By the end of the 1960s, however, groups such as the Black Panthers or the Nation of Islam emerged that argued that black people had their own traditions and consciousness; black people needed to take pride in themselves for what they were and not for what the broader society wanted them to be. In the words of the poem written by William Holmes Borders, Sr., and recited by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, “I may be poor, but I am—Somebody!” The authentic inner selves of black Americans were not those of white people, but were shaped by the unique experiences of growing up black in a hostile white
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