in Harlem.  Attendees at the event were asked to consider why Black Solidarity Day was created decades ago and about modern-day parallels. This milestone anniversary provides us an opportunity to reflect on the day's origins using resources available at the New York Public Library and, specifically, at the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture, including ProQuest Historical African American Newspapers and the Schomburg Clipping File collection.

The first Black Solidarity Day was held on November 3, 1969, against the backdrop of the Black Power Movement and a post-Civil Rights-era America, and it was strategically observed one day prior to Election Day. It was a call to "protest against the intensifying repression that threatens the very existence of black people in America," stated Carlos Russell, an activist, professor, and spokesperson for the Black Solidarity Committee, which was comprised of New York City-based educators, activists, community leaders, and politicians.

On Black Solidarity Day, black people were asked to stay home, take the day off from work and school, and not shop. The intent was to draw attention to the plight of African Americans who, although having made gains in the Civil Rights Movement, still faced inequality on various socioeconomic levels. Russell extended his accusation of black repression to politicians who ignored the needs of their black constituents.

Billy Dee Williams and Frances Foster
Billy Dee Williams and Frances Foster in "Day of Absence".
New York Times, February 20, 1966

In a 1969 New York Amsterdam News article, Russell cited reasons for a nationwide strike on Black Solidarity Day that ranged from the severe cutback of social services that heavily impacted the black community to discrimination against blacks in the workplace. 

Reportedly, the idea of Black Solidarity Day sprung from the 1960s Off-Broadway hit satire Day of Absence, by Douglas Turner Ward, an African American theater maker who would go on to collaborate with Robert Hooks and Gerald Krone to establish the Negro Ensemble Company, one of the most prominent and influential black theater companies of the 20th century.  The Negro Ensemble Company Records, an archival collection which documents this iconic company from its late 1960s beginnings through the 1990s, is in the Schomburg Center's Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division

Day of Absence, which is set in a southern U.S. town, imagines what would happen if African Americans suddenly disappeared, leaving white townspeople (including politicians and law enforcement) to confront the reality of a world in which black people no longer exist. Day of Absence, which Turner Ward called a minstrel show in reverse, was famously performed by black actors in whiteface makeup.

The Black Solidarity Day Clipping File, available in the Schomburg Center’s Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division contains clips from both the African American and mainstream press that chart Black Solidarity Day for the first few years it was observed. The clipping file contains microfilmed ephemera including leaflets and a statement that lists the names of the Black Solidarity Day co-chairpersons and sponsors, which include Harlem activist Audley Moore (best known as Queen Mother Moore) and David Billings from the Council Against Poverty.

Black Solidarity Day Flier (1970)
Black Solidarity Day Flier (1970),
Schomburg Clipping File Collection

Researchers can track Black Solidarity Day programs, events in New York City and across the country, and assessments about the day by black public figures over the preceding decades, by using resources such as the above-mentioned black press datababases and The Kaiser Index to Black Resources 1948-1986

By looking at Black Solidarity Day through the lens of current events—reports of the criminalization of black people, policies such as "stop and frisk policing," and the Black Lives Matter movement—researchers can compare and contrast methods activists and others use to seek redress and accountability for injustice and repression experienced by blacks and other marginalized people. Researchers may contextualize Black Solidarity Day alongside other social justice movements and milestones such as the Black Power Movement and Stonewall, which also celebrated 50th anniversaries over the past few years.

How do you envision the next 50 years will look in the ongoing struggle for socioeconomic, racial, gender, and political equity? How can libraries and archives help us to imagine this future?


 

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