3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

do anything violent ."~s But as the notion of Black Power expanded and took on a life of
its own, some black activists used its ominous overtones as a loosely veiled threat to
whites .~~
Stokely Carmichael challenged proponents of nonviolent dinxt action with the
rhetoric of power; they responded in turn . He argued :
We cannot be expected any longer to march and have our heads broken in order to
say to whites : "Come on, you're nice guys." For you arc not nice guys . We have
found you out . We had to work for power, because this country does not function
by morality, love and nonviolence, but by power.~8
SCLC activist Andrew Young replied : "In a pluralistic society, to have real power you
have to deny it . And if you go around claiming power, the whole society turns on you
and crushes you ." With little irony, his words prophesied the inception and ultimate
demise of the Black Panther Party .~9
Definitions of Black Power, as understood by various blacks and whites, ranged
from an ideology of cultural nationalism to a commitment to killing white people .
~6Ha11, quoted in Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer with Sarah Flynn, Voices of
Froedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 19SOs Th_rou~h_ _
t_h_e
1980s (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 305.
~~Black Power became tightly entangled in what one historian has termed "white fears
and black fantasies :' See Clayborne Carson,~, 288-9 .
~ eCarmichael, Stokely Soesks : Black PowerBack to Pan Africanism (New York:
Random House,1965), 18 .
~9Young, quoted in Hampton, Voices of Freedom , 299 . Henry Hampton has written :
"The Panthers insisted that 'picking up the gun' was a political act designed to galvanize
the black community . But the image of young black men carrying guns on the streets of
American cities also galvanized the white establishment ." Hampton, Voices of Freedom ,
351 .
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