The Fight For Black America

Characterising Black Power as the civil rights movement’s ‘evil twin’ masks its considerable achievements over the past 50 years

- Peter Ling

By the time two African American sprinters raised their black gloved fists in salute from the medal rostrum at the 1968 Olympics, Black Power had established itself as the clarion call of black America. From the beginning it had been a movement shaped by the media, and arguably, systematically misrepresented. Cameras had captured the moment when lone protester James Meredith was felled by a shotgun blast early in his ‘March Against Fear’ along the highways of Mississippi in June 1966. As Meredith lay in hospital, national civil rights leaders, and even more journalists, had then continued the march, despite threats. Later that month, after being released by local police, the youngest leader, Stokely Carmichael, addressed a crowd of marchers near Greenwood. Visibly angry, he declared that: “The only way we gonna stop them white men from whupping us is to take over. We been saying ‘Freedom’ for six years and we ain’t got nothing.”

Encouraged by fellow Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members, the crowd responded to Stokely’s call, “What do we want?”, with the words, “Black Power!” Television transmitted the angry rally to the nation in the same way that it had earlier captured Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ oration. But, as many were confronted by the term ‘Black Power’ for the first time, the emotions elicited among white viewers were very different, drawing less upon their ideals than on their nightmares.