The United States – From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Assassinations as Turning Point
For the United States, 1968 is the year of assassinations. On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. is shot dead in Memphis. The prophet of the nonviolent civil rights movement, the preacher of integration, the dreamer of “I have a dream”—dead. Two months later, on June 5, Robert F. Kennedy is shot in Los Angeles, shortly after his victory in the California primary. The last Kennedy, the hope-bearer of the liberal left—dead.[1]
The symbolism is brutal: liberal America dies in 1968. The vision that racism can be overcome through integration, that the American dream applies to everyone, that reform rather than revolution is possible—this vision dies with King and Kennedy. What follows is radicalization.
The structure of the violence: after King’s death, uprisings break out in over 100 American cities—Washington, Baltimore, Chicago burn. The National Guard is mobilized, curfews are imposed. The “long, hot summer” of 1967 (Newark, Detroit) repeats itself—only this time not as a spontaneous explosion, but as a reaction to political murder. The message is clear: nonviolence is answered with violence.[2]
From Martin Luther King to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers
Martin Luther King (1929–1968) represented the first phase of the civil rights movement: grounded in Christianity (the Sermon on the Mount), Gandhian-inspired (nonviolence), integrationist in orientation (the beloved community). His goal was not separatism but the realization of the American Constitution—“all men are created equal” should finally apply to Black people too.[3]
Malcolm X (1925–1965, assassinated) represented the second phase: radical, separatist, militant. “By any means necessary.” Not integration into a racist system, but self-defense and Black self-determination. Malcolm X did not read Hegel directly, but his dialectic of master and slave was implicitly present: the slave must fight the master, not beg for recognition.[4]
The Black Panther Party (founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale) radicalizes further: armed self-defense, social programs (free breakfast for children), Marxist rhetoric. They read Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth) and understand themselves as colonized people within their own country. America is not “home” but an occupying power. The police is not protection but an organ of repression.[5]
The Olympic Games in Mexico City (October 1968) become a stage for protest: Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists during the playing of the U.S. anthem—the Black Power salute. They wear no shoes (a symbol of Black poverty), black gloves (a symbol of Black strength), black scarves (a symbol of Black pride). They are expelled, sent home, ostracized. But the image travels around the world—and becomes an icon.[6]
The Hegel Connection – Recognition through Struggle
The Black Power movement unconsciously practices what Hegel had described in the master-slave dialectic: recognition cannot be begged for but must be fought for. The slave who begs for recognition confirms his slavery. The slave who fights—if necessary with violence—forces recognition as an equal subject.
Martin Luther King’s nonviolence presupposed that the opponent has a conscience. Malcolm X and the Black Panthers recognized: structural racism has no conscience—it is a system, not a morality. It cannot be overcome by appeals, only by a struggle for power.
The systematic question: was Hegel right that recognition results from struggle? Or was King right that violence only produces counter-violence? The historical answer is dialectical: both. The civil rights movement needed both—King’s moral authority and the Black Panthers’ militant threat. Without King, no legitimacy; without the Panthers, no urgency. The reforms (the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965) came because white Americans understood: either integration or civil war.[7]
The Feminist Wave – “The Personal Is Political”
1968 is also the year in which the second wave of feminism explodes. The first wave (women’s suffrage, 19th/early 20th century) had won formal equality. The second wave (1960s–1980s) goes deeper: it concerns structural oppression—in the family, in sexuality, in language, in consciousness.[8]
Simone de Beauvoir had laid the philosophical groundwork in 1949 in The Second Sex: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Gender is not nature but social construction. Woman is man’s “Other”—defined by negation, not by her own positivity. This is Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, turned toward gender: man is the subject, woman the object.[9]
Kate Millett (Sexual Politics, 1970, but with roots in 1968) shows: literature (D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer) is political—it legitimizes male domination by portraying women as passive objects of male desire. The private (sexuality, love, family) is political—it is a site of power struggles, not a refuge.[10]
The Women’s Liberation Movement practices consciousness-raising—forming awareness through the exchange of experience. Women meet in small groups, tell their stories, and recognize: “This is not my individual problem, this is structural.” Domestic violence, sexual harassment, wage discrimination—these are not isolated cases but a system.[11]
The Hegel connection: here too, an unconscious application of the master-slave dialectic. Women have historically been constructed as “the Other” (Beauvoir). The task is not integration into male structures but self-determination. This means: creating one’s own spaces (women’s shelters, feminist bookstores, women’s magazines), developing one’s own language (gender-inclusive language), making one’s own politics (gender quotas, reproductive rights).
The systematic point: feminism discovers what Hegel had overlooked—that the family (which he idealized as the site of love and recognition) can itself be a site of domination. Hegel’s Sittlichkeit (ethical life) must be criticized feminist-ically: the “natural ethical life” of the family is often patriarchal domination. Woman is not “priestess of the house” (Hegel) but often an unpaid worker in an institution that prevents her independence.[12]
On the assassinations see Taylor Branch: At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68 (2006); Thurston Clarke: The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America (2008). ↩︎
On the unrest after King’s death see Clay Risen: A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (2009). ↩︎
Martin Luther King: “I Have a Dream” (1963); “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963). On its philosophical foundation see Richard King: Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (1992). ↩︎
Malcolm X: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). On the Hegel connection see George Yancy: Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race (2008), chapter on recognition. ↩︎
On the Black Panthers see Joshua Bloom & Waldo Martin: Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (2013); Huey P. Newton: Revolutionary Suicide (1973). ↩︎
On the Black Power salute see John Carlos & Dave Zirin: The John Carlos Story (2011); Douglas Hartmann: Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete (2003). ↩︎
On the dialectical interpretation see Cornel West: “Malcolm X and Black Rage” in: id.: Race Matters (1993). ↩︎
On the second wave of feminism see Sara Evans: Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation (1979); Gisela Bock: Frauen in der europäischen Geschichte (2000). ↩︎
Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex (1949). On its Hegel reception see Eva Lundgren-Gothlin: Sex and Existence: Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’ (1996). ↩︎
Kate Millett: Sexual Politics (1970). ↩︎
On consciousness-raising see Kathie Sarachild: “Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon” (1973) in: Feminist Revolution (1975). ↩︎
On feminist critique of Hegel see Heidi Hartmann: “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism” in: Capital & Class 8 (1979); Luce Irigaray: Speculum of the Other Woman (1974). ↩︎