Defeating Black Power ― Civil Rights and the National Black Political Convention of 1972

In March of 1972, civil rights activists and black power leaders met for three days in Gary, Indiana, looking to end their intense four-year feud that had effectively divided Black America into two camps: integrationists and separatists. While these tensions always existed within the black freedom struggle, the situation escalated in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination.

National Black Political Convention would bring together 8,000 of America's most important black leaders. The convention's attempt to develop a national black agenda would merge competing ideologies under the theme "unity without uniformity." Over the course of three intense days, the convention produced a document called "The National Black Political Agenda", which covered areas critical to black life. While attendees and delegates agreed with nearly everything within the document, integrationists had fundamental issues with certain planks, such as the calling of a constitutional convention along with the nationalist demand for reparations. As a result civil rights activists and black elected officials withdrew their support less than ten weeks after the convention. Since nationalists did not hold elective office, have a broad constituency, nor have access to levers of real power in pragmatic ways, their popularity within black communities rapidly declined, leaving civil rights activists and black elected officials holding the mantle of black political leadership in 1972 and beyond.

While the 1972 National Black Political Convention is widely talked about, mentioned, and referenced in both academic and popular circles, Leonard Moore's history of the assembly is the first scholarly analysis of the proceedings and their long-term impact on America.