Built with Empty Fists: The Rise and Circulation of Black Power Martial Artistry During The Cold War

Abstract

My dissertation explores the history of unarmed self-defense and martial arts in Black community organizing between 1955 and 1980. As such, it intervenes in Black Power studies, Afro-Asian studies, and gender history. Using a Black feminist approach to social movement analysis, it challenges preconceived notions about Black Power athleticism, aesthetics, gender roles, and self-defense. Utilizing oral histories and archival research, my dissertation alters current understandings of Black martial artistry. This study disproves the narrative that 1970s kung fu films sparked African American interest in martial artistry, and from there trickled into Black Power organizations. It analyzes how U.S. Cold War occupation of Okinawa and similar locales across East Asia facilitated the study of arts like karate by creating possibilities for interracial contact, both domestically and abroad. While the roots of African-American practices of East Asian martial artistry can be traced to U.S. militarism, I argue that martial arts practice contributed to the development of holistic, community engagement practices rooted in political, spiritual, and physical well-being within Black communities. I explore martial arts practice in three organizational case studies in order to attend to differences in time-period, approach, and gender practices. Nationwide, the Nation of Islam empowered men and women to feel safe with gendered ideas about who should practice unarmed, community defense. The Congress of African People practiced karate to provide physical protection to black community leaders and politicians running for elected office and enrich Pan-Africanism and Black Arts cultural practice in New York and New Jersey. Lastly, the Black Panther Party taught tae kwon do as part of a Third World, gender-inclusive education, catering to the body and soul of Oakland youth. The dissertation ends by examining how these organizations influenced the representations of male and female martial artists in Blaxploitation films. My intersectional lens centers a critical approach to Black nationalist masculinism and situates how developments in Black women's leadership impact the gender norms and pedagogy of combat sports and self-defense. It revises assumptions that Black manhood and womanhood remained static and that Black Power activists did not develop nuanced approaches to body politics and self-determination.