issippi, in the summer of 1966, and as it reverberated
across America Stokeley Carmichael's motto spontaneously took on the
dimensions of a movement. James Meredith, who had become famous for
initiating federally backed integration of the University of Mississippi,
was making a one-man freedom march across the South. He sought to
demonstrate that blacks could walk through the South without fear. When
he was shot, civil rights leaders from across the land felt compelled to
continue his demonstration.

Martin Luther King representing S.C.L.C., Floyd McKissick from C.O.R.E.,
Stokeley Carmichael of S.N.C.C. and several others discussed the meaning
and direction of the movement as they marched along the road by day and
as they sat together in motels at night. Their discussion became a heated
debate about both the tactics and the goals of their struggle. McKissick
and Carmichael questioned the worth of nonviolence as a tactic and the
value of integration as a goal. When the marchers reached Greenwood,
Mississippi, a S.N.C.C. stronghold, Carmichael seized the microphone, and
instead of using the traditional civil rights slogan of "Freedom Now" he
began chanting "Black Power!"

Many whites assumed that the phrase meant black violence, and they
assumed further that black violence meant black aggression. They conjured
up pictures of bloody retaliation. Others saw it as a rejection of white
allies, and they insisted that the freedom struggle could not be won
without white help. To Carmichael, the Civil Rights Movement as it
existed was "pleading and begging." It also had been wrong, he said, in
assuming it was possible to build a working coalition between a group
which was strong and economically secure--middle-class white
liberals--and one which was insecure--poor blacks. In his opinion, "there
is in fact no group at present with whom to form a coalition in which
blacks will not be absorbed and betrayed." Two such differing groups had
different sets of self-interest in spite of their similar sentiments.
Carmichael contended that a genuine coalition had to be built between
groups with similar self interests. Further, he argued that each group
must have its own independent base of power from which to negotiate the
terms of a working alliance. Black power, he said, was an attempt to
build the strength on which future coalitions could be established.

Carmichael also attacked the concept of integration. If blacks wanted
good housi