Introduction: Black Power

If the nonviolence of the Southern Freedom Movement frightened mainstream people in the United States, the Black Power movement confronted institutional racism with a youthful boldness and fearlessness unseen since enslaved Africans took up arms in the Civil War.

Three boys pose with Black Peoples Free Store sign in Oakland. Source: Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his later years, Black athletes and artists, and other people of color said “No!” forcefully to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, racial violence, racialized poverty, police brutality, and other institutions that had been unmoved by moral appeals to end racial discrimination and second-class citizenship. 

In some cases, Black Power advocates argued for separatism from corrupted mainstream, white-dominated institutions; in all cases, the Black Power movement sought freedom. Emboldened by the decolonization movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as by the continued state and mob violence against nonviolent activists and federal government surveillance, the Black Power movement pushed for Black self-determination in politics, economics, education, and culture, by and for Black communities not yet free from oppression.

While the public call for Black Power was new, the goal was not. As noted in a symposium hosted by the SNCC Digital Gateway on the roots of Black power:

Before SNCC arrived, Black southerners already understood that voting in the Black Belt South was a means to power.

In this section, important “founding documents” of the Black Power movement are examined. In addition, the section explores the cultural and political impact of Black Power on other oppressed peoples in the United States. ■