"Should Black Americans Make Inroads Within the System to Enact Change, or Should They Work to Dismantle the Status Quo and Assert Their Power by Any Means Necessary?"

"While applauding the new convention's aspirations, participants in and scholars of its 1972 predecessor also offered a cautionary note in recent interviews. They warned that social media can be an effective educational and organizing tool—one they never had access to—but that online attention should not be mistaken for political change. They emphasized the importance of unity, which they weren't always able to maintain themselves. Perhaps most important, they argued that in order to achieve lasting change, organizers will need to understand the benefits of coordinating with other marginalized groups to elect more Black officials into the political system, while also working from the outside to hold those in power to account.
"That's one lesson the Black Lives Matter activists seem to be taking from 1972 so far. 'Electoral politics is not something that we can neglect,' Lumumba says. 'Unless we continue to experiment with governing, we will never see ourselves being free.'"

Jesús A. Rodríguez at Politico looks back to the 1972 National Black Political Convention.