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

To Carmichael, the Deacons for Defense and Jtutice provided an illustrative example .
"The Deacons and all other blacks who resort to self-defense mpresent s simple answer to
a simple question : what man would not defend his family and home from attack?"~
Black Power was indispensable in so far as "pride in being black proved
invaluable in aiding blacks to discard the disabling self-helm inculcated by white
culture."~ Most importantly, Black Power was an Afro-American expression of political
and social empowerment, rather than an ideology of racial supremacy. It is worth noting
that, for most activists, being pro-black did not mean being anti-white. Carmichael
advised SNCC sympathizers wary of Black Power that they had to understand that the
Afro-American wanted "to build something of his own, something that he builds with his
own hands . And that is~anti-white . When you build your own house, it doesn't mean
you tear down the house across the street ."~
A variety ofother interpretations sprouted up . For example, King wrote in WheK
Da We Go From Here? :
One of the greatest paradoxes of the Black Power movement is that it talks
unceasingly about not imitating the values of white society, but in advocating
violence it is imitating the worst, the most brutal and the most uncivilized value of
American life . . . Violence has been the inseparable twin of materialism, the
hallmark of its grandeur and misery. This is one thing about modern civilization
that I do not care to imitate .
~b~' ,53 .
24Harvard Sitkoff, The Strua¢le for Black Eauality rev . ed . (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1993), 202 .
uCarmichael, quoted in Carson,~, 205 .
King, Whet+e Do We Go From Here : Chaos orCommunity? (New York: Harper&
Row, 1967), 64, 66 .
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