The Black Power Movement

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Reasons for the Black Power Movement
The earliest use of the term ‘Black Power’ came from a book with the title Black Power by
Richard Wright published in 1954. The Black Power Movement in the United States was
established during the civil rights era in the 1960s. Many members of the SNCC, among
them Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) became critical of the non-violent
approach of Martin Luther King Junior because they believed that it was not achieving
social change fast enough.
The members of the SNCC, who supported Black Power, were generally younger than the
members of the main civil rights organisations. They became increasingly militant and
outspoken. Their view was that white racists were prepared to use extreme violence
against African Americans and that the non-violent approach had not made fast enough
progress towards equality. Increasing numbers of African American youth in particular
rejected their elders’ approach of non-violence, racial integration and assimilation.
The Black Power Movement emphasised black pride (or racial pride) and called for the
founding of black political and cultural institutions. Because of their emphasis on restoring
black dignity and pride, many supported segregation in the Civil Rights Movement. As
slavery had stripped African Americans of identity and culture, they believed that only
African Americans could reclaim their lost heritage.
The acceptance of violence as a legitimate means of achieving civil rights was in conflict
with the approach of the leaders of the mainstream Civil Rights Movement and the two
movements have often been regarded as being antagonistic towards each other. However,
there were groups and individuals, such as Stokely Carmichael, who participated in both.
And both wanted freedom for African Americans. A range of political goals expressed by
the Black Power Movement was the same as those of the Civil Rights Movement, including
the ending of racial oppression and equal political and civil rights.

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Black Panther
The Black Panther Party was formed in California in 1966 and played a short but important
part in civil rights movements. The party was originally formed to protect local communities
from police brutality and racism.
The two founders of the Black Panther Party (BPP) were Huey Percy Newton and Bobby
Seale. The Black Panther Party had social as well as political goals. They wanted equality
in education, housing, employment and civil rights. In a 10-Point Plan to achieve these
goals, they called for freedom, full employment, decent housing, the need for teaching the
true history of African American people, an end to police brutality, an end to the murder of
African Americans and free health care. They also called for a revolutionary war to achieve
their political goals of equality and civil rights and were willing to use violence to get what
they wanted.
Community programmes
The Socialist community programmes were an important part of the Panther’s strategy.
Through the programmes they showed how politics were relevant to the people and that
the Panthers cared about the needs of their communities. The programmes achieved a lot
with very limited resources. The first programme organised by the Black Panthers was the
Free Breakfast for Children Programme. They approached businessmen for donations and
organised boycotts of stores that refused to contribute. Food was served to the children in
church halls. They also ran medical clinics.
Militancy
The other side of the Panther programme was militancy. They decided to take up their
constitutional right to carry arms and to implement Malcolm X’s philosophy of self-defence
by monitoring police action in the communities. This was a time of severe police brutality
towards African Americans. If they saw an officer stop and search African Americans, the
Panthers would go over and watch with their guns on full display. In doing this they were
acting within their constitutional rights to carry weapons and the police could not prevent
them, as long as they stood a reasonable distance away. The Panthers made it clear that
they were not looking for shoot-outs and that they would only use their weapons in self-
defence.
The gun had an enormous psychological effect, both on the African American community
and on the police and – to an extent – reversed the power relations between the two
groups. On the one hand, the African American community felt empowered, seeing their
African American brothers and sisters protecting their interests. On the other hand, the
police felt fear – the kind they had, through their brutality, instilled in the African American
community – because they were now vulnerable to armed attacks.
The activities of the Black Panthers came to the attention of the racist and white
supremacist head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover. In August 1967, the FBI set up a counter-
intelligence programme called COINTELPRO. Its aim was to disrupt and ‘neutralise’
organisations the FBI regarded as ‘black nationalist hate groups’. In July 1969, the Black
Panthers became the primary target of COINTELPRO. This involved assassinations by FBI
agents, as well as psychological attacks intended to arouse anger, frustration and mistrust,
setting African American groups against each other. The campaign destroyed the Black
Panthers. Stokely Carmichael went into exile and from 1971 the Black Panthers
concentrated on Socialist community programmes, including the feeding scheme for

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school children, free medical clinics and helping the homeless. COINTELPRO was also
disbanded in 1971.

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Roles of Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X
Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X were both influential leaders in the Black Power
Movement. Carmichael articulated many of the movement’s principles, which were largely
based on the ideologies of Malcolm X.
Role of Stokely Carmichael
The first political and social use of the term Black Power was by Stokely Carmichael and
Willie Ricks (who became Mukasa Dada). They were both organisers and leaders within
the SNCC. Carmichael had taken part in the non-violent campaigns. In 1961 he became a
Freedom Rider, was arrested and spent 49 days in Parchman prison. He also worked on
the Freedom Summer project. In 1966 he became chairman of the SNCC.
Stokely Carmichael becomes radical
On 5 June 1966, James Meredith started a solitary March Against Fear, planning to march
from Memphis to Jackson in protest against racism and to encourage African Americans
to register and vote after the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which promised
federal enforcement of rights. He hoped his march would help African Americans to
overcome fear of violence at the polls. However, soon after he set out, a white sniper,
Aubrey James Norvell, shot him in the back. When they heard the news, other civil rights
campaigners, including Carmichael and King, decided to continue the march in Meredith’s
name. When they got to Greenwood, Mississippi, the police arrested Carmichael and some
of the other marchers. This was the 27th time that Carmichael had been arrested. On his
release he made a Black Power speech, calling for African Americans to unite, to recognise
their heritage and to build a sense of community. He further called on African Americans
to form and lead their own organisations and to reject the values of American society. He
adopted the slogan, ‘Black is Beautiful’ and promoted ‘black’ pride, Afro hairstyles and
African forms of dress. It was from this point that Carmichael began to criticise Martin
Luther King and his ideology of non-violence and joined the Black Panther Party. He was
elected ‘honorary prime minister’ of the Party.

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Role of Malcolm X
The Black Panther Party drew inspiration from the ideas of Malcolm X. They rejected
pacifism and reformism in favour of militant action and self-defence against racists.
Malcolm X was a militant revolutionary with the dignity and self-respect to stand up and
fight to win equality for all oppressed minorities, while also being an outstanding role
model, someone who sought to bring about positive social services. The Black Panthers
followed both of these paths. Malcolm X firmly believed that the time had come to fight
back in self-defence whenever and wherever African Americans were being unjustly and
unlawfully attacked. It was the Black Panther Party’s emphasis on self-defence, leading to
armed confrontations with the state, which made it headline news and an inspiration to a
generation of militants.
Malcolm X joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) while serving a prison term in Massachusetts
on burglary charges. Shortly after his release in 1952, he moved to Chicago and became
a minister under Elijah Muhammad, abandoning his ‘slave name’ and becoming Malcolm
X (“We Are Rising”). By the late 1950s, Malcolm had become the Nation of Islam’s leading
spokesman. While Malcolm X rejected King’s non-violent approach, he respected King as
a fellow leader. In the spring of 1964, Malcolm made a pilgrimage to Mecca. When he
returned, he repudiated the leadership of Elijah Muhammad and began following a course
similar to King’s – combining religious leadership and political action.
Malcolm X was also a socialist. The Panthers followed Malcolm X's belief of international
working class unity across race and gender. The Panthers therefore argued for
international working class unity and supported joint action with white revolutionary
groups. They eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group.

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Short-term and long-term gains
Black Power declined very quickly in the late 1960s because its organisation was very poor
and it had little money to support itself. It also declined because the government preferred
King’s peaceful methods to the violence and hatred of Black Power. Thus it seemed as if
Black Power had not achieved anything of real importance for black people, and was a
factor in the ending of the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. However, it can be said that
Black Power did manage to achieve something for black people as a whole. Black Power
leaders did try to help the people in the inner-city ghettos, and they did increase African
American pride and a sense of black nationalism. Malcolm X in particular was very
important in raising the morale of many African American people, and became a hero to
young African American people in the USA and around the world.
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Conclusion
What progress, if any, was made towards equality and civil rights by the Civil Rights and
Black Power movements? The Civil Rights Movement was at its peak from 1955 to 1965.
It was a major event in US history and aimed to give African Americans the same citizenship
rights that white Americans took for granted. The battles were carried out on many fronts:
non-violent protests and marches, ranging from the 1955–1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott
to the student-led sit-ins of the 1960s, to school desegregation and to the huge March on
Washington in 1963.In the 1960s it achieved both judicial and legislative victories against
discrimination. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of
1965, guaranteeing basic civil rights for all Americans, regardless of race. It had some
success in fighting job and housing discrimination and the Black Panthers set up social
welfare programmes. The new opportunities favoured middle-class African Americans –
teachers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals. They had been role-models in their
communities, so when they moved into former all-white areas, the communities they lseft
behind were then segregated not only by race, but also by class. The Civil Rights Movement
did not solve the problems of poverty, drugs, crime and broken families.
While the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling of 1954 began the process of school
integration, many schools today remain segregated by race as black and white Americans
still mostly live in segregated neighbourhoods. This is not a legal segregation, but one that
is determined by choice and socio-economic status. Certainly the Jim Crow laws were
repealed and there is no longer a legal basis for segregation, but the psychological legacy
of slavery and decades of discrimination has been more difficult to overcome. The Civil
Rights Movement did not achieve complete equality, but greater equality. Many of the
challenges of the 1950s and 1960s remain, including neighbourhoods with underfunded
schools and inadequate health care – some of the issues highlighted by the Black
Panthers. And in the US today, not only are African Americans still engaged in civil rights
campaigns, but women, Hispanics and homosexuals are as well. But the reality of an
African American President of the United States is an indication of the success of the Civil
Rights Movement.
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