The fallout of saying "BLACK POWER" in a Civil Rights march. (1966)
Documentary · Black Liberation · January 1, 1966 · 04:05
Stokely Carmichael
Summary
This episode uses primary-source recordings to explore the immediate aftermath and controversy surrounding Stokely Carmichael's call for 'Black Power' during the 1966 March Against Fear in Mississippi. It features Carmichael's own recollections of how the slogan was planned and unleashed, the enthusiastic crowd response, and varied reactions from other SNCC members, journalists, and observers who debated the meaning and impact of the shift from 'Freedom Now' to 'Black Power.'
Transcript (diarized)
Stokely Carmichael: And I'm tired of violence. I've seen too much of it. I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs in the South. And I'm not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use.
Speaker 2: SNCC planned to issue a dramatic call as the march approached Greenwood, Mississippi.
Stokely Carmichael: Willie Ricks, was sent out ahead as the advance scout. And sometimes he could have as many as 20 to 40— as we grew bigger, even 20 or 40 people under his direction to spread out. And his task was to take them, spread them out to plantations, speak to the sharecroppers, tell them the march was coming through, but to throw out Black Power and to give little Black Power speeches to get the reaction. I think about 3 nights before Greenwood— because SNCC was deciding where's the best place for us to launch it— about 3 nights before Greenwood, I remember about 2 o'clock in the morning, Ricks came back, and he was giving a report. And Cleve Sellers was sitting next to me, I remember. And Ricks was saying, we ought to drop it now. The people are ready for it. He said, I said it the other day, and they dropped their hoes, you know.
Speaker 4: When you want it?
Speaker 5: Now!
Speaker 4: When you want it?
Stokely Carmichael: Now!
Speaker 4: Ricks had everybody primed.
Stokely Carmichael: He said, just get to your speech. We're going against Freedom Now. We're going for Black Power. Don't hit too much on Freedom Now, but hit the need for power. So we built up on the need for power. And just when I got there— before I got it, Ricks was there saying, hit them now! Hit them now! I kept saying, give me time.
Speaker 6: Give me time.
Stokely Carmichael: When we finally got it and we dropped it, black power, of course, they had been primed, and they responded immediately. But I, myself, to be honest, I didn't expect that enthusiastic response.
Speaker 4: Black power!
Stokely Carmichael: Black power!
Speaker 4: We want black power!
Stokely Carmichael: Black power!
Speaker 4: We want black power!
Stokely Carmichael: Black power!
Speaker 4: What do you want?
Speaker 7: Black power!
Speaker 4: What do you want?
Stokely Carmichael: Black power!
Speaker 4: Everybody, what do you want?
Stokely Carmichael: Black power!
Speaker 4: We want black power! We want black power!
Stokely Carmichael: Black power!
Speaker 4: That's what we gonna get!
Speaker 7: And so, finally, everyone together was thundering, black power! Black power! And that was chilling. That was frightening.
Speaker 6: It scared people, because they did not understand they could not subtract violence from power. They could only see power as a violent instrument accompanying it.
Speaker 8: It was empty rhetoric. It was not a message. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had a rich history of being involved in programmatic efforts and not just the use of slogans. It was at that point, during that march, that I made a decision to leave the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Speaker 9: The cause of black equality will be decided by black people.
Speaker 2: The media saw the call for black power as a major shift in the civil rights movement.
Speaker 9: There was a tendency, I thought, to overplay it. There were a lot of new reporters, reporters who were new to this beat, who were coming in from a lot of papers around the country as the march began to pick up momentum and as this Black Power theme began to get some publicity. The second reason was that it was never— the theme was never really clearly articulated, or at least what it meant was never clearly defined. And so it was open to very broad interpretations, and there were some Whites, for their own reasons, who wanted to take this as a signal of real black hostility and enmity.
Speaker 7: And the strategy coming out of Black Power, from SNCC, was that blacks should organize with blacks and whites should organize with whites.
Speaker 5: SNCC took the position that if there was going to be a march in Mississippi, it should be a march that's indigenous, meaning that Mississippians should be involved and we should not call out the liberal armies from the North to come in and assist with that march.
Speaker 7: So we moved on to work with whites on issues that we felt we should work with. In the next year, that was not civil rights; that was Vietnam.