With Power, the masses could make or participate in making the decisions which Thus we determined to win Political power, with the idea of moving on from there into activity that would have economic effects. We bad to work for power, because this country does not function by morality, love, and nonviolence, but by power. We had to begin with politics because black Americans are a propertyless people in a country where property is valued above all. Any program to end racism must address itself to that double reality.Īlmost from its beginning SNCC sought to address itself to both conditions with a program aimed at winning political power for impoverished Southern blacks. All other problems arise from this two-sided reality: lack of education, the so-called apathy of black men.

We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two problems: they are poor and they are black. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogon.īlack power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it. And they will do this no matter how often the press tries to stop the use of the slogan by equating it with racism or separatism.Īn organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community, as SNCC does, must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. For once, black people are going to use the words they want to use, not just the words whites want to hear. This is the significance of black power as a slogan. We helped to build their frustration.Īn organization which claims to speak for the needs of a community, as does the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, must speak in the tone of that community, not as somebody else's buffer zone. We had nothing to offer that they could see, except to go out and be beaten again. Each time the people in those cities saw Martin Luther King get slapped, they became angry when they saw four little black girls bombed to death, they were angrier and when nothing happened, they were steaming. In a sense, I blame ourselves, together with the mass media, for what has happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha. None of its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to. It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young blacks. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto. Stokely Carmichael, 'What We Want,' The New York Review of Books, Vol.

Black power by stokely carmichael