When Beyoncé jolted 100 million viewers back to Black power on Super Bowl Sunday, she was dancing with history. She was dancing for history.
She danced with a fierce Black women dance troupe of black leather, black berets, swaying Afros, stomping Malcolm “X” formations, raised fists, posing with sign that boomed: “Justice 4 Mario Woods,” referring to the Black man killed by San Francisco police on December 2.
Beyoncé’s unmistakable Black power salute to the Black Lives Matter movement did not just come during Super Bowl 50. It came on the 50th anniversary of Stokely Carmichael’s call for “Black power” during the stifling June heat of the Mississippi March Against Fear in 1966. Beyoncé’s performance came on the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense 40 miles up the road in Oakland in 1966. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale created this iconic Black power organization blocks from the bar where Alicia Garza first love-lettered “Black lives matter” on her Facebook three years ago.
As much as Beyoncé danced with history, so did her detractors.
“I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Fox News Monday. “What we should be doing in the African-American community, and all communities, is building up respect for police officers.”
On Fox News on Thursday, lawyer Peter Johnson Jr. said “there are a lot of civil rights leaders that Beyoncé could emulate and talk about. Black Panthers are not someone that need to be emulated.” They “were a criminal, violent group.”
These attacks on Beyoncé’s performance came on the 50th anniversary of the firestorm of bipartisan hostility to the call for Black power. It came on the 50th anniversary of the declaration of war on those young activists who turned away from civil rights to Black power in 1966. Giuliani’s attack came on the 50th anniversary of electoral opening of the racist backlash to civil rights and Black power, specifically Ronald Reagan’s win of the California governorship in 1966.
