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Primary source: Stokley Carmichael, "What We Want," essay, 1966.
Caption: Stokely Carmichael (1941–88), born in Trinidad, invented the rallying cry of "Black Power" in Mississippi, in 1966, as a leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He left America in 1969 for Africa, where he helped found the All-African People's Revolutionary Party.
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. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young blacks. . . .
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An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community—as SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] does—must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. . . .
Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it. We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two problems: they are poor and they are black. All other problems arise from this two-sided reality. . . . Any program to end racism must address itself to that double reality. . . .
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Ultimately, the economic foundations of this country must be shaken if black people are to control their lives. The colonies of the United States—and this includes the black ghettoes within its borders, north and south—must be liberated. For a century, this nation has been like an octopus of exploitation, its tentacles stretching from Mississippi and Harlem to South America, the Middle East, southern Africa, and Vietnam; the form of the exploitation varies from area to area but the essential result has been the same—a powerful few have been maintained and enriched at the expense of the poor and voiceless colored masses. This pattern must be broken. As its grip loosens here and there around the world, the hopes of black Americans become more realistic. For racism to die, a totally different America must be born.
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Stokley Carmichael, "What We Want," The New York Review of Books 7, no. 4 (22 September 1966): 5–6.
Courtesy of
The New York Review of Books
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