Black pride is a movement indicating pride in being black. Related movements include black nationalism, Black Panthers, and Afrocentrism.
The slogan has been used in the United States by African Americans to celebrate heritage and personal pride. The black pride movement is closely linked with the developments of the American civil rights movement, during which figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael spoke out against the conditions of the United States' segregated society, and lobbied for better treatment for people of all races.
The black pride movement permeated into the work of African American popular musicians. The Impressions's song "We're a Winner", written by their lead singer, Curtis Mayfield, became a virtual anthem of the black pride movement, as did James Brown's "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud", and Martha & the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street"
The black pride movement is very prevalent in Brazil, especially throughout their poorer population, and in the Brazilian funk music genre. Brazilian funk’s origin reflects Brazilian black resistance. Ethnomusicologist George Yúdice states that youths were engaging black culture mediated by a U.S. culture industry met with many arguments against their susceptibility to cultural colonization. Although it borrows some ingredients from hip hop, its style still remains unique to Brazil (specifically Rio and São Paulo).
Black pride has been a central theme of the originally Jamaican Rastafari movement since the second half of the 20th century. It has been described as "a rock in the face of expressions of white superiority".
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or pride:
“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world.... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.””
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“It is the highest and most legitimate pride of an Englishman to have the letters M.P. written after his name. No selection from the alphabet, no doctorship, no fellowship, be it of ever so learned or royal a society, no knightship,—not though it be of the Garter,—confers so fair an honour.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)