Black Power
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
It was June 16th, 1966 in Greenwood, Mississippi. A large crowd of Black people were gathered, awaiting chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Stokely Carmichael’s release from jail. Civil rights activist James Meredith had been shot by a white sniper only 10 days earlier, while undertaking his solitary “March Against Fear.”
Just south of Hernando, on the second day of his solitary march, a white man by the name of Aubrey James Norvell stood along the roadside and raised his shotgun, then fired three loads of buckshot at him. Several pellets struck Meredith in the head, neck, and body while horrified onlookers watched. Almost immediately, civil rights leaders from different organizations rushed to Meredith’s bedside at a Memphis hospital with plans to continue the “March Against Fear” while he recuperated. Martin Luther King and CORE national director, Floyd McKissick, met with SNCC’s Cleveland Sellers, Stanley Wise, and newly-elected SNCC chairman, Stokely Carmichael, who stressed that the march was an opportunity “to organize in communities along the march route.” SNCC wanted the march to focus attention on local voter registration efforts by bringing marchers and reporters to Mississippi towns where most Black people were still unregistered as voters. They also insisted that marchers use civil disobedience in communities where they encountered resistance.
Rev. Martin Luther King was the march’s most visible figure. Black people in Mississippi and throughout the South idolized King and trusted his leadership. King, for his part, was aware of a new anger among young Black people in SNCC and elsewhere, and one could detect in his speeches during the march, attempts to reflect the new racial mood without abandoning the ideals of nonviolence and brotherhood.Though respecting King, SNCC participants sought opportunities to convey the idea that beyond getting more Black people registered to vote, a more radical approach to change was now necessary. It was within this context that SNCC’s Willie Ricks and Carmichael shouted out “Black Power”–a shortened version of “black power for black people.” SNCC organizers had been using the phrase in Alabama.
The decision made that day by the SNCC contingent would change the course of Black struggle. The call for “Black Power” — not simply, “Freedom Now,” would challenge the established movement leadership positions. The people who delivered that message were Stokely Carmichael, and Willie Ricks (whose name you may not know).
“Note: extremely radical, militant individual,” read the arrest card of SNCC’s field organizer, Willie “Mukasa” Ricks. Nicknamed “The Reverend” because of his fiery oratorical style, Ricks was known for his significant contribution to the rhetoric, mobilization and emergence of Black Power. Perhaps no greater example of Ricks’ unique role in the Movement was the Meredith March Against Fear in 1966. It was Stokely Carmichael’s turn to speak, and he was met with an explosive crowd: “We have been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothing.’ What we gonna start saying now is Black Power!”
“Black power!”
“Black power!”
Ricks sprang onto stage besides Carmichael and united the crowd with a question that would propel the sentiment of the Movement for years to come. “What do you want?”
“BLACK POWER!”
“What do you want?”
“BLACK POWER!”
There is no tape available of that speech — Stokely would amplify his remarks in an address he gave in Berkeley, California several months later, on October 29, 1966. This time however, he was addressing white people.
...in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free. You may enslave a man after he is born free, and that is in fact what this country does. It enslaves black people after they’re born, so that the only acts that white people can do is to stop denying black people their freedom; that is, they must stop denying freedom. They never give it to anyone.
Now we want to take that to its logical extension, so that we could understand, then, what its relevancy would be in terms of new civil rights bills. I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people. For example, I am black. I know that. I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, "He’s a human being; don’t stop him." That bill was for that white man, not for me. I knew it all the time. I knew it all the time.
I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill for white people to tell them, "When a black man comes to vote, don’t bother him." That bill, again, was for white people, not for black people; so that when you talk about open occupancy, I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are incapable of allowing me to live where I want to live. You need a civil rights bill, not me. I know I can live where I want to live.
So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities. It is incapability of whites to deal with their own problems inside their own communities. That is the problem of the failure of the civil rights bill.
And so in a larger sense we must then ask, How is it that black people move? And what do we do? But the question in a greater sense is, How can white people who are the majority -- and who are responsible for making democracy work -- make it work? They have miserably failed to this point. They have never made democracy work, be it inside the United States, Vietnam, South Africa, Philippines, South America, Puerto Rico. Wherever American has been, she has not been able to make democracy work; so that in a larger sense, we not only condemn the country for what it's done internally, but we must condemn it for what it does externally. We see this country trying to rule the world, and someone must stand up and start articulating that this country is not God, and cannot rule the world.
It was a long speech. Few Black people involved in the Civil Rights movement had ever spoken so bluntly to white folks.
Years later, Stokely, now Kwame Ture, was living in Guinea, organizing with the All-African's People Revolutionary Party. He spoke of that day.
Interview with Stokley Carmichael, conducted by Blackside, Inc. on November 7, 1988, for Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965 to 1985. Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection.
Listen to Brother Mukasa Ricks talk about those times, his involvement, and what organizing was like in the South.
In this interview, Willie Ricks describes his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement beginning in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He participated in the Movement in several southern locations: Albany, Georgia, Lowndes County, Alabama, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Montgomery, Alabama. Ricks also describes the conflict between SCLC and SNCC and the differences between each organization.
In this interview, Willie Ricks expands on his experiences as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Lowndes County, Alabama. He explains how he became SNCC’s minister, a field secretary, how he actively organized demonstrations, and how he helped organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. Ricks also describes the different positions about nonviolence among the members of the Civil Rights Movement.
Few of the young people marching in the streets today for #BlackLivesMatter have heard these words. I doubt that even a handful know of Brother Hicks. A few more may have read of Brother Ture. In many ways, many of the demands being voiced today are demands for Black Power — over our schools, neighborhoods, hospitals, health care systems, and public safety.
Stokely’s question is being asked again today:
The question then is, How can white people move to start making the major institutions that they have in this country function the way it is supposed to function? That is the real question. And can white people move inside their own community and start tearing down racism where in fact it does exist? Where it exists. It is you who live in Cicero and stop us from living there. It is white people who stop us from moving into Grenada. It is white people who make sure that we live in the ghettos of this country. it is white institutions that do that. They must change. In order -- In order for America to really live on a basic principle of human relationships, a new society must be born. Racism must die, and the economic exploitation of this country of non-white peoples around the world must also die -- must also die.
I did not become a Pan-Africanist like Brother Ture. I did not give up on American electoral politics. I did respond to the call for Black Power, and for self-defense, and for white folks to do what they must do to end this madness. Let’s see what happens — this time.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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In Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 landmark affirmative action case, the United States Supreme Court hid the ball of affirmative action in college admissions behind the veneer of academic diversity, declaring that the University of Michigan Law School had a compelling interest in obtaining the benefits that naturally flow from a diverse educational environment. A classroom with “a mix of students with varying backgrounds and experiences who will respect and learn from each other” would do the work to diminish stereotypes and enrich the course material. Grutter gave us the repetitive edict heard from companies and colleges throughout America: Diversity is our strength.
I always thought the open forum Grutter stood for would easily foster social inclusivity. But framing diversity crises as fixable through conversation alone just normalizes unhelpful, abstract discussions about race in America. Black Americans don’t have the luxury of abstraction. For us, the law can be measured in lifetimes.Just before my father was born, the United States Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown decision promised my grandparents that the racial segregation infecting their classrooms would not permeate in their children’s classrooms. All they had to do was wait for its enforcement.