Black Fundamentalism: Louis Farrakhan and the Politics of Conservative Black Nationalism

October 16, 1995, the largest public gathering of African Americans in history took place in Washington, D.C. The participants had come together under the slogan the Million Man March, with an agenda emphasizing racial pride, personal responsibility, and patriarchal family relations. Estimates of the crowd’s size ranged from five hundred thousand to well over one million. The African American who initiated this demonstration had been vilified in the national media for more than a decade as racist and anti-Semitic. Yet this leader had the political insight to recognize and respond to the deep sense of social crisis within this community, the levels of rage, social alienation, and violence that were destroying an entire population of young African-American males. In a language both spiritual and visionary, he exhorted black men to transform their lives, to protect their families, to give their time and financial support to black institutions.

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