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Unlock This CourseBy 1966 the civil rights movement had won two great laws. Yet many younger campaigners were angry and impatient. They began to turn away from Martin Luther King's methods. There were four main reasons.
Key terms:
Stokely Carmichael was born in Trinidad in 1941 and moved to New York as a boy. As a student he joined SNCC and was jailed in Mississippi as a freedom rider in 1961. For years he followed the path of non-violence.
In 1965 he went to Lowndes County, Alabama. Most people there were black, yet at the start of that year not one black person was registered to vote. Carmichael helped to register about 2,600 black voters. He also helped local people to set up their own political party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organisation. It was run by black people for black people, and its symbol was a black panther.
In May 1966, aged 24, Carmichael was elected chairman of SNCC. He replaced John Lewis, a firm supporter of non-violence. This showed how far the mood inside SNCC had changed.
On 5 June 1966 James Meredith set out to walk from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. He wanted to show black people in Mississippi that they need not be afraid to register to vote. On the second day he was shot and wounded. King, Carmichael and Floyd McKissick of CORE took over his March Against Fear.
The leaders disagreed along the road. On 16 June, in Greenwood, Carmichael was arrested. When he was let out that evening, he told a crowd that it was the 27th time he had been arrested. From now on, he said, they should stop asking for 'freedom' and demand 'Black Power'. The crowd shouted the words back to him.
Reporters spread the slogan across the country. King called it 'an unfortunate choice of words'. He feared it would frighten away white supporters and sound like a call to violence. The march ended in Jackson on 26 June with a crowd of about 15,000, but it was the slogan that people remembered.
Carmichael explained that Black Power meant black people joining together to win political and economic power, taking pride in their history, and leading their own organisations. He toured the country giving speeches, and in 1967 he set out his ideas in a book, 'Black Power'. He stepped down as chairman of SNCC that year and left the USA in 1969 to live in Guinea, in West Africa. He led SNCC for only a year, but he had changed the language of the movement.
Black Power gave many black Americans new pride. 'Black is beautiful' became a popular saying, and natural Afro hairstyles and African clothes came into fashion. Students won courses in black history at universities. More black voters chose black candidates: in 1967 Carl Stokes of Cleveland became the first black mayor of a major American city.
Black Power split the movement. In July 1966 CORE backed it, and in December 1966 SNCC voted to expel its white members. The NAACP and King's SCLC rejected the slogan. Many white supporters felt pushed out, and their donations to SNCC and CORE fell sharply. SNCC had faded away by the early 1970s. Talk of self-defence alarmed many white Americans and fed a backlash against civil rights.
Black Power also inspired new and more militant groups, as you will see in The Watts Riots and the Black Panthers.
In October 1967 Harry Edwards, a young teacher at a college in California, set up the Olympic Project for Human Rights. He asked black American athletes to boycott the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, in protest at racism in the USA. The boycott did not happen, but some athletes looked for another way to protest.
On 16 October 1968 the American sprinter Tommie Smith won the 200 metres in a world record time. His team-mate John Carlos came third. At the medal ceremony, as the American national anthem played, both men bowed their heads and each raised a fist in a black glove. They stood without shoes, in black socks, to stand for black poverty. All three medal winners, including the Australian Peter Norman, wore the badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
Why did it matter?
Smith later said the gesture was a salute for human rights. At the time, most people saw it as a Black Power salute.
Don't write that Black Power was simply a call to violence. For most supporters it meant pride, self-help and black people leading their own organisations. Don't write that Carmichael invented these ideas, either. He gave older ideas a slogan and a national audience.
Explain two effects of the growth of Black Power on the civil rights movement. [8 marks]
One effect was that the civil rights movement became divided. After Stokely Carmichael called for 'Black Power' at Greenwood in June 1966, CORE backed the slogan and in December 1966 SNCC voted to expel its white members. King called the slogan 'an unfortunate choice of words' and the NAACP rejected it. Because Black Power meant black people leading their own organisations and defending themselves, groups that had marched together could no longer agree on aims or methods, so the movement lost its united voice.
A second effect was that the movement lost white support. Many white supporters felt pushed out when SNCC became an all-black organisation, and their donations to SNCC and CORE fell sharply, so that SNCC had faded away by the early 1970s. Talk of self-defence also alarmed many white Americans. This fed a backlash against civil rights, which was shown when Tommie Smith and John Carlos were suspended and sent home for their protest at the 1968 Olympics.
What lifts this to the top level: each paragraph names one clear effect, supports it with precise names and dates, and explains how the growth of Black Power led to that effect.
Write about two separate effects in two separate paragraphs. One effect alone cannot score more than half marks, however well you explain it. Don't tell the story of the March Against Fear: start each paragraph with 'One effect was...' and finish it by showing how Black Power caused that effect.