The Black Power Movement
As the Civil Rights struggle continued into the mid-1960s, the tensions on either side of the battlefied began to mount. In the South whites became more vicious in their attacks. In the North, as Blacks began to cry for freedom there also, whites reacted with stiff oppositon. Many Blacks had had enough of waiting for white America to give them justice. In Harlem a protest march against a police station turned into a revolt with guerilla attacks by Blacks on white police. In Brooklyn, Rochester, Chicago, and Philadelphia, molotov cocktails and rebellion were replacing picket signs and demonstrations. After the disastrous Selma March of 1965, even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was disturbed that the movement had not increased the standard of living of the masses, was becoming disillusioned. |
All of this did not go unnoticed by the young black Civil Rights workers. They had joined the various organizations expecting so much more than had been achieved by this time. The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was one of these especially. They watched as Civil Rights leaders like Fanni Lou Hamer and D.U. Pullium were severely beaten. They watched as Herbert Lee and Louis Allen were beaten and eventually killed. On August 11, 1965 the degradations, oppression and rage exploded in the Watts Rebellion. For six days Blacks fought white policemen, firemen, and National Guardsmen in pitched battles. When the dust had cleared, the Civil Rights struggle was changed forever.
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After an attempted assassination of Civil Rights leader James Meredith, a protest March was held in
Missisippi. The leader of SNCC was a young graduate of Howard University by the name of Stokely Carmicheal (Kwame Ture). At the march it was Carmicheal who uttered the historic words, "Black Power." They were two simple words which whites would fear and Blacks would love. "Black Power" rolled like thunder throughout America and was picked up as a rallying cry. The age of the "negroe" or the more derogatory words were over, Black was beautiful now---Black was power The struggle for simple equality had taken a new and inevitable turn which would change the politics of the Black world forever. |
Malcolm X