Full transcript
0:01After 1965, a lot of the young activists
0:05who had been involved with groups like
0:07SNIK in the early 1960s were
0:10disillusioned with where the movement
0:13had gone.
0:14A lot of them felt like Dr. King's
0:17nonviolent protests had outlived their
0:21usefulness.
0:23A lot of them also began arguing that
0:26the goals of the civil rights movement
0:28to mainstream into American society were
0:32bankrupt.
0:34They began identifying more with the
0:38concept of black nationalism which had
0:40been around for a number of decades.
0:42Right? These people have been reading
0:43their Marcus Garvey and their Malcolm X
0:46and they begin arguing that they need to
0:51adopt a more extreme outlook on life.
0:55One in which included rejecting the idea
0:58that success was tied to acceptance from
1:02white America.
1:04As a result, leaders like Stokeley
1:07Carmichael split from Dr. King in the
1:10mid 1960s
1:12and adopted the concept of black power
1:16which caught on less as a specific
1:19social or political outlook than as
1:21something that articulated their new
1:23mindset and militant outlook for young
1:26civil rights activists.
1:29The tipping point came in June of 1966
1:32when
1:33James Meredith was shot as he marched
1:38from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi in
1:40a one-man protest. Meredith was a famous
1:43activist. He was a World War II vet. He
1:45had integrated the University of
1:47Mississippi in 1962.
1:50And the Meredith March was meant to
1:52protest
1:55uh the idea that he actually could enjoy
1:59the rights that he supposedly had
2:02because of recent legislation.
2:05Other activists joined Meredith in the
2:08protest and continued on after he was
2:12shot. It was kind of a dayslong event uh
2:16featuring people like Floyd McKisik of
2:18CORE, Dr. King of SNIK, uh excuse me, of
2:23SCC and of course Stokeley Carmichael of
2:27SNIK.
2:28Um things were tense but peaceful until
2:32Dr. King left the protest to go to
2:35Chicago. By 1966, King was beginning to
2:39expand his activism away from racial uh
2:46issues towards issues related to
2:48poverty. And when King left, all of the
2:52cameras following the protest left. And
2:54at that point, the marchers weren't safe
2:56anymore.
2:58Mississippi State troopers attacked the
3:00marchers and arrested a number of them,
3:02including Carmichael. When Carmichael
3:05was let out of jail after posting bond,
3:08he returned to the marchers camp.
3:12Carmichael
3:14grabbed a microphone at a nightly rally
3:18and began chanting, "What do we want?
3:21Black power," which was something he had
3:23had borrowed from a friend of his named
3:25Willie Rex. The crowd soon was chanting
3:28along with them. He would ask the
3:29question, "What do we want?" and they
3:31would yell back, "Black power." By the
3:33end of 1966, Core and Snick both
3:36expelled their white members. And
3:39Carmichael worked with sociologist
3:41Charles Van Hamilton to write a book
3:44called Black Power: The Politics of
3:46Liberation in America, which was
3:47published in 1967.
3:50In that book, they expressed the belief
3:52that black power would enhance black
3:54life so that black Americans could
3:57choose whether or not they wanted to
3:59integrate into white society. It
4:01preached self-worth, self-love, and
4:04self-respect, and also economic
4:06self-reliance.
4:07The book was race conscious, but not
4:10particularly angry. It called for
4:13uniform electoral activity, so saying
4:16all black people need to vote as a
4:18block, that they need to take over their
4:22neighborhoods and start community- owned
4:23businesses that would help the black
4:25community. and they needed to
4:29be politically active to elect black
4:31people to community controlled schools
4:32and boards so they could advance
4:35educational issues and housing issues
4:38that were important to them.
4:41Carmichael argued
4:43that he quote rejected an American dream
4:46defined by white people and must work to
4:48construct an American reality defined by
4:51afroamericans.
4:52And in saying this, what what Carmichael
4:56is doing is rejecting integration. He
4:59says despite the struggles of groups
5:01like the Black Panthers, ultimately
5:04their successes probably did more
5:06culturally than politically. I mean, the
5:08the Black Power movement, groups like uh
5:12the Black Panthers helped spread the
5:15concept of black is beautiful. The
5:18mentality itself wasn't necessarily a
5:21movement like the civil rights movement,
5:23but it meant a lot of things to a lot of
5:26different people and it brought a lot of
5:28people pride to have this sense that as
5:32the 1960s closed, there were ways they
5:34could begin defining their own
5:38victories, their own communities for
5:40themselves rather than accepting what
5:43outside white Americans thought about
5:45them. Ultimately, perhaps this sense of
5:49self-sufficiency and self-worth was one
5:51of the more important results of the
5:53long civil rights movement in the turn
5:56towards black power in the late 1960s.