Although the term “Black Power” was used occasionally by African-American writers and politicians for years, the expression first gained national attention during the Meredith March against Fear in the summer of 1966. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that Black Power was “essentially an emotional concept” that meant “different things to different people,” but he worried that the slogan carried “connotations of violence and separatism.” (King, 32; King, Statement on Black Power, 14 October 1966). The controversy over Black Power reflected and perpetuated a split in the civil rights movement between organizations that saw nonviolent methods as the only way to achieve civil rights goals and those organizations that were prepared to accept armed self-defense and black nationalism.
During the Meredith March on 16 June 1966, Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) rallied a crowd in Greenwood, Mississippi, with the cry, “We want black power!” Although Willie Ricks and other SNCC organizers had used the slogan “Black power for black people” before this was the first time the expression Black Power was used alone. The media quickly publicized the slogan.
Although King believed that “the slogan was an unwise choice,” he attempted to explain its meaning, writing that although “the Negro is powerless,” he should seek “to amass political and economic power to reach his legitimate goals” (King, “It Is Not Enough to Condemn Black Power,” October 1966; King, Statement on Black Power). King believed that “America must be made a nation in which its multi-racial people are partners in power” (King, Statement on Black Power). Carmichael, on the other hand, believed that “Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks.” (Carmichael, 44).
Although King was hesitant to criticize Black Power openly, he told his staff on 14 November 1966, that Black Power “was born from the wombs of despair and disappointment. Black Power is a cry of pain. It is in fact a reaction to the failure of White Power to deliver the promises and to do it in a hurry” (King, Address at SCLC Staff Retreat, 14 November 1966).
As SCLC, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and other civil rights organizations rejected Black Power, the African American freedom movement became fractured. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Black Power became the rallying call of Black Nationalists and revolutionary armed groups like the Black Panther Party.