An Editorial: Black Power's Quiet Side

Black Power's Quiet Side - New York Times: "Op-Ed Contributor
Black Power's Quiet Side


By PENIEL E. JOSEPH
Published: June 19, 2006
JUST over 40 years ago, on June 16, 1966, Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, mounted a podium on a sticky evening in the Mississippi Delta and introduced the phrase 'Black Power' to a crowd of civil rights demonstrators. 'Black Power' quickly became the controversial slogan for a movement that was largely perceived as rejecting the civil rights movement's nonviolent tactics and goals of integration in favor of a new ethos of black identity, self-defense and separatism.

For the next several years expressions of black power appeared everywhere: from gun-toting Black Panthers and clench-fisted athletes at the Olympics to sky-high Afros and dashiki-clad poets, politicians and actors. Then, like a bright streaking comet, the movement seemed to vanish as quickly as it appeared, plagued by internal divisions, poor leadership and pressure from authorities......"