1. Why did Black Power become so popular? What effect did it have on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr?
2. What significant victories did black people score during the civil rights era (1940–1970)? Which techniques were the most effective? What did the movement not manage to accomplish? Do you believe that the triumphs or the failures are more significant? Why?
Overview
The phrase “Black Power” has been used by African American writers and politicians for many years, but it was during the Meredith March Against Fear in the summer of 1966 that it first entered the vocabulary of the civil rights movement. Black Power, in the opinion of Martin Luther King Jr., was “basically an emotive idea” that meant “various things to different people,” but he opposed its usage because he thought the phrase had “connotations of violence and separatism” (King, 32; King, 14 October 1966).
The debate over Black Power mirrored and strengthened a division within the civil rights movement between groups that insisted that using peaceful means was the only way to advance civil rights and others that had become impatient and were prepared to turn to violence and black secession.
We demand Black Power! Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) inspired a throng in Greenwood, Mississippi on June 16, 1966, as he finished the march that James Meredith had started. SNCC members had used the phrase in casual talks, but this was the first time it was used as a slogan in public.
When asked afterwards what he meant by the phrase, Carmichael replied, “Any white guy in this nation knows about power. When you talk about black power you talk about bringing this country to its knees any time it deals with the black man. According to “Negro Leaders on ‘Meet the Press,’ he is aware of what white power is and ought to understand what black power is.”
King sought to change the phrase’s meaning, stating that even if “the Negro is helpless,” he should aspire “to acquire political and economic strength to attain his rightful aims” despite his belief that “the slogan was an inappropriate choice” (King, October 1966; King, 14 October 1966). America “must be formed a nation in which its multiracial people are partners in power,” according to King (King, 14 October 1966). On the other side, Carmichael thought that before black people could join a multiracial society, they first needed to “close ranks” in solidarity with one another (Carmichael, 44).