Black leaders of the 1960s used various methods in attempting to construct an identity for the black community. Communication is the attempt to transform subjective experience into intersubjective reality in which all members of a community participate. In constructing group identity, community spokesmen attempt to define the nature of the community and to propose action that overcomes barriers to the attainment of the community's fully defined identity. Although all the black spokesmen of the 1960s employed these rhetorical resources of definition and action, they approached the problem of black participation in United States society from two main perspectives: integrationist and separatist. An analysis of their rhetoric leads to four general conclusions: (1) the function of rhetoric in identity construction is often antagonistic to its function in promoting cooperative action; (2) separatist rhetoric built identity through fantasies of group potency and triumph; (3) integrationist rhetoric built identity upon the myth of equal participation in society for all but yielded to more militant postures; and (4) the black movement was forced into such radical definitions of community as identification with emerging Third World nations. (Author/GW)