The 1967 Arab–Israeli War rocketed
the question of Israel and Palestine onto the front pages of American
newspapers. Black Power activists saw Palestinians as a kindred
people of color, waging the same struggle for freedom and justice as
themselves. Soon concerns over the Arab–Israeli conflict spread
across mainstream black politics and into the heart of the civil
rights movement itself. Black
Power and Palestine
uncovers why so many African Americans—notably Martin Luther King,
Jr., Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali, among others—came to support the
Palestinians or felt the need to respond to those who did.
Americans
first heard pro-Palestinian sentiments in public through the black
freedom struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. Michael R. Fischbach
uncovers this hidden history of the Arab–Israeli conflict's role in
African American activism and the ways that distant struggle shaped
the domestic fight for racial equality. Black Power's transnational
connections between African Americans and Palestinians deeply
affected U.S. black politics, animating black visions of identity
well into the late 1970s. Black
Power and Palestine
allows those black voices to be heard again today.
In
chronicling this story, Fischbach reveals much about how American
peoples of color create political strategies, a sense of self, and a
place within U.S. and global communities. The shadow cast by events
of the 1960s and 1970s continues to affect the United States in deep,
structural ways. This is the first book to explore how conflict in
the Middle East shaped the American civil rights movement.