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The Power to Transform t e Nation: The Theories

of Racial Empowerment of Martin Luther King, Jr.
and Stokely Carmichael

presented by

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The Power to Transform the Nation: The Theories of Racial
Empowerment of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael

By

Jeffrey J. Janowick

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

1994

ABSTRACT

THE POWER TO TRANSFORM THE NATION:
THE THEORIES OF RACIAL EMPOWERMENT OF
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. AND STOKELY CARMICHAEL

By

Jeffrey Jerome J anowick

The study of Martin Luther King, Jr. often focuses on the
earliest period of his leadership in the civil rights movement. This
concentration ignores his later career, leading to a portrayal of King
as a moderate leader with modest goals. By studying King after 1966,
however, a more radical leader emerges, determined to effect
fundamental change .

This essay examines the ideology of King through the
counterpoint of Stokely Carmichael, a "black power" radical within
the mainstream civil rights movement. By comparing the thinking of
these leaders a clearer understanding of both is possible. The
fundamental similarities between a militant like Carmichael and the
seemingly moderate King challenges those who wish to draw a
dichotomy between their ideas. Both leaders sought to empower
black people as the best means to achieve the liberation of African-
Americans from the oppression of racism. This goal required a
fundamental transformation of American values.

Copyright by
jEFFREY JEROME JANOWICK
1 994

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks are in order to Doug Miller for his valuable assistance
in the research and writing of this essay. Harry Reed also played a
vital role in the shaping of my ideas. I also wish to thank Lewis
Siegelbaum for his assistance in refining my analysis.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
The Roots of Nonviolent Direct Action
Nonviolence in Action
STOKELY CARMICHAEL
Beginnings
Radicalization: Freedom Summer
Identity Crisis
The Birth of Black Power
THEORIES OF EMPOWERMENT
Economics
Politics
Culture
The Transformation of Values

BIBLIOGRAPHY

17

30

32

37

43

46

53

58

65

70

72

76

INTRODUCTION

On a sultry summer night in central Mississippi in 1966,
Stokely Carmichael introduced the slogan "Black Power" into the
national discussion of civil rights. This precipitated a conflict within
the mainstream civil rights movement over the issue of
empowerment. Carmichael‘s ideology of black power rejected both
the methods and goals of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership and
challenged his commitment to integration as the best way to achieve
equality for African-Americans. Although King remained committed
to nonviolence and integration, Carmichael and other black power
advocates forced him to re-assess the nature of the problems facing
blacks, leading him to radicalize his thought. While never accepting
the separatism proposed by Carmichael, King nevertheless began to
criticize the federal government and his white liberal allies. Although
Carmichael hoped for blacks to develop the strength to challenge
white domination in power relations without concern for morality,
King insisted that blacks link power with justice and began to search
for a moral means of empowering black people. Despite vast
differences in goals and methods, both leaders reached a similar
conclusion: the empowerment of black people so that they could
participate equally in American society required a fundamental
transformation of American values.

It is important to recognize this similarity between two leaders

of such different political persuasions. Martin Luther King, Jr. is

2
generally represented as a moderate leader who sought merely to

reform America. This focus on the "I Have A Dream" element of
King's philosophy disguises the radical King who advocated dramatic
social and economic change in his later years. To forget this element
of King's career distorts his legacy as a leader of the black struggle
for liberation. Stokely Carmichael is often considered to be a fiery
revolutionary who advocated violence and the destruction of white
America. His rhetorical style contributed to this perception. However,
such a characterization diminishes the sophistication of his analysis.
Carmichael's critique of both American society and the civil rights
leadership was cogent and well-developed. More than a demagogue,
Carmichael was an intellectual searching for solutions to the
powerlessness of African-Americans in American society.

This essay will explore the differences in the ideologies of these
leaders, as well as the fundamental similarity that emerges in their
definition of the solution. First, I will establish the background and
ideology of each leader before the introduction of the black power
slogan and the debate over empowerment. Then I will compare and
contrast the manner in which both leaders developed their own
definitions of how to empower black people. I chose Martin Luther
King because he was the quintessential leader of the mainstream
civil rights movement., and is too often portrayed as a moderate
leader unwilling to advocate radical change. Stokely Carmichael
represented an alternative ideology that developed within the
mainstream movement and challenged King's leadership, forcing King
to radicalize his own beliefs. At the same time, he occupied an

important position among black radical or militant leaders of the

3
sixties due to his early realization of the need for black

empowerment and his popularization of the "black power" slogan.
Both leaders struggled with the problem of creating power for
black people. I have used the term "empowerment" to describe the
goal they strived for to liberate their people. The word
empowerment is currently politically charged, with different
connotations depending on the political persuasion of the user. In
this essay, I hope I have escaped the baggage associated with this
term and instead used it as a practical term that describes what both
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael desired for their
people: a meaningful share in the power structure of this country.
Although their means of achieving this empowerment of African-
Americans were dissimilar, both leaders argued that a
transformation of values was required if that power was ever to be
meaningful. In this way, both leaders advocated a similar philosophy
of empowerment despite the vast differences that separate their

ideas of how to achieve or use that power.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Martin Luther King, Jr., first entered the national spotlight, and
the black civil rights struggle, as the leader of the successful bus
boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955-56. Under his leadership,
the mainstream civil rights movement shifted its focus from moving
through the courts to a policy of nonviolent direct action to prod
whites into treating blacks equally. Through movements across the
South, from Albany, Georgia to Birmingham to Selma, Alabama, King
led blacks in a dramatic struggle with the forces of segregation that
moved whites, especially in the North, to support their cause. The
federal government passed laws and made rulings that supported
the rights of blacks to enjoy the full privileges of citizenship. At the
March on Washington, King shared his dream for America from the
steps of the Lincoln memorial, and white America professed to share
that dream. After Selma, in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson told the
nation that "we shall overcome" the problems of racial hatred,
quoting a civil rights song on the occasion of introducing the most
sweeping voting rights act in almost one hundred years. Yet three
years later, this same Martin King would be assassinated in Memphis,
Tennessee, as he supported a strike of sanitation workers; estranged
from Lyndon Johnson, with declining northern white liberal support,
and in many ways isolated from his own movement. This change
occurred as King became alienated from his earlier views on the

solubility of the problems blacks faced in the United States.

4

5
King spent the first years of his career as a civil rights leader

developing an ideology and generating the strategies and tactics that
best enabled him to work for the cause of black people. By grounding
his strategies of resistance in an ideology, King provided both
stability and flexibility to his methods. Since King based his
strategies on a belief system that guided his entire life, his actions
would be consistent. At the same time, because his ideas were
malleable and could be altered to fit changing situations, King was
able to develop new strategies that were both consistent with his
fundamental ideology and relevant to the new perceptions of the
issues. This development of King's ideology over time is a tribute to
his ability to re-evaluate his own ideas as his experiences indicated
their weaknesses and strengths, yet remain committed to a basic
core of values.

King's fundamental ideology was nonviolent direct action. This
method of dealing with oppression was not only a tactic to King; he
considered it to be a way of life.1 The fundamental premise of
nonviolent direct action was that only by awakening the moral
instincts in the oppressors could the oppressed hope to achieve
justice. Violent actions only increased injustice and justified the evil
actions of the oppressors in their minds. As King stated: "To meet
hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the
existence of evil in the universe".2 By actively resisting an evil

system nonviolently, and refusing to cooperate with its structures,

 

1Martin Luther King, Jr. W. (New York: Harper, 1957) pg
101; "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence", W- (A1011) Ed- Washington
(New York: Harper, 1986) 38.

2King. "Experiment in Love", AIQH. l7.

6
the oppressed could prick the consciences of the oppressors until

they repented of their erroneous ways. Using direct action, the
oppressed could bring the evil and violence inherent in any system
of oppression into the open, dismissing the justifications and
rationalizations that hid the true nature of the problem. "We do not
march to precipitate violence. However, we are aware that the
existence of injustice in society is the existence of voiceless, latent
violence."3 Targeting the system rather than the individual left open
the chance of redemption for the oppressors and did not make them
into implacable enemies who could only be defeated on a personal
level. Rather, the evil system is the problem which limits both
oppressor and oppressed, and individual oppressors can be saved

along with the oppressed.

The Roots of Nonviolent Direct Action

King grounded this doctrine in a system of beliefs best
described as black folk religion. Not to be confused with the
organized black church, black folk religion is a cultural belief system
and is not institutional in nature, although its elements may be
manifested in the established black churches. Black folk religion
incorporates Christian teachings found in both white and black
institutional churches with the particular needs and learned

experience of African-Americans.4 This religious worldview is not

 

3Stephen Oates. W. (New York: Harper, 1983) 411.
4C Eric Lincolnwmmmmmdmm
(Durham. Duke, 1990 2, Gayraud Wilmore. WWW—REMEDI-

(New York: Orbis, 1983) 26; James Cone. Wm. (New
York: Orbis, 1991) 12.

7
confined to a limited notion of "church" and permeates all areas of

life, much in the way African traditional religion acts in the lives of
African peoples.5 Important elements of black folk belief are a
personal God who is active in history, a universe that moves towards
justice, a belief that unearned suffering is redemptive, and the
importance of resistance to injustice and evil.6 These ideas are
reflected in the Old Testament stories of the Exodus and the
prophets, leading American blacks to identify with the struggles of
the ancient Hebrews and to see themselves as a Chosen People of
God. Martin Luther King drew heavily on ideas within this cultural
belief system in the formation of his own ideology of nonviolence
and political struggle that shaped his development as a civil rights
leader. It was this foundation of his ideas in black culture that made
his leadership so successful among blacks: they recognized in his
philosophy and leadership familiar elements of their own beliefs and
experiences. At the same time, this cultural baseline would later limit
his effectiveness, both among whites and among Northern urban
blacks, who were not familiar with this Southern black religious
tradition and did not find familiarity or relevance in his philosophy.
The central idea behind King's philosophy is the concept of
Christian love, or agape. King defined agape as love in action; it was
not an emotional sort of love but rather the love of God operating in

the human heart, a love for all men.7 Only through love could

 

5John Mbiti. MW. (Oxford: Heineman Books, 1991)
29.

6King, " Nonviolence and Racial Justice", ALOH— 9; "Power of Nonviolence",
ALQH, l3; "Experiment in Love". Am. 18-20; Strength to Love. ALQH. 504.

7King. WW (5119105.

8
humans overcome the divisions of evil within their society and

create the "beloved community" that would be a fulfillment of the
Kingdom of God on Earth. Through this love, blacks could transform
their oppressors by showing their own humanity and shaming whites
into recognizing their own failure to act in a Christian manner.

Personalism, or the belief in a personal God who is active in
history, is another important element of black folk religion that King
used to develop his philosophy. This Old Testament conception of a
God who actively takes the part of His people gave blacks hope in
their ultimate success, so that although they faced great suffering
and seemingly insurmountable opposition, they knew that their God
was an active ally in their struggle.8 Thus, when the United States
Supreme Court declared segregation illegal on public transportation
just as the city of Montgomery enjoined the car pool that had made
the bus boycott so successful, one observer stated that "God Almighty
has spoken from Washington, DC.".9 Blacks believed that God was
acting for them and was not merely an impersonal deity who took no
interest in His people's tribulations on earth.

At the same time, blacks did not use this personalistic belief to
justify inaction. Indeed, they understood that God required them to
act on their own behalf if they desired freedom. "Noncooperation
with evil is as much a moral obligation as the cooperation with good,"
King argued in an early defense of direct action.10 Only through

struggle against oppression could blacks hope to overcome it. A

 

8Com. Mattin.l26:81mnxth_19_LQxeinAI_QH.504 507; Keith Miner. 2mm:
111111211199.- (New York: Free Press, 1992) 37.

9King. HE. 160.
10King, "Love, Law and Civil Disobedience”, A1011 48.

9
personal God may make the struggle easier to bear on an individual

level, and the fruits of human actions may be interpreted as
evidence of divine action, but only through hard work against evil
could justice reign. Being the Chosen People thus carried the
responsibility of actively working to achieve His will on earth and
was not a passive role.11

A belief parallel to personalism is the belief in a moral order to
the universe. Even as physical laws govern the actions of physical
bodies, so too do moral laws govern the actions of moral bodies.
These moral laws put the universe on the side of justice, another
element strengthening black resolve to persevere in the face of
oppression with a hope for ultimate success. As King argued, though
darkness may rule for a day, eventually light would drive it out;
Good Friday would give way to Easter.12 This eventual triumph of
justice was not some kind of otherworldly salvation, either: justice
would reign in this world. While the struggle might be long and
difficult, in the end, this-worldly salvation would occur and victory
would be achieved. As King stated in Selma, "The arm of the universe
is long, but it bends towards justice".13

The redemptive power of suffering is linked to this idea.
Unearned suffering had a transformative power for both oppressed
and oppressor. Freedom was not a thing freely given, but rather
must be earned through struggle and suffering. Because the universe

sided with justice, the unearned suffering of the oppressed wo‘uld

 

llWilmore. BlacLReliginn 26; Major Jones. WW
1211391931. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1974) 49.

12King, "Nonviolence and Racial Justice", A1911 9.
13King, " How Long?" AIQH 230.

10
buy relief from oppression because injustice could not survive long

in the face of moral resistance. "The nonviolent say that suffering
becomes a powerful social force when you willingly accept that
violence on yourself, so that self-suffering stands at the center of the
nonviolent movement and the individuals involved are able to suffer
in a creative manner, feeling that unearned suffering is redemptive
and that suffering may serve to transform the social situation."14
Again, the redemption of this suffering was not a reward in heaven:
the redemption of the oppressed was a this-worldly phenomenon
that manifested the will of God and the moral order of the universe
upon the hearts of humanity. By suffering under the blows of the
segregationists, blacks both bought their own freedom and paid the
price of salvation for the oppressors, who were banned by the evil
system of segregation just as blacks were. Thus, by suffering for the
cause of justice and goodness, blacks fulfilled the will of God and
brought justice to the world not only for their own benefit but for
the good of all.

All of these elements demonstrated to blacks the need for
struggle. Redemption was not going to be achieved through waiting
or accommodation but through active resistance to evil. God, the
moral order of the universe and justice demanded that they fight
oppression and injustice. The idea that black religion emphasized an
otherworldly salvation as the reward for this-worldly suffering does
not seem accurate given this belief system. While otherworldly
salvation is not unimportant in the black folk religious context,

acceptance of injustice is not a part of this kind of salvation. The

 

l4King, "Love, Law and Civil Disobedience" A1011 47.

1 I
promise of otherworldly salvation enabled blacks to survive under

the oppression of slavery and racism; at the same time, the hope for
this-worldly redemption was not forgotten.15 Indeed, blacks have
resisted oppression and fought for freedom since the days of slavery,
and folk religious beliefs were an important element of this
resistance. Again, it is important to distinguish folk religion from
institutionalized religion. During slavery, institutional religion was
"often controlled by whites and directed at convincing blacks to
accept their position as slaves. Yet the slaves developed their own
interpretations of Christianity that whites could not control, and it
was from this folk religious practice that a tradition of resistance
developed. Black preachers emphasized the Old Testament stories of
the ancient Hebrews, especially the tale of the Exodus and their
redemption from slavery. This kind of salvation is certainly not
otherworldly. Using this belief system, black preachers forged a
tradition of resistance. Major slave rebellions, such as those of
Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner, were partially inspired by religious
beliefs. Prosser's revolt, though it was betrayed before it could be
attempted, had religious overtones through the roles of black
preachers. Turner was a preacher who believed that God had ordered
him to lead a bloody slave revolt to redeem his people from
slavery.16 Folk religion remained important after emancipation, as

black churches were involved in establishing themselves in the new

 

l5Lawre=nce Levine. WW. ( London: Oxford.
1977) 50.

l6Wilmore, Winn. 45, 54; Albert Raboteau. mm. (London:
Oxford, 1978) 147, I63.

l 2
order and were not able to be active in issues of racial justice.17

During Reconstruction, men like Henry Turner emphasized the need
to continually resist the racist oppression of whites. By the beginning
of the twentieth century, when blacks faced tremendous oppression
and violence and the black freedom struggle was at its nadir, the
black church had become increasingly a middle class institution and
was marginalized by its unwillingness and inability to confront racial
issues.18 Yet even at this time, blacks understood the need for
resistance.

African-Americans created these folk religious beliefs to give
them dignity in the face of oppression and also to enable them to
fight for the ultimate victory of justice. The themes of justice and
hope permeate this cosmic worldview of blacks; so too does the
theme of resistance.19 Black folk religion emphasizes a belief in an
Old Testament, personal God who is active in history to establish
justice for the weak. This religious system also interprets Jesus as a
liberator; the heart of His gospel is the creation of justice for the poor
and meek. The Beatitudes bless those who the world does not; and
from this tendency in Christianity blacks forged a liberating tradition
for their own beliefs. Suffering was an inherent part of this Christian
life: by bearing the cross, blacks reaffirmed their faith in God and
carried on Christ's work of redemption and reconciliation. The price

of freedom was working to make justice a reality as God willed and

 

l7Wilmore. Win 141.
18Wilmor‘e, W 145.
19Cone, Martin, 126.

l 3
to restore the beloved community in which color was secondary to a

notion of universal humanity.20

King learned this folk religious tradition through his own life.
He was raised within an African-American religious context: his
father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been preachers.
His father in particular was trained in the tradition of black folk
preaching, with its own distinctive style and belief system. Although
the younger King was raised in an affluent section of Atlanta, his
father had been raised in poverty. The preaching style and message
of the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he pastored showed this
influence. Other local churches, and the services at Morehouse
College, which King attended as a teenager, had less emotional, more
"dignified" services than Ebenezer, where the elder King often
preached in the folk style and stimulated emotional responses from
his congregation. Martin Luther King, Jr. learned a great deal from
this style, and while he valued the less emotional style of Morehouse
services, he was also adept at the more passionate style of his
father.21

King himself, in an autobiography of religious development
written at Crozer Theological Seminary, recognized his father and his
early church experiences as the most important influences on his
beliefs as an adult. In explaining why he described his early life in
the essay, King stated that these experiences were "highly significant
in determining [his] religious attitudes", such as the belief in a '

friendly universe, a personal God of love, and a sense of optimism

 

20Cone,Manin._l_21; King, "Love, Law and Civil Disobedience"AI_Q1-I 47.
2‘Lcwis_Km:_A_CriticaLflmz£anh¥ 4 ll 23 26

l 4
about human nature.22 These ideas would all be central to his

ideology of nonviolence, and were rooted in the folk religion of
African-Americans. King did not have to go to Boston University to
discover the foundations of his nonviolent philosophy; he had
learned them as a youth and took them to Boston with him.

At the same time, it is necessary to recognize the importance of
non-black thinkers to King's intellectual development. The key is not
to over-emphasize their role. Much of the historiography on King's
formulation of his nonviolent philosophy emphasizes the thought of
Gandhi, Thoreau, and white theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr and
Walter Raushchenbusch. All of these thinkers did influence King. King
left Morehouse College for Crozer Seminary and then Boston
University and was trained in the tradition of white Christianity. His
"Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" is a well-documented description of how
he developed his ideas of nonviolence by studying these mostly
white theologians and philosophers. However, these thinkers only
served to buttress beliefs that King already held. None of the ideas
described in "Pilgrimage" were unique from his learned black folk
religious knowledge. Indeed, King took bits and pieces from non-
black thinkers as necessary, while leaving out elements that did not
serve his own needs. For example, from Gandhi he borrowed
methods and tactics for nonviolent direct action, and those
supporting ideas that reflect the doctrine of Christian love, while
leaving out the Hindu elements such as fasting. Of course, this sifting
of ideas does not prove that King was not influenced by outside

thinkers. Like any intellectual, King refined the knowledge he

 

22King. WW 6 (275 in Warren).

15
learned to create his own ideology and understanding of the world,

accepting those ideas that seemed to fit his understanding and
criticizing or rejecting those that did not.

However, as Clayborne Carson discovered, King plagiarized
portions of his dissertation.23 In another study of King's use of
language, Keith Miller discovered that large portions of "Pilgrimage"
were also plagiarized. In particular, those portions of the essay in
which King explained what it was he learned from these white
thinkers were taken from general evaluations of these men and were
not original to King.24 This would seem to indicate that King was not
being entirely truthful when be indicated that Reinhold Niebuhr and
other white theologians were instrumental in his belief in a personal
God and a moral order to the universe. Miller argues that King used
these thinkers to appeal to white audiences, validating his movement
by utilizing traditional white Protestant thinking. Black folk beliefs
may not have gained support among whites; established white
Christian ideas were more likely to generate a sympathetic .
response.25 While these non-black sources may not have been the
foundation of his ideas, they did provide the cornerstone of his
appeal to white Americans.

The key to this question relates to the audience King was
appealing to when he wrote "Pilgrimage" and his other published

works. The majority of King's published works, and many of his

 

23Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project, W
L. (BerkelyzUniversity of California Press, 1992).

“Miller. m 55.
25Miner. m, 65-7.

l 6
speeches, were directed at whites in the North and not at blacks.26

Thus, an appeal to black folk religion would be an appeal to alien,
unfamiliar ideas in this context. Therefore, King cloaked ideas he
learned in the African-American folk context in the respectability of
white Protestant religious thought. This suggests that white
influences were not seminal in the development of his ideas. White
Protestant thought served both to buttress black religious beliefs and
to open the door to a wider dissemination of his ideas. Thinkers such
as Gandhi and Thoreau did add elements not directly related to black
folk religion, such as specific direct action tactics and the doctrine of
non-cooperation. The same holds true for certain elements of the
thought of white theologians; his reactions to them certainly
influenced his own concepts of Christianity. But the central ideas of
his philosophy did not come from white Protestant thought but from
black religious thought. He cloaked these ideas in the respectability
of white thinkers so that whites would consider them and be familiar
with them so they would seem neither threatening nor irrelevant
due to their source.

Further evidence of King's debt to black folk religion can be
found in Stride Towards Freedom. At a critical moment in the
boycott, after threats against his life, King almost broke down. As he
searched his knowledge for a justification for continuing, he came up
empty, and so turned to prayer. As he prayed, he felt the presence of
God and reaffirmed his commitment to the movement.27 James Cone

interprets this moment as a conversion experience in the tradition of

 

26Cone. Martin, 123.
27King. 511:, 134-5.

17
black religion. Searching through his knowledge of white Protestant

beliefs, he came up empty and so turned to the beliefs engrained in
his soul in his early life, to the black folk religion he had
unconsciously absorbed as a youth. These beliefs are what gave him
the strength to continue and to lead the movement for so long. These
beliefs became the basis for his philosophy of nonviolence, which
was tested only a week later after his house was bombed and he had
to calm an angry mob bent on retaliation. This black folk religion,
and not white philosophy, became the dominant element in his

thinking.28

Nonviolence in Action

This ideology provided the basis for King's leadership of the
civil rights movement. Although his ideas developed over the course
of time, his commitment to the doctrine of Christian love and
nonviolence never faltered. Still, three major phases can be seen in
King's implementation of this ideology over the course of his
leadership. During his emergence as a major force in the civil rights
movement, from Montgomery through 1962, King remained
committed to nonviolence in its purest form as defined in his earliest
published works. He relied upon moral persuasion to awaken the
conscience of white America and believed that racial justice could be
achieved through an end to segregation. After the failure of the
movement in Albany, Georgia, King altered his emphasis from moral
persuasion to coercion in response to the entrenched white resistance

to the movement. His efforts were no longer directed mainly at

 

28Cone. Martin. 124 ff.

l 8
moral persuasion of Southerners so much as towards forcing the

federal government to intervene on behalf of blacks. King hoped that
violent confrontation with whites would expose the violence of
segregation to northern liberals and push the federal government to
take action. At this time, he shifted his emphasis from ending
segregation towards gaining the ballot as the best way to improve
the condition of blacks.29 Ending segregation did not seem to be
enough; only through voting could blacks hope to alter the social
system of the South. The third and final phase of King's leadership
began after the Watts riot. On the heels of the signing of the
sweeping Voting Rights Act of 1965, these riots demonstrated that
large segments of the black population had not been affected by the
movement, and that an end to legal segregation and the right to vote
were not enough to create justice for blacks in the United States.
During this period, King became much more radical and identified the
key reasons for the oppression of blacks as economic domination and
white racism.30 He began to organize the poor, advocating sweeping
governmental reforms and a wholesale transformation of the values
of American society if the nation hoped to solve the race and poverty
problems and avoid massive conflict. His vocal opposition to the war
in Vietnam was his most public repudiation of the federal
government, which he now saw as part of the problem rather than

the solution.

 

”King. W. WWW York: Harper, 1963) 165-6; King.
"Civil Right No. 1". AILQH 183.

30King. WWWW
York: Harper, 1967) 8-10.

1 9
Each of these phases of King's career can be explored through

an analysis of the major movements that he led during that part of
his career. In his early years as a leader, King led the Montgomery
Bus Boycott, and helped organize other movements throughout the
county. The pivotal experience during this period was the failure of
demonstrations in Albany, Georgia. Although not truly a failure in
the sense that the movement did manage to maintain protest for an
extended period in a Southern city in the face of white opposition, it
was a failure in that it achieved no concrete gains and tended to
discredit direct action in the eyes of the nation.31 The chief reason
for this failure was the manner in which Police Chief Laurie Pritchett
of Albany handled the protesters. Having read King's Stride Towards
Freedom, Pritchett had some understanding of King's tactics and
methods. He avoided confrontation and refused to allow his men to
act violently towards demonstrators in the open. He tried to avoid
arresting King, and when he was forced to, he had him released on
bail so that King could not bring attention to the movement through a
long prison stay. When he did make arrests, he sent prisoners to jails
throughout the whole area through a pre-set plan so that the
movement could not fill up the jails in Albany. This meant that there
was no end in sight to arrests, which took some heart out of the
protesters. After seeing the dramatic influence that violent actions
by whites could have on national opinion, and witnessing the lack of
impact of blacks being arrested without such violence, King began to
reconsider his reliance on moral persuasion. The Albany movement

continued for months, with little apparent impact. The white leaders

 

31King. mm 34.

20
of the city were just as committed to segregation after months of

protest as they were before; nonviolent direct action had not affected
their consciences at all.

With these facts in mind, King and his Southern Christian
Leadership conference (SCLC) were careful about deciding where
they would lead the next major movement. They finally chose the
city of Birmingham, Alabama, not only because of the strength of
segregation in this city, but because of the personality of
Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor. Bull Connor was
an avowed segregationist who was infamous for his violent
treatment of Negroes. The SCLC planned carefully, and the movement
went into Birmingham with specific goals and an organized strategy
of attack.32 Initially, Connor refused to cooperate, taking a page from
Pritchett's playbook and refusing to use open violence in his handling
of demonstrators. However, his restraint was short lived, and soon
pictures of blacks being attacked with clubs, fire hoses, and dogs
spread across national television and newspapers. King violated a
state court order prohibiting further demonstrations, a calculated
decision that risked white support and was the first time King
disobeyed a court's ruling. "We did not take this radical step without
prolonged and prayerful consideration....we had decided that if an
injunction was issued to thwart our demonstrations, it would be our
duty to violate it."33 A similar court order had destroyed the Albany
movement, and SCLC hoped to avoid this error again. King's arrest for

this violation would also generate publicity for the movement. He

 

32King. mm, 35, 47-50.
33King. may. 68.

2 1
used his prison stay to write the "Letter from Birmingham Jail",

which defended the Birmingham movement against criticism from
white clergymen, and at the same time dramatized the plight of
black citizens to the rest of the nation.

The Birmingham movement proved to be an enormous political
success. Northern whites condemned the actions of Bull Connor and
the leadership of Birmingham, and the movement gained both
financial and political support. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a direct
result of the Birmingham movement, as the popular support
mobilized by the movement forced President Kennedy to act on the
behalf of blacks. In Birmingham, the white business community
agreed to the end of segregation of public facilities, and Bull Connor
lost his position as Commissioner of Public Safety. The "Letter from a
Birmingham Jail" generated tremendous popular appeal and support
for King and the civil rights movement by demonstrating the justice
of their cause and linking civil rights for blacks with American ideals
and Christian values.

However, this phase of the movement reached its apex only
two years later at Selma, Alabama. Like Birmingham, this movement
was carefully planned and organized to achieve maximum white
liberal support and to force the federal government to act. After the
usual confrontations with local leaders, the Selma movement planned
a march on the state capital in Montgomery. This march was banned
by the state courts, and when, in King's absence, it was attempted
anyway, Alabama state police and Selma's police force attacked the
marchers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge. The resulting carnage made

national headlines and mobilized white support throughout the

22
North. Capitalizing on this, King invited white religious leaders of all

denominations to Selma to lead another march the following week.
However, an appeal by SCLC to remove a state injunction against the
march dealt King a blow by enjoining further marches until a
decision could be made in federal court, in a hearing scheduled after
the date of the planned protest. Unbeknownst to his followers, King
agreed to this ruling and marched only to the Pettis Bridge, where he
obeyed an order to turn back. To some activists, especially those in
SNCC, this seemed timid and even treasonous.34

The Selma movement was nevertheless an enormous success.
When the Selma-Montgomery March did occur two weeks later,
thousands joined in, and the final demonstration in Montgomery
drew 50,000. Although Governor Wallace refused to receive their
petition, the march was in many ways a celebration of victory for the
movement. After the second march in Selma was turned back, a
white minister had been killed in Selma, and the white North had
again reacted to the violence of segregationists and had demanded
action. President Lyndon Johnson went on national television and
called for a sweeping civil rights bill. He ended his address by
quoting the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome". In July, the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law, and victory seemed to
be at hand for the civil rights movement. All of its major legislative
and legal goals had been achieved.

At the same time, Selma showed some of the problems the

movement faced. Internal division surfaced when the Student

 

34Cleveland Sellers. 111W. (New York: Harper, 19? ) 118;
Clayborne Carson. Wm, (Cambridge: Harvard, 1981) 158.

2 3
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) refused to sponsor the

march on Montgomery. The SNCC was unhappy because they felt that
the SCLC and King were moving in on its territory.35 They had
worked to develop resistance locally in Selma for more than a year
and felt that SCLC was taking advantage of their hard and dangerous
work to run away with the publicity and fund raising donations and
then would leave them with the pieces after SCLC left. Once King
turned back the second march, SNCC workers were even more upset.
They felt betrayed by King's actions, which the more militant and
radical SNCC workers believed to be too conservative. The SNCC
rejected King's reliance on federal support; for too long the
government had not acted for black people except when forced to,
and SNCC perceived the government more as an enemy than a friend.
The Watts riot in August, 1965 also overshadowed the
dramatic success of Selma. After visiting the riot torn area, King
realized that his southern movement had done little or nothing for
blacks in the North, who still suffered under the weight of oppression
and racism. The difference between North and South was that the
racism of the South was overt and easily identified by segregation; in
the North, racism was more covert and was not legally recognized,
but was engrained in the institutions of government and the
economy. The plight of blacks in the North, where there was no legal
segregation and where blacks had been able to vote for years, also
showed King that even in the South blacks had only just begun the
struggle for liberation. Economic deprivation and de facto segregation

in housing and employment meant that blacks had a long way to go

 

35Sellers, River, 118; Carson, Male, 158.

24
before equality would become a reality. The intensity of white

racism and resistance would make this task even tougher.

King's first movement in the North began in Chicago in January,
1966. The tactics that had served the movement so well in the South
were immediately challenged in the North. It was difficult to
organize support because the issues of contention were not so clearly
delineated as was segregation or the denial of citizenship rights in
the South. "Poverty" is a complex issue that defied easy solution or
identification. Whites were much less likely to support a movement
against poverty, because American ideals suggested that in a land of
opportunity, each individual had the chance to succeed if they
worked hard enough. Thus, those who were poor were at least
partially to blame for their condition. Poverty also contains many
internal issues, such as housing and jobs, that are difficult to mobilize
a mass movement around. While the Poor People's Campaign of 1968
attempted to raise awareness of the problem of poverty, in 1966
King was unable to confront these issues in a clearly developed
manner. Yet perhaps King's greatest challenge in Chicago was Mayor
Richard J. Daley.

Daley had run Chicago since 1955, and was the last of the great
machine bosses. Daley's political clout had been instrumental in the
election of John Kennedy to the presidency in 1960, and his political
power was formidable in 1966. To complicate matters, Daley had
enjoyed tremendous black support in previous elections.36 To

prevent King from organizing a southern style movement in Chicago,

 

36James Colaiaco. W
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988) 153.

25
Daley moved to counter King's every action. For every issue King

raised, Daley produced a committee or policy or funding to
demonstrate that he was already acting. Although many of the
changes he made were cosmetic, Daley managed to maintain the
initiative as much as possible. Earlier agitation in Chicago had
centered around the city's Superintendent of Schools, Benjamin
Willis, but Daley had replaced him before King arrived. King planned
to start an anti-slum campaign, but Daley unveiled his own plan to
end slum conditions by the end of the decade. The mayor proposed
millions of dollars in improvements to the physical structure of the
ghetto and to services to ghetto residents. King criticized the city for
cooperating with slum lords who allowed their buildings to fall into
disrepair, and Daley announced an investigation of the Housing
Inspector's office and the hiring of new inspectors. After six months
in Chicago, King had been unable to mobilize blacks around any issue
without Daley eliminating it. King seemed unable to successfully
confront the issues facing blacks outside the South.

Fair housing soon became the focus of the campaign. In 1966,
Chicago was one of the most segregated cities in the nation.37
Although blacks comprised one-quarter of the city's population, they
were concentrated in two large ghettoes, one on the West Side and
another on the South Side. Attempts by blacks to move outside these
area into white neighborhoods had been met with violence in the
past. King proposed an agreement with the mayor to ensure fair '
housing in the city through a commission to monitor real estate

agencies, banks and other lenders in order to be sure they obeyed

 

37Colaiaco, Mfljmm, 152.

26
fair housing laws and that the city enforced such laws. Daley angrily

refused to accept such an agreement, claiming that it was
unnecessary. King finally had his area of conflict.

Although a riot in July disrupted planning for this phase of the
movement, King was able to begin the marches for open housing in
August. During the first march, through the Southwest Side of the
city, King was struck in the head by a stone. White protesters waving
Confederate and Nazi flags stood along the march route. Another
march in nearby Gage Park resulted in white rioting that left several
police officers injured and hundreds of whites arrested. King
summed up the intensity of this opposition: "T he people of
Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate".38 The
"creative tension" reached it peak when King threatened to march in
neighboring Cicero after a state court forbid further marches in Cook
County. Illinois Governor Otto Kerner immediately mobilized the
National Guard in anticipation of violence in the volatile white
suburb. Previous attempts by blacks to move into the neighborhood
had resulted in bombings and riots. Daley capitulated and agreed to
support statewide legislative reform, to enforce the city's own laws,
and to monitor real estate agencies and banks to make certain that
blacks were not unfairly excluded from predominately white
neighborhoods. It seemed as if nonviolent direct action had achieved
yet another victory despite the difficulties of working in the North.

However, the Chicago movement demonstrated many problems
that made it difficult to practice direct action as it had worked in the

South. Large urban areas restricted the effectiveness of direct action

 

38Oates, Trumpet, 143.

27
tactics. Mass protests and rallies were limited in the context of a city

of two million. The city tended to absorb any but the largest of
demonstrations. Black neighborhoods were segregated from those of
whites and the downtown area, making it more difficult to galvanize
city-wide attention. Police forces in urban areas were generally
larger and better trained than their southern counterparts, and
better able to maintain control of demonstration situations. There
was also more jail space available. Although the future would show
the inability of police to quell urban riots, they were well suited to
handle nonviolent demonstrators.

Perhaps an even larger problem facing King was the fact that
his message, based on religious tenets and a southern cultural
foundation, lost some of its familiarity and appeal with the more
secularized northern urban blacks. The more modernized African-
Americans of the northern cities were not impressed by the religious
tone of King's ideology. Concrete issues such as jobs and housing
dominated their concerns, and morality seemed to have little place in
these arguments. They already had the legal rights King had fought
for in the South; he had to establish a new record of an ability to deal
with Northern problems. Urban blacks were also less certain in their
commitment to nonviolence, perhaps because of its religious basis or
because of the more impersonal nature of oppression in the cities.
They were unconvinced of its ability to apply to the secular problems
they faced.

The lack of an obvious enemy also hurt the movement in that it
made it difficult to focus criticism on any one individual or system.

The city government seemed a likely candidate, but Daley enjoyed

28
widespread black support, even after the movement entered the

scene. The city claimed to be taking steps to rectify the problems
that blacks identified, and did institute slum programs. It was one
thing to make poverty the enemy; it is another to place the blame for
this injustice on any particular person, organization or institution. For
some blacks, particularly black power advocates and other
nationalists, the enemy became white society at large. While King
never quite came to this conclusion, he did begin to criticize the
federal government and white society in general for its unwillingness
to effect meaningful change.39

Watts and then the experiences of the Chicago movement
forced King to re-evaluate both his conceptions of what the problems
facing black people were and how they could best be confronted and
solved. Obviously, the victories achieved in the South were only a
step toward actualizing justice. Equally as obvious, direct action as
practiced in the South was not as effective in the North in dealing
with the new conception of the problem. Combined with these
concerns was the development of the ideology of black power,
promoted even within the mainstream civil rights movement by
Stokely Carmichael of SNCC. King gradually grew more radical during
the last three years of his life, as the continued oppression of
African-Americans and the militance of some blacks drove him
further from his initial conceptions of what needed to be done. King
realized that for blacks to share equally in the benefits of American
life, they needed to develop group power. This empowerment would

have to encompass the economic, political and social spheres of life if

 

39King. ms.

29
African-Americans were to be equal. This realization included the

recognition that whites in general, and the federal government in
particular, would be for the most part unwilling to assist in this
empowerment.40 A whole new conception of the civil rights
movement was needed. As Bayard Rustin said, "The civil rights
movement is evolving from a protest movement into a full fledged
social movement".41 No longer content with calling for reform of
specific inequities, such as segregation, King began to focus on a
broader critique of society. Recognizing that change would not be
easily achieved, he advocated a complete transformation of the
values of society. Despite these vast changes in focus, the vital root of
his ideology continued to be a commitment to nonviolence and
Christian love. While his appeals and arguments lost some of their
religious tint after he entered the North, this seems to be more a
function of his audience than a change in his own thinking. Even as
he called for power, he insisted that it be linked with love in the
cause of justice. Before a broader discussion of this radical King can
be attempted, it is necessary to look at one of the elements that
forced him to re-evaluate his position: Stokely Carmichael and the

rise of "black power" within his own movement.

 

4oKing. mm 5. 8.
“Bayard Rustin. "From Protest to Politics- The Future of the Civil Rights
Movement", W XXXIX (Feb. 1965) 25.

STOKELY CARMICHAEL

Stokely Carmichael began his career as a civil rights leader as a
member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in
1961. As he moved through this organization, advancing from
volunteer to field secretary and eventually to Chairman, he
underwent a radicalization that paralleled the development of SNCC
as a whole. Carmichael popularized the slogan "Black Power" on the
Meredith march in central Mississippi in 1966. As the primary and
most vocal exponent of black power within the mainstream civil
rights movement, Carmichael attempted to define this ideology in his
1967 work Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America,
written in collaboration with political scientist Charles Hamilton. In
evaluating the pre-black power Stokely Carmichael, it is useful to
study the development of SNCC at the same time. While Martin
Luther King was much more an individual figure, defining the SCLC
by his actions, Carmichael was a more organizational figure, defined
by his experiences in SNCC.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, founded as a
loose organization to facilitate cooperation among student
movements throughout the South, originally had a heavily religious
tendency linked to its deep commitment to nonviolent direct action
as a means of social change. By 1966, however, SNCC was a major
civil rights organization, committed to voter registration and the

development of "black power". Its members had eschewed

30

31
nonviolence even as a tactic, and had expelled whites from their

organization. Indeed, SNCC was by far the most militant and radical
of the major civil rights organizations. As SNCC workers experienced
the reaction of whites to their efforts to empower black people, they
created their own ideology of social protest and criticism. While SNCC
had always been on the leading edge of militancy, philosophically the
shift to black power was a change from its earlier involvement in the
movement.

An example of the course of this change can be seen in the
experience of Stokely Carmichael. Although not a field secretary of
SNCC until 1964, Carmichael was active in SNCC from 1961. Through
his experiences as a Freedom Rider, an organizer in Mississippi, and
later director of an alternative political structure in Alabama,
Carmichael lived the experiences that would radicalize SNCC.
Ambivalent about the floater-hard-liner debate between those
favoring greater centralization and those supporting a looser
organization for SNCC, Carmichael underwent the identity crisis that
afflicted the organization after Freedom Summer. He chose the trend
towards structure to increase the effectiveness of SNCC as an
organization for the mobilization and empowerment of black people.
Elected Chairman in 1966, he led the move to the slogan Black Power
that split the civil rights coalition. While Carmichael was a leader in
the radicalizing process, this radicalization was not a product of

Carmichael, but rather he was a product of it.

32
Beginnings

Born in the West Indies in 1941, Carmichael moved to the
United States in 1952. New York City was very different from his
native Trinidad. There, although whites maintained true control of
the island, blacks did hold some positions of power, including visible
ones such as police officers or local officials. In Harlem, this was not
the case. His father was a hardworking man who died young trying
to prove that a black man could make it in a white man's world.42
The family lived in a white neighborhood in the Bronx by the time
Stokely entered high school, and he attended the elite Bronx High
School of Science. When he first heard of the Negro college student sit
in movement, he was skeptical. According to a 1966 Ebony article, he
felt that "niggers would do anything to get their names in the paper".
Yet within two weeks he was involved in a sympathy picket,
although only a high school student. 43 His experience led him to
attend Howard University in Washington, DC. rather than a Northern
white institution. At Howard, he joined the Nonviolent Action Group
(NAG), an organization affiliated with SNCC. His involvement with
NAG led him to participate in the 1961 Freedom Rides.

As Negro college student protest swept the South, Ella Baker of
the Southern Christian Leadership conference (SCLC), thought it
important that these diverse groups of students keep in contact in
order to share experiences and maintain the momentum of the
movement. In April 1960 in Raleigh, North Carolina, she organized a

conference for the students under the auspices of SCLC in order to

 

42Ebony article reprinted in SNCC papers, AI 49.
43Ebony article reprinted in SNCC papers, AI 49.

33
facilitate the exchange of ideas. The students involved decided to

create an autonomous organization, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, to coordinate efforts and facilitate
communication. From this limited beginning, SNCC developed into a
major civil rights organization in its own right.

The SNCC emphasized nonviolent direct action as a means of
social change. A deep commitment to nonviolence, not only as a tactic
but as a way of life, was very important to SNCC at this time. In its

statement of purpose, SNCC's founders stated:

We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the
foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our faith, and the manner
of our action. Nonviolence as it grows in the Iudeo-Christian traditions seeks
a social order of justice permeated by love. Integration of human endeavor
represents the crucial first step towards such a society.

Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear;love transforms
hate....The redemptive community supersedes systems of gross social
immorality.44

Thus, although extremely militant, and radical in the context of
the day, SNCC was philosophically moderate for the most part, and fit
well into the other civil rights organizations. At this point, the most
influential group within SNCC came out of Nashville. Led by James
Lawson, such important figures as Diane Nash, Marion Barry, and
John Lewis all came out of the Nashville group. Their commitment to
nonviolence was complete, and their religiosity is evidenced in that
both Lawson and Lewis were theology students. Marion Barry was
elected the first chairman of SNCC in May 1960.

The focus on direct action made SNCC the most militant of all
civil rights organizations. Thus, SNCC forged a reputation, and a self-

image, as the leading edge of the movement. This appealed to the

 

“Carson, Struggle, 27.

34
militant elements of the black community, assuring that those

seeking radical change would seek out SNCC. The concentration on
direct action also led to the brutal experiences that made SNCC
activists question their faith in the Federal government, American
society, and the viability of nonviolence.

At the time of the Freedom Rides, SNCC was facing one of its
first important philosophical and policy debates. One group within
SNCC favored direct action as the best means of social protest, both
because of its success and because of their commitment to the
philosophy of nonviolence, with its focus on converting the oppressor
through an appeal to conscience. This group pointed to the success of
nonviolent direct action, evidenced in the Freedom Rides and the sit-
ins, to support their case, as well as the morality of this method. This
group was the more militant, but was more conservative
philosophically.

Another group within SNCC favored voter registration as the
best way to further the struggle for equality. They argued that the
results of direct action were limited and that while victories had
occurred, the real battle involved political representation and power.
The success of nonviolent direct action also worked against it- there
seemed to be little more that could be accomplished with this
method. While in some ways this group was less militant than the
direct action faction, in that they advocated less militant means of
achieving their ends, and because the Federal government also
advocated voter registration as a way to divert attention from the
Civil Rights movement, in some ways the group was more radical. If

their means were moderate, their end, political power for black

35
people, was radical in its challenge to the institutions of the South. By

identifying the real problem as the ballot, and not segregation, SNCC
moved from social to political challenge. This was not in itself more
radical, but was certainly more threatening to Southern whites. The
focus on voter registration also held the roots of SNCC's future
development as a radical organization: the development of local
leadership, the brutality involved in voter registration, and the
realization that even the ballot was not enough and that the
government would provide limited assistance.

The conflict was resolved by doing both: one faction of SNCC
emphasized direct action and another voter registration. When it
became apparent that the two methods were often linked in the
reality of the struggle despite their theoretical differences, the
potential split within SNCC was healed.

This was the SNCC that Stokely Carmichael entered in 1961.
Although not one of the original Freedom Riders, Carmichael
answered SNCC's call for activists to test the Supreme Court's ruling
on the illegality of segregation in facilities for interstate
transportation. After his arrest in Jackson, Mississippi, Carmichael
served forty-nine days in Parchman Penitentiary. He apparently was
quite a rabble rouser in the prison; when guards tried to take his
mattress as punishment for singing freedom songs, he refused to let
go of it despite being dragged out of his cell and beaten. Howard Zinn
suggests that the warden breathed a sigh of relief when he was

finally released.45

 

45Howard Zinn. W. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965 edition) 40.

36
Carmichael in many ways demonstrates the character of SNCC

at this time. Using nonviolent direct action, he was involved in
desegregation of public facilities. After his arrest, he refused bail and
served his sentence in prison as part of SNCC's commitment to non-
cooperation with the system. Once in prison, he joined in freedom
songs and disrupted the prison with his refusal to accept the role
expected of blacks at the time, while retaining his nonviolent ethic.
Yet even at this time, Carmichael was not wholly in tune with the
religious brand of militancy favored by many SNCC members. When
John Lewis led prayers in prison, Carmichael and other NAG
members who had been arrested that summer refused to
participate.46

After his release, Carmichael returned to Howard and was
active in NAG. Cleveland Sellers, who entered Howard in 1962,
remembers Carmichael's apartment as the group's unofficial
headquarters.47 The NAG was active in picketing and desegregating
facilities in the nation's capital. One difference between SNCC and
NAG, suggested by Mary King, was that as Northern college students,
NAG members were often more theoretically sophisticated than other
SNCC members, and that later this allowed them to wield a
disproportionate influence within SNCC.48 Other differences from
SNCC included a socialistic tendency and a greater emphasis on
economic issues, even as early as 1963. These elements would prove

important in Carmichael's formulation of black power.

 

46Carson , Infitmgglg 38.
47Sellers, Ring, 59.

48Mary King.
William Morrow, 1987) 313.

‘II at . (New York:

 

37

Radicalization: Freedom Summer

Carmichael continued his work with SNCC over the summers of
his years at Howard. In 1962 and 1963 he was involved in voter
registration in Mississippi, honing his skills as an organizer. After
graduating from Howard in 1964 with a degree in Philosophy, he
joined SNCC full time for Freedom Summer. This ambitious project,
the brainchild of Bob Moses, hoped to dramatize the plight of
southern blacks in relation to voting rights. SNCC planned to register
blacks in the Mississipi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and elect
delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City as an
alternative to the white controlled state party delegation. This
protest vote would focus attention on the disenfranchisement of
African-Americans in the South, and some in SNCC even hoped to
actually unseat the white Mississippi delegates. To ensure maximum
exposure, large numbers of northern white students were brought in
to help in the registration process. This massive effort, and its
eventual failure, served both to define SNCC's approach to organizing
and to forge it into the most radical mainstream civil rights
organization. In the summer project, Carmichael was named District
Director of the Second Congressional District, headquartered in.
Greenwood, Mississippi.

In some ways one can see the development of SNCC in this
period encapsulated through Carmichael's career. He started out .
desegregating public facilities through nonviolent direct action. As
the intense religiosity of earlier SNCC members began to fade, a more

political bent took hold of the organization, symbolized by the

38
conflict between proponents of direct action and voter registration.

This is the time when Carmichael joined the organization. The
Freedom Rides both politicized SNCC and attracted radical or militant
segments of the black community, such as Carmichael and his
companions from NAG. Early experiences in voter registration
convinced SNCC workers of the importance of this endeavor to the
movement, and began the development of the legendary organizing
skills of SNCC field secretaries. As a District Director in Freedom
Summer, Carmichael's refusal to accept whites into his district
reflected the ambivalence within SNCC over the use of white
volunteers. Many in SNCC feared interracial action in the South might
generate even greater local hostility, increasing the danger for all
involved. They also feared the negative influence whites might exert
on local blacks by perpetuating tendencies of deference within the
black community. Carmichael's recruitment of an all-black staff

’ foreshadows his later emphasis on the need for blacks to develop
and lead their own organizations without white interference. Only
Bob Moses' assurances of the importance of white participation in
terms of media attention convinced SNCC of the need of this
participation. Carmichael's turn to full-time membership in SNCC
coincided with the influx of NAG members and other militant blacks
who were more theoretically sophisticated than their southern
counterparts. Thus, it is possible to see the growing changes within
SNCC: voter registration phased out direct action, northern students,
and a more politicized group of activists such as James Forman
entered the movement, and discussions over the role of whites

began.

39
SNCC was still committed to nonviolence, although by this time

it was seen more as a tactic than a way of life.49 Integration
continued to be its main goal. SNCC concentrated its actions at
developing local leadership that could continue the struggle after
SNCC left the area. By being program rather than leadership oriented,
SNCC differed from SCLC and Dr. King because they did not come to
an area to lead the movement themselves, but raised awareness
among local blacks so that they could lead their own movement.50
SNCC never developed a rigid ideology to support their organizing;
field secretaries worked within the local situation. "Let the people
decide" was the loose rule for their work. Ella Baker noted that this
worked within SNCC as well.51 Decisions were made by consensus,
through long and intense discussion in which all members were
given an opportunity to express their opinion. This early vision of
participatory democracy was grounded in a pure vision of what
American democracy should be.52 This idealism about American
society and democracy is an important characteristic of SNCC at this
time. The students believed that if they demonstrated the failure to
live up to the promise of democracy, the society and the government
would move to correct this. Thus, they worked to register voters and
to develop the Freedom Democratic Party: SNCC believed in the
system and attempted to work within it by calling on America to live

up to its ideals.

 

49James; Forman. W (New York: MacMillan, 1972) 158.
”Forman W 244.

51 Carson, W 20.

”King W 281.

40
Yet by the time of the Atlantic City challenge, most SNCC staff

members doubted the possibility of success. Their faith in American
democracy had been shaken by their experiences in the South and
would be destroyed by the actions of the President and white
liberals at the convention. The failure of the American public to
respond to the needs of blacks convinced SNCC that the values of the
society themselves had to be questioned. When public reaction only
reflected SNCC's moral outrage when mass brutalization occurred,
such as in Birmingham, or when whites were involved, such as in the
Freedom Summer, SNCC began to question their commitment to
American ideals. The organization brought in white students to
increase awareness, but did so bitterly at the knowledge that black
suffering was not enough to awaken America. This belief was
confirmed when two bodies were discovered while searching for the
Freedom Summer volunteers, sparking media interest, but turned
out to be local blacks and thus not worthy of national coverage.53
Disappointment with the government's actions was another
factor in the radicalization of SNCC. Initially, SNCC counted on
government cooperation with their efforts. Yet after the Freedom
Rides yielded only reluctant federal action, and voter registration
protection was nonexistent, and when FBI agents did nothing but
take notes when blacks were beaten and arrested, SNCC's workers
grew disillusioned. When three SNCC field secretaries in Americus,
Georgia were charged with inciting to insurrection, a capital crime,
and the government did nothing, SNCC grew more hostile. After the

indictment by the Justice Department of SNCC workers involved in

 

53Doug McAdam, W (New York: Oxford, 1988) 103

41
picketing a store owned by a man who happened to be on a federal

grand jury, SNCC became incensed. Why was it that the federal
government could do nothing to protect civil rights workers but
could indict them so easily? John Lewis's unedited text at the March
on Washington asked "Which side is the government on?"54 . SNCC
truly wondered due to the reticence of the Federal government to
become involved in enforcing the law and protecting the rights of
black citizens.

Local blacks also contributed to the change within SNCC. Mary
King writes that locals fueled the movement: an organizer could not
create a movement in a community unless the will existed within the
community already.55 Many of these locals were more militant than
the SNCC organizers. They had lived their entire lives under the
conditions SNCC now encountered for the first time, and held no
misconceptions about ideal democracy or federal assistance. They
had no commitment to nonviolence and often carried guns in self-
defense. One local farmer told Stokely Carmichael "if you turn the
other cheek, you get handed half of what you're sitting on".56 Fannie
Lou Hamer, a share cropper who became a member of the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party, and a field secretary of SNCC, was
another local black who influenced SNCC workers who were inspired
by the lengths to which blacks were willing to go and the risks they
were willing to take for the movement. These local influences pushed

SNCC workers to transcend their own conceptions of the struggle.

 

54Text of John Lewis's speech to the March on Washington, SNCC papers, A I 42.

5516113, W; 91.
5‘5Ebony, july 1966. Reproduced by SNCC 1n SNCC papers, A I 49.

42
Because SNCC concentrated its field work in Georgia, Alabama

and Mississippi: the Deep South; they faced incredible brutality and
isolation. Although they argued that by breaking the toughest nut,
the rest of the South would come apart easier, the question became
one of who would crack first. By working in such areas, SNCC worked
away from the other civil rights organizations. While this helped in
developing an esprit de corps of being the toughest and most militant
civil rights organization, it also meant that they were isolated from
the resources and support of these groups and that they were
exposed to incredible brutality. Beatings and arrests without end,
and often without apparent result, raised questions about tactics,
goals and ideals.

The Freedom Summer campaign brought all of these matters to
a head. Although successful in raising awareness, both among blacks
and whites, and in organizing black Mississippians, the voter
registration aspect of the project was not overwhelmingly
successful.57 In terms of the radicalization of SNCC, it was a
watershed. Cleveland Sellers described the experience as the "longest
nightmare I ever had".58 Three workers were killed at the outset, but
this was only the beginning of the brutality. Beatings, arrests,
bombings and shootings occurred daily. Harassment by police and
other whites was intense. Although white involvement did arouse
national awareness, it was a bitter pill to SNCC that these white
students could create more attention in three months than SNCC -

could get in three years. Black fears about white influences on the

 

57Carson, W 117. Only 1600 blacks were registered, although 80000 registered for
MFDP.
58Sellers, m 94.

43
black community were realized to some extent, and tensions

developed.59 The rejection of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party (MFDP) dispelled the notion that either the President or white
liberals held the interests of blacks at heart and completed this
process of radicalization within SNCC. All of their efforts to work
within the system had been dismissed.

The Freedom Summer challenged SNCC's identity. Integration,
coalition, cooperation, morality, and democratic ideals were now open
to question as goals. What role would SNCC play in changing the
society or forcing it to live up to its professed values? What was the
ideal society? Was SNCC supposed to lead the change to this society,
or was it a model for it? What was the role of whites? What was the
role of the organizer, or the leader? What structure, if any, should
SNCC take as an organization to lead the struggle in this new
direction? All of these question were raised by the experiences of the

previous three years.60

Identity Crisis: The Search for Ideology
This soul searching came at a time when SNCC was ill prepared
to handle it. SNCC veterans were suffering from battle fatigue from
their work over the previous years but especially the previous
summer. An influx of new members, mostly white, raised questions
about structure and created problems in rule by consensus. The ideal
of a circle of trust was challenged by so many new members, by the

tensions between whites and blacks, and by the growth of faction

 

59See Sara Evans W“ for a fuller discussion of this tension, especially between
white and black women.

5°Forman. Rexolutionariss. 448ff.

44
within the organization. Because the MFDP challenge failed, the

direction of the movement was in question. Instead of conceiving of
the problem being one of how to mobilize federal intervention and
white support, a new idea had to be created. The passage of the 1964
Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act also meant that many
SNCC goals were realized and that organizing would take on a new
character. Rather than raise awareness, SNCC needed to work for
more concrete gains in its work.

These questions resulted in an acrimonious debate within the
organization. A rift developed between those identified as "floaters"
and the so-called "hard-liners". The floaters were also called
"Freedom high"; they were considered to lack discipline and be more
concerned with exploring issues of personal freedom than with
pushing the struggle into more concrete gains. They advocated
following one's conscience, integration, and feared leadership and
structure as coercive and oppressive forces. Hard-liners criticized
them for having "local-people-itis"; they still held completely to a
belief in local leadership to the extent that they rejected the idea of
SNCC's role being to lead and shape the direction of the struggle. The
hard-liners exhibited a strong nationalistic tendency, saw a need for
discipline and organization, and felt that SNCC must increase its
leadership role in the black community.61

Up to this point in its history, SNCC had created its own
ideology through experience. Ideology had never been rigidly
defined as such, but had rather been of the tendency to accept what

worked within the concept of a commitment to democracy. SNCC

 

61Sellers. Rim 130; Forman Rexolutionaries. 422.

45
found its own ideology; its ideas came from action.62 However, as it

searched for answers in this identity crisis, SNCC turned to outsiders.
Mary King first read Frantz Fanon in 1963; Cleveland Sellers puts his
influence in late 1966. Most likely he became important to SNCC's
discourse sometime in 1965.63 Malcolm X certainly influenced SNCC a
great deal at this point, especially in terms of his cultural
nationalism. Pride in blackness became important to SNCC's program
in this time, and””of—-course--his. insistence" on’setfedefensegai‘ne‘d‘ 7* .
adherents within SNCC as well. Pan-Africanism, and the international
dimensions of the black struggle, entered SNCC's awareness to a
greater extent during this period. Of course, all of these elements had
existed within SNCC prior to the influence of Malcolm X, and in many
ways he simply affirmed SNCC thinking. But at this point in its
history, SNCC began to accentuate these ideas in large part because of

tMmiration for Malcolm's rejection of white values.

“Mt-u..-
N“...
m..-_ ' ’

Stokely Carmichael'sflrole inthis identity crisis~~wasran
ambivalent one. Although identified with the NAG group, which was
seen as theoretically sophisticated and committed to shifting the
struggle to more concrete problems such as economic domination,
Carmichael in many ways identified with the floater faction. While
Cleveland Sellers, his good friend from NAG, was a leader of the
hard-liners, Courtland Cox, another NAG member, was a leader of the

floaters. In the course of grappling with these issues, SNCC held a

 

62King, W. 283. Also see Zinn, 273 and Carson 155.

63King's early reading of Fanon, which first appeared in the US in 1963, seems to be prior to its
widespread familiarity in SNCC. Sellers later date seems to be too late in that Carmichael's
1967 work W as well as his speeches of the time, reflect a familiarity with Fanon,
especially the colonial analogy. Thus, a middle date, during or immediately following the
resolution of the identity crisis, seems most likely.

46
conference at Waveland, Mississippi, at which it was decided to

pursue the development of alternative institutions for black people
as the best means of continuing the struggle. At this point,
Carmichael was still unsure of his own position on the factional
debate, which this decision did not solve. However, soon thereafter,
Carmichael adopted the hard-liner perception of the struggle,
probably because of the argument that only increased structure and
discipline would allow SNCC to remain an effective agent of change
for the black community.64 By the end of 1965, SNCC had been
purged of floaters through firings and resignations, and the factional

debate was effectively ended, albeit with rancor.65

The Birth of Black Power

The development of alternative institutions was an important
step in SNCC's radicalization. It symbolized the change that had
occurred within the organization, as it rejected the hope for
assistance from liberals and the federal government and lost faith in
the American ideals that had been so important to SNCC's
development. SNCC's changing goals also can be seen; rather than
integration into mainstream American society, SNCC rejected the
values of that society and attempted to create institutions to serve
black people that could challenge white dominance. More concrete
gains such as economic and political power replaced the earlier
emphasis on desegregation and the ballot. This rejection of white-

values and acceptance of the need for alternative avenues for black

 

“Carson. 1113111881: 155.
65$ellers, Bin; 145-6.

47
people was not entirely new; the Freedom Schools of Mississippi

Summer were the beginning of replacing corrupt institutions with
ones that served the needs of blacks. SNCC chose Lowndes County
Alabama as the sight of their first large scale attempt to build an
alternative political structure and to gain power for black people.
And they chose Stokely Carmichael to lead it.

Carmichael entered Lowndes County in March 1965. With the
resignations of such organizers as Bob Moses and Charles Sherrod, he
was probably SNCC's best remaining organizer. His tremendous
success in creating the Lowndes County Freedom Organization(LCFO),
which nearly defeated the established Democratic party in a county
that was 80% black with no registered African-American voters
when he arrived, propelled him to SNCC's chairmanship in 1966. It
also radicalized Carmichael and SNCC to the point that enabled them
to advocate Black Power as the future of the black struggle for
liberation.

The Lowndes County project was very exciting for SNCC. Like
Freedom Summer, it involved registering black voters and holding
alternative party actions like a convention. However, in the Lowndes
County case, the SNCC party was supported by real voters as federal
registrars entered the county to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Instead of relying on the goodwill of whites to allow them a share of
power, the LCFO depended upon black voters to bring them power.
Despite intense white resistance, SNCC registered enough black voters
to outnumber whites. The LCFO, whose symbol was the black
panther, organized primaries, and at the party convention, the people

created their own platform through the process of participatory

48
democracy. Carmichael and SNCC had high hopes for the success of

the party. 66 Despite a high turnout by black voters, the presence of
black poll watchers and government supervision, the LCFO did not
win a single position in the county government. Local plantation
owners had brought their tenants en masse and had made sure they
voted for white candidates through intimidation and threats. The
economic vulnerability of the majority of southern blacks had
enabled the whites to retain their power.

Still, SNCC had learned a valuable lesson. The alternative
institution had created great excitement and strength within the
black community. It was possible for blacks to develop their own
arenas of power and to challenge white authority. SNCC had also
learned that despite their best efforts, the problem of black economic
exploitation needed to be addressed before true power could be
developed. This type of pressure had been exerted before, and SNCC
was already aware that one of the most difficult problems blacks
faced was economics.67 The experience of the LCFO merely
accentuated this. This experience, particularly for Carmichael,
created the awareness of the true need for black power.

John Lewis had argued of the need for black power as early as
1963. In the unedited text of his address at the March on
Washington he had called for the development of means of power
outside of the government.68 The MFDP had been an attempt to

challenge the white power structure and to give not only

 

66Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, W (New York: Random House,
1967)115.

67Sellers, Rim: 130.

53Text of Lewis Speech, SNCC Papers, A I 42.

49
representation but power to black people. In many ways, the LCFO

was the summation of SNCC experiences in the South. Carmichael
developed local leadership, let the people decide the direction of the
party, concentrated on political power rather than desegregation, and
worked to create a black organization that would make concrete
changes in the situation of black people. Although the LCFO did not
win the election, it did galvanize the black community and prepared
them for future challenges to white control.

In 1966, Carmichael was elected Chairman of SNCC in a
controversial election. Although John Lewis was elected on the first
ballot, some questioned whether Lewis reflected the attitudes of the
organization. His commitment to nonviolence and integration were at
odds with the trends within SNCC that favored the development of
alternative institutions and rejected nonviolence even as a tactic in
some cases. Lewis was asked to resign so that a new election could be
held; when he did so, Carmichael was elected. His experiences in
Lowndes County were much more reflective of the radicalization of
goals and ideology that had taken place within SNCC since Lewis's
first election in 1963.

This long process of radicalization, culminating in the
experience of Lowndes County, created the ideology of black power.
Although when originally expressed, black power was more slogan
than program, it was not simply "a pathetic cry of anguish, without
forethought or analysis" as Nathan Wright claimed.69 Indeed,
although it advocated no specific program, black power did identify

the ideology SNCC had created through its experiences as a civil

 

69Nathan Wright. WERE-it. (New York: 1967) 2.

50
rights organization. The analysis behind the slogan came from five

years of protesting, organizing, being arrested, experiencing
disappointment with white liberals and the federal government, and
seeing white America ignore the problems of its black citizens. For
Carmichael, it was the product of 27 arrests, numerous beatings,
Parchman Penitentiary, Cambridge, Greenwood, and Lowndes County.
But it was not only Stokely Carmichael. It was SNCC. In June 1966,
SNCC was an organization dedicated to developing power for black
people.

Even in the definitions of Black Power that he undertook
throughout 1966-7, Carmichael never truly strayed from SNCC policy
or attitudes as evidenced by the organization's experiences. The need
to develop black institutions and organizations had been recognized
by SNCC in 1965 when they sent Carmichael to Lowndes County.
SNCC had rejected coalition with white liberals and the federal
government since the Atlantic City experience. The importance of
creating black economic power was evidenced. by the problems of
voter registration in Mississippi as well as by the experience of the
LCFO. Whites had been expelled from SNCC in December, 1966, after
the introduction of the Black Power slogan but before Carmichael
identified separatism as a key to black power. While Carmichael
expanded on all of these ideas, their roots could be found within the
experience of SNCC. -

These were the experiences that shaped Stokely Carmichael's
perception of the problems facing black people. Although after he
left the chairmanship of SNCC in 1967, his association with the

organization diminished in importance in terms of its influence on his

51
thinking, his earlier experiences in the organization were vital in

shaping his approach to the issue of liberation. The unwillingness of
even white liberals to make significant concessions to black demands
for meaningful power, and the powerlessness of blacks in the face of
white economic exploitation drove him to reject integration and the
moral emphasis of nonviolence. Instead, he began to concentrate on
the empowerment of black people through separatism and the
development of political, economic, and social strength.

Carmichael therefore entered the discussions of empowerment
within the civil rights movement after 1966 with a greater degree of
sophistication than King. He had actively participated in attempts to
empower African-Americans politically through alternative
institutions and had participated in the development of black power
as an ideology within SNCC before that slogan had been popularized
and linked to his name. While King was reacting to many of the same
issues that had driven Carmichael and SNCC to challenge the values
of American society and to seek power for black people, he was
doing so after Carmichael had refined his thinking. Thus, entering the
discussion, Carmichael had a more sophisticated conception of what
black power meant. King might have eventually surpassed
Carmichael in terms of concrete programs, but in 1966 he was trying
to catch up with the new situation, while Carmichael was helping to

define it. Carmichael's ideas emphasrzed distrust of whites, the

-2-... .2 Hmn2.

J“.- Mmflm ‘W‘
'W meal-M, Morwwfiwfim "2.14. m

-I- “I "‘4.

development of alternative institutions for blacks and the need for '

.- r-r- .W h...

blacks to develop sources of power that were separate and

. .22..-- -.. W .. rum-W- ...-....-.......
independent of whites. These are the central ideas that guided his

 

development of black power as an ideology after 1966, at a time

‘-.-w-.""

52
when discussions of empowerment began to dominate the national

discourse on civil rights.

THEORIES OF EMPOWERMENT

Thus, we see the divergent ideologies which King and
Carmichael brought to the discussion of empowerment in 1966. King
was in the process of radicalization, as he recognized the entrenched
nature of racism in the United States, and the difficulty of the
struggle ahead. He had also begun to alter his conception of the
problems facing African-Americans by placing emphasis on their
complex economic problems, and was in the process of identifying
the elimination of poverty and its social ills as the key to black
liberation. Even with these changes however, he remained committed
to nonviolent direct action as the best way to end injustice.
Carmichael, on the other hand, had already rejected integration as a
goal and instead focused on developing separate black institutions.
Alternative structures, such as the Lowndes County Freedom
Organization, were one example of the direction his thinking was
taking. He also recognized that the economic powerlessness of blacks
also had to be confronted in order for African-American political
power to develop into an effective force.

The key to analyzing the differences between these ideologies
is to grasp their concepts of empowerment. King defined power as
"the ability to achieve purpose". This ability had to be linked with
love if it is to be moral power, which is love implementing the

demands of justice.70 If power was not tempered with love, only

 

7OKing. m. 37.

53

54
immoral uses could result. Rather than working for justice, immoral

power became corrupted and was a tool of oppression. The problem
in the United States was that immoral power too often faced
powerless morality, resulting in domination and the perversion of
virtue. The only way to bring justice to society was for power to be
shared so that immoral whites could not use it to dominate the black
minority.71

This concept of power reflects King's continued commitment to
morality and religiously oriented values. Empowerment by itself was
not enough for African-Americans; rather, they had to link power to
Christian values. This meant that for King, the goal of African-
Americans could not be power alone, but justice. The early civil
rights movement emphasized that its true goal was not simply a seat
on the bus or at the hamburger counter, but justice; King continued
to hold that idea although the stakes were different and the strategy
had changed. This allegiance to a higher cause - Christian values -
meant that blacks must use moral means to achieve their goals. Even
though the problems he was addressing, such as poverty and racism,
were more subtle than the blatant segregation of the South, King
remained committed to the fundamental ideas that formed the
foundation of nonviolence.

This is evident in the manner in which King sought power.
First, he demanded government assistance to equalize the disparities
blacks faced. He called on the President and Congress to implement

justice by altering the economic and political structures that

 

“King. 12121191211. 37.

5 5
rendered blacks powerless and kept them in an inferior status.72 At

the same time, he was urging blacks to develop their own avenues of
power without government assistance. Operation Breadbasket, a
program supporting black economic growth, and the Chicago
movement are two examples of this kind of organizing. Blacks
demanded a share of power and did so through moral means of
persuasion and coercion. They demanded a just share of power, not
simply power itself. Although African-Americans were expected to
take action and face resistance in this endeavor, the eventual
cooperation of whites was also expected. King recognized that the
movement could no longer count on a government of goodwill after
1965, and that only massive resistance and coercion could force the
government to act as he desired, but he still saw government action
as the best way to improve the condition of blacks.73 His ultimate
goal was a just society; power was the means to obtain this.
Stokely Carmichael had a different conception of power, in
terms of its definition, goals and realization. Carmichael defined
power as self-definition.74 "Black power is...a call for black people to
define their own goals, to lead their own organizations, and to
support these organizations". 75 African- Americans had to have this
control over their own conceptions and organizations before they
could even hope to enter white society on an equal basis. Without

internal strength, manifested in self-definition and unity, blacks

 

72King, WDW QEH, 21,34, "Showdown for Nonviolence, A1911 65- 8.

73Richard Lentz mwmmmun-Lmnflm.
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990) 292.

"Carmichael, W 35-6.
75Carmichael,_B_la§.k_Emer_44.

5 6
would be unable to effectively challenge white oppression. To

Carmichael, power was a strictly material tool to improve the
economic, political and social position of African—Americans. Morality
was not at issue, nor was justice, except in the more general idea that
blacks deserved better treatment. The true issue was physical
power- the ability to act from a position of strength in social
relations, rather than from weakness. Black power meant that blacks
could resist domination by whites by drawing upon their own
strength rather than relying upon the often fickle support of white
liberals. The ability to force equality is at the heart of Carmichael's
thinking.

This difference in how power is conceived is evident in how
Carmichael hoped to use and obtain it. He desired to even the
strength of blacks in all power relationships with whites. To create
this strength, unity was essential. This unity in arenas of power
would enable African-Americans to develop their own separate
strengths apart from white interference. This development of power
was therefore not linked to white assistance at either the individual
or institutional level. Instead, blacks had to develop their own
communities and organizations. Once this was accomplished, they
could re-enter the broader society and force whites to treat them as
equals on all levels. Whites would only do so if they were forced to
by strength and power. From a position of weakness or dependency,
blacks could never hope to gain anything.76

Carmichael also emphasized the right to self-defense as a vital

component to black power. Blacks had to "build a power base so

 

76Carmichael, W 46, 76.

57
strong, it would bring America to its knees any time it messed with

[blacks]". Only if whites knew that blacks would and could defend
themselves would they respect the rights of African—Americans. King
objected to any insinuation that blacks should resort to violence,
arguing that it was not only immoral but impractical. He recognized
the right to self-defense; however, he argued that nonviolent
demonstrators must forego this right if they wished to succeed in
changing the society. The line between defensive and aggressive
violence was thin enough that organizing a protest around the right
to self-defense was both provocative and unlikely to generate white
support.77 Carmichael rejected the notion that blacks could be
"whipped into power"; he argued that nonviolence was a tactic blacks
could not afford and whites did not deserve.78 This issue presented
an enormous gulf between the strategies of the two leaders.

Thus, a vast difference between King and Carmichael exists
concerning empowerment. They did not agree on the definition, goals
or means to power. King emphasized morality in all of these areas; to
Carmichael power was a goal in itself. White cooperation was
essential to King's conception of power, while for Carmichael it was a
dangerous hindrance. Blacks had to develop their own sources of
power if it was to be effective in the struggle for liberation. A more
cooperative vision of society drove King's thinking, while Carmichael
envisioned confrontation and amoral power relations as the reality.

Further differences, as well as some similarities can be seen more.

 

77King. W27.
78Carmichael, Elam 51.

5 8
clearly by a closer examination of specific areas of power: economics,

politics and social or cultural concerns.

Economics

As early as 1963, Martin Luther King began placing great
emphasis on economic concerns confronting African-Americans. His
Why We Can't Wait used economic problems as a key example of
why blacks could not wait for change, and also as an example of the
structural inequities facing them in their struggle for equality. King
first proposed his "Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged" in Why We
Can't Wait. This program criticized the structural deficiencies of the
capitalist system, specifically the manner in which blacks and other
lower class groups were often maintained as a ready cheap labor
force by the large industries. He urged the federal government to
guarantee certain economic rights for all Americans, but specifically
the poor, in order to eliminate the contradiction of poverty in the
midst of plenty. Among the goals he suggested were a guarantee of
full employment so that all those who desired to work could. He also
urged an improvement to the social work apparatus to eliminate
non-monetary problems, from child care to education to the
elimination of a welfare system that bred dependency. To force the
government to act on these demands, he urged poor blacks and
whites to unite and through coalition work for economic equality.79

Where Do We Go From Here (1966) also placed great emphasis
on the need for alterations in the economic structure. King heavily

criticized the United States' economic structure, which benefited from

 

79King, mom 157-8.

5 9
the economic subordination of some groups into menial low paying

jobs. These jobs not only kept their holders in a dependent economic
status, but demeaned them psychologically. At the same time, King
criticized the government's anti-poverty policies. Instead of lifting
people out of poverty, these programs too often held them at the
threshold of poverty without ameliorating its symptoms or causes. In
order to eradicate poverty, King estimated that $1 trillion would be
needed to fund new programs that met the needs of poor people.80
At this point in his career as a civil rights leader, King was not
focused exclusively on the needs of African-Americans. His calls for
change on the economic front argued the need to help all poor
people, not just blacks.81 Although the black community might need
a higher level of assistance due to the racism that exacerbated their
exploitation, they were not alone in the need for change. This focus
led to the development of the planned Poor People's Campaign (PPC),
which took place after King's assassination. Organized as a means to
dramatize the plight of the nation's poor and to push for new
legislation to alleviate their situation, the PPC went far beyond issues
of race alone. King planned on using this campaign to force the
government to create radical new programs to re-distribute income
and respond to the needs of poor people. It included provisions for
housing, education and job reform on a coordinated level to
ameliorate the problems of poverty. At the same time, it proposed a
radical solution to the material needs of poor people: a guaranteed

income. This proposal was meant as an alternative to full

 

80King. mural-:11. 6.7.
81King. 1112mm 132.

6O
employment. It was meant to guarantee a decent standard of living

in relation to the rest of society, and not merely provide the poor
with the bare minimum necessary to survive. Once an end to poverty
was achieved, other problems such as housing and crime would most
likely also be affected. Although King used some capitalistic
arguments to promote his idea, suggesting that a guaranteed income
would create more consumers and thus further economic prosperity,
his main line of argument was moral. "The curse of poverty has no
place in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of
cannibalism....The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the
total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty".82

Another program instituted by King's SCLC was Operation
Breadbasket, which sought to create a greater black economic stake
in their own communities. This program urged companies that
operated in the ghetto to employ local residents and to utilize black
products and services. If companies refused to conform their
behavior to what the SCLC thought reasonable, boycotts could result.
Another aspect of the program was to create greater investment in
the community by companies that profited from ghetto business. As
in the employment and product ideas, the goal of Operation
Breadbasket was to eliminate or at least reduce the flow of capital
out of the black community by forcing companies that profited at
black expense to return something to the community. Organizers
hoped that this return would not only be in immediate gains such as
wages, but in the development of economic strength within the black

community. Again, direct action was to play a vital role in developing

 

82King. way-mm, 165-6.

6 1
this economic power: boycotts and protests by blacks would not only

force businesses to change their policies but would involve poor
blacks directly in their own struggle. King claimed that Operation
Breadbasket had saved black Chicagoans $7 million in 1966 alone.33
These actions and programs show the shifting focus of King's
concerns. The issue of poverty in many ways eclipsed race, as
evidenced by the Poor People's Campaign, yet at the same time race
was a vital component, as demonstrated by Operation Breadbasket.
Yet clearly King recognized the need for economic power if blacks
were to participate on an equal status in American society. The
means of achieving this power required massive government
support, but to generate this support blacks needed to coerce an
unwilling government through nonviolent direct action. African-
Americans needed to participate in their own empowerment, not
only by joining the freedom struggle, but also by developing their
own economic power. Operation Breadbasket involved direct action
and white assistance, but also was designed to create economic
power within the black community. This sort of two pronged attack,
combining government responsibility with self-help, was an
important element in King's answer to black economic powerlessness.
King became even more radical as he neared his death. The PPC
demonstrated his dissatisfaction with the existing economic order. He
argued against the structures of the capitalist economy, and in Where
Do We Go From Here even advocated a sort of Christian democratic
socialism by rejecting many of the assumptions of capitalism and

suggesting that by combining the best elements of capitalism and

 

83King W 145.

62
socialism the solution to poverty might be found.“ At the time of his

murder, King was in Memphis supporting a strike by sanitation
workers. These actions might have foreshadowed a future rejection
of capitalism altogether by King, if his line of thought continued in
the same vein and if he had not been murdered.

Stokely Carmichael's economic ideas were grounded in
different experiences and are not as concrete programatically, yet
reflect a similar conception of the economic problems facing blacks
and how to resolve them. Before he entered SNCC as a full time field
secretary, Carmichael had belonged to a Howard University
organization, the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG). The NAG had
focused on economic analysis from the start, and so Carmichael was
well-grounded in the recognition of the importance of economics
even before his experiences in SNCC affirmed this.” Black power
ideology identified economic factors as the key to white domination
and eventual black liberation in America. As long as they were
economically dependent, blacks could not develop the political and
social power to confront whites on an equal basis.86

The experiences of SNCC in the South proved this; especially
important for Carmichael personally was the defeat of the Lowndes
County Freedom Organization (LCFO) which he founded in rural
Alabama. This all-black political party, which used Alabama state
law and the new 1965 Voting Rights Act to challenge the supremacy

of the white democratic organization, inspired great hope within ‘

 

84King 2022121111 186.
85Mary King. mm: 313.
“Carmichael. W 2243.

6 3
SNCC for the future of black political power. However, the party lost

when local black sharecroppers, under the watchful eyes of their
white landlords, registered and then voted against the LCFO.37
Optimism about political gains vanished as the economic
subordination of African-Americans, and their resultant
powerlessness in other matters, showed Carmichael just how much
was left to be done.

In his work, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America,
Carmichael defined the ideology of Black Power that was shaped by
the Lowndes County experience, among others. Carmichael argued
that blacks needed first of all to develop economic power so that
they could escape white domination. To create economic strength, he
encouraged blacks to develop their own community by buying black
products, supporting black products and companies, and re-investing
in the black community. This in many ways mirrored King's efforts in
Operation Breadbasket, but Carmichael differed from King in one
very important aspect: while King expected and desired white
cooperation, Carmichael expected blacks to develop this strength
separate from whites. In so doing, African-Americans would be able
to ensure that whites did not use the economic lever against them,
because their strength would come completely from within the black
community.

Carmichael's ideas were less developed than King's in that he
attached no specific programs to his ideology, but rather presented a
framework with which blacks could interpret and resist their

oppression. This in some ways limited Carmichael's impact, but at the

 

87Ca1'michael, W 117, 119.

64
same time reflected his SNCC-influenced, grass-roots method of

organizing. Carmichael desired African-Americans to develop their
own sources of power without white interference so that blacks could
be free of any white influence. Because King was both an
integrationist and desired government assistance, he included whites
in his programs. The separatism of Carmichael, and his "let the
people decide" attitude meant that in some ways it would be
contradictory for him to advocate specific programs to develop
power. He instead created an intellectual framework on which to
evaluate programs in light of the needs of the black community. This
would leave blacks free to act as they saw fit in relation to their
specific circumstances, in ways that would be empowering to
particular individuals and communities.

Thus, despite differences, some similarities exist between both
leaders' ideas. Economic power was an essential component to the
liberation of African-Americans from oppression; both saw economic
exploitation as the key hindrance to that liberation. In a more
specific sense, both recognized the legitimacy of Fanon's colonial
analogy, at least to the extent that whites exploited the black
community for profit without investing in the development of that
community, because that would be counterproductive to the
subordinate relationship they desired and required to remain
dominant.88 Black economic strength was the key to breaking this
cycle of exploitation, and one means of developing this strength was

unity in supporting black workers, companies and products. In this

 

88For a full discussion of internal colonialism see Robert Blauner, "Internal
Colonialism and Ghetto Revolt", Social Problems, Spring, 1969, pg 393.

65
area, King placed a greater emphasis on the role of whites in assisting

this development of black capital. Perhaps this was a pragmatic
move, but Carmichael rejected it as merely a means for whites to
maintain their dominance over black life, and instead advocated
black solidarity within their community without white support. For
the most part, both leaders emphasized self-help as the key to
economic empowerment. By working within their own communities
to develop strength, blacks would be able to pull themselves out of
poverty. This was a significant area of difference, however, in that
King argued that while African-Americans must work actively for
their own empowerment, the major responsibility lay with the
federal government. Despite this major difference on the issue of the
role of whites, the fundamental premise was similar.
Politics

Both leaders also recognized that economic power alone was
not sufficient to ensure African-Americans an equal position in
society, and thus stressed the importance of meaningful
representation in government. Only political strength would ensure
that black communities received the services they needed to climb
out of their subordinate position, from fair police protection to good
schools. Both King and Carmichael agreed that registration and voting
would not be enough to create the kind of effective representation
African-Americans required, . Too often, black elected officials
responded to white party bosses and not to the needs of those they
represented. Black officials needed to be responsible to the black
community if the political power of blacks was to be effective for

change. In order to create this kind of leader, African-Americans

66
needed to reject the puppets of white politicians and elect truly

representative leaders from within their own community. At the
same time, African-Americans needed to gain respect from party
leaders who expected widespread black support but then did not
compensate the black community adequately in projects, services, or
improvements.

Carmichael hoped to develop both power and responsible
leadership through alternative, separate institutions that would be
black dominated rather than through the established parties. The
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was an early example of this
type of parallel institution, in which blacks attempted to usurp
certain functions of government which did not represent them, in
this case the election of delegates to the 1964 Democratic convention.
Although the MFDP did attempt to work with white liberals and
through the established party system, it was a lesson in parallel
institutions and how effective they can be in mobilizing the
community. The defeat of the MFDP in Atlantic City led SNCC to reject
working within the party system, not the structure of parallel
institutions.

SNCC's next attempt at such an action, the development of the
Lowndes County Freedom Organization, was broader and more
successful than the MFDP, even though the LCFO also failed in its
ultimate goal. Using an Alabama state law that allowed for
alternative parties, and registering large numbers of blacks through
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, SNCC attempted to elect black officials
in the 80% black populated county. The LCFO had a convention,

developed a platform, and conducted a strong campaign to represent

67
the needs of blacks that had been ignored under white domination.

Although not exclusive in theory, no whites cared to join the party,
so it was all black. In the election, white landlords used economic
coercion over their tenants to defeat the black candidates, but the
movement was successful in generating excitement among blacks
and showing the possibilities for the success of alternative
institutions. As Carmichael said the night before the election: "We
have done what they said we could not do. Colored people have come
together tonight. Tonight says that we can come together and we can
rock this country from California to New York City".89

In Carmichael's thinking, African-Americans needed to develop
these alternative institutions in black dominated areas, taking control
of the political structure where they were able through their
majority. Once they had become politically powerful in these areas,
such as Northern cities and the black belt in the South, and had done
so with black led parties, they could begin to branch out into areas
where blacks were not in the majority. In these places, through
coalition with poor and right thinking whites, blacks could gain a
share in the national power structure that had so often ignored their
rights in the past. Black dominated areas, such as Lowndes county,
would provide the power base from which such political action could
be launched and then supported.90

Martin Luther King was much more integrationist in his ideas
for the establishment of effective black political power. In his mind,

the only practical method for increased political clout on a national

 

89Carmichael,_B_|agk_P_QmL 235.
90Carmichael, W 46.

6 8
scale was coalition with white liberals. Later, after he began to

become disillusioned with and critical of his liberal supporters, the
white poor increased in importance, but even then the need for
liberal support was not discounted.91 Although King emphasized the
need for African-American communities to elect effective,
responsible officials who answered to their needs, he also recognized
that beyond the local level this black unity would not create
meaningful change. Only through cooperation with the white
majority could blacks hope to gain effective political power. "There is
no separate black path to power in this country that do not intersect
with whites".92

Carmichael rejected this need for coalition. His experiences with
the MFDP and their defeat at the hands of supposed allies at the
Atlantic City Convention left him unwilling to trust white liberals
again. As Cleveland Sellers stated, "After Atlantic City, things could
never be the same."93 Coalition between the powerful and the
powerless was impossible, Carmichael argued, because the powerful
have no need to respect the interests of the powerless. The only
viable coalition Carmichael could imagine would be between blacks
and poor whites, yet even this was not possible at the moment due to
racism and the unpreparedness of the white community. In fact,
whites benefited from the continued exploitation of blacks and
therefore would be acting against their best interests to liberate

them.94 In Carmichael's conception of a world driven by power

 

91King. M 52, 17.
92King W 52.

93Sellers, m, 111.
94Carmichael, W 67.

69
relations, this would be unthinkable. Without a moral viewpoint, as

espoused by King, it would be impossible to expect the strong to
work equally for the needs of the weak. In Carmichael's thinking,
only if blacks had power could they exert influence upon the white
majority and thus be able to form a coalition that fit the needs of
both sides. "Power is the only thing respected in this world, and we
must have it at any cost."95

King also expressed distrust of both the government and white
liberals. Some of the harshest criticism in Where Do We Go From Here
is directed at white liberals who did not wholeheartedly support the
black freedom struggle.95 Although his economic plans called for
massive government support, he was even more critical of federal
actions. His disillusionment with the government was centered for
the most part around the Vietnam War, which King not only saw as
immoral but as wasting precious resources that could be used for the
war on poverty. "The war in Vietnam destroys the hopes and dreams
for a decent America", he argued. "The bombs dropped in Vietnam
explode at home".97 Another problem King had with the government
was its unwillingness to implement the legislation that his movement
had fought so hard for. Brown v. Board was over a decade old, but
school segregation persisted. The Voting Rights Act, though more
closely followed also failed to live up to expectations when civil
rights leaders claimed that not enough federal registrars were sent

South.98 Finally, harassment by the FBI further alienated King from

 

95Lewis, King 325.

96King. 1111mm 8.
97King. M 97.
98King, W 10-11, 34.

70
the government. Agents tracked his every move and sought to

discredit him by linking him to communists or through exposing
elements of his personal life. The end result of this poor relationship
was that King faced massive opposition from the government,

particularly the Executive branch, after 1966.

Culture

During the sixties, black cultural pride became an important
issue to the black liberation movements as well. An awareness of
black history and culture developed that honored the African
tradition that had been ignored or dismissed up to that point. Blacks
especially refused to accept the derogatory images of Africa and
African-Americans that perpetuated black inferiority. Skin lighteners
and hair straighteners went out of style and African clothing and
names came into fashion. Knowledge about African culture, and the
remnants of that culture among black Americans also increased.
African-Americans no longer accepted the negative stereotypes
whites used to deride blackness and assert their own superiority.
King and Carmichael were both influenced by this cultural awareness
and gave it a place in their ideologies as a means of empowering
black people.

King started his discussion of cultural empowerment as early as
1963 in Why We Can't Wait. The psychological problems created by a
racial inferiority complex were just as damaging as outright physical
abuses. He went even further in Where Do We Go From Here?, in

which he focused not only on the accomplishments of the civil rights

7 1
movement as a means of race pride, but also on black history and

cultural tendencies, not only in the United States, but in Africa. Too
often these areas were distorted in perception to preserve the idea
that blacks were inferior to whites. King challenged this and argued
that blacks must have pride in their heritage if they were ever to
push aside the barriers to advancement in the United States. The
first step to liberation was the self-liberation of rejecting negative
ideas of Africans in general. "The Negro will only be truly free when
he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with
the pen and ink of assertive self-hood his own emancipation
proclamation".99

Stokely Carmichael also placed great emphasis on the need to
overcome self-hatred. His use of the word "black" rather than Negro
was the outward symbol of the rejection of white beliefs concerning
black people. He and other black power advocates made a distinction
between the "tomming" Negro, unable or unwilling to resist white
oppression, and the strong "black" man, who fights for his rights. The
influence of Malcolm X was vital to this discussion, both in terms of
racial pride in history and the willingness to reject white culture in
favor of black culture. Black power totally rejected white values and
judgments, and relied on traditional black cultural tendencies to
determine the course of the freedom struggle.

Carmichael argued that blacks needed to develop and explore
their own culture and history, rather than adopt that of the white
man. This was especially true because white culture devalued black

life and only served to destroy black people. The racist values of

 

99King MK 43.

7 2
American society were incompatible with the needs of African-

Americans, who must turn to their own heritage in Africa to find the
values to sustain them.100 By affirming their own racial
characteristics and culture, African-Americans could begin to
empower themselves in the face of white racism. ‘

For both leaders, cultural empowerment was an essential
element in the freedom struggle. Blacks had to first recognize their
own self-worth and the value of their own history and culture before
they could resist white oppression. Carmichael was sometimes more
strident or bitter in his denunciation of white attempts to destroy
black culture and in his desire for black cultural autonomy. He saw
little use for any white American values to blacks. In this way he
was more influenced by Malcolm X and his strong nationalism,
particularly during his earlier days and his strong condemnation of

the entire white race.

The Transformation of Values

Through all of these elements, but particularly clearly in the
cultural discussion, the idea that the values of white America needed
to be changed stands out. In order for blacks to become equal
participants in American society, white racism had to end. The entire
value system of the United States had to be re-structured. Although
these leaders had different ideas about how to restructure values,
and what this meant, they agreed that this transformation was
essential to the success of their struggle. The road to empowerment

involved altering societal virtues and attitudes towards black people.

 

‘OOCarmichael, W 40.

73
King argued that "there is a need for a radical restructuring of

American society", while Carmichael suggested that America had
"little worth winning as it is".101

When discussing how values must be transformed, King
focused much more on the religious nature of this conversion. The
moral way to alter society was through the use of nonviolent direct
action and the love ethic of Christ. The fundamental premise of
nonviolence; that is, that love is a powerful force for social change,
remained unchanged even after the radicalization King underwent
during the last three years of his life. Carmichael rejected this
explicitly religious appeal, but his ideas nevertheless were tinged
with a sense of morality. He desired a change of values, which was
necessarily moral at center, and argued that a change in the belief
system was needed because the present one was ineffective and
morally wrong. This seems to place Carmichael's argument at the
moral level; by arguing about values he left the materialistic level
that predominates in his discussion of empowerment. While the need
for power was not moral, and the power itself was not morally based,
the way it would be effectively achieved was fundamentally moral.
Black power might force whites to recognize blacks as a force in
society, but only a change in values could make them change so that
equality would result.

However, Carmichael differed from King in how this change
was to be generated. He argued that only through force would white
America awaken to the need for change. The way to create this force

was for blacks to separate from society and develop their own

 

101King, WDWGEH 133; NEW 1380- 26, 1966-

74
sources of power, and then to re-enter the mainstream society with

strength to challenge white power. In this way, blacks could force
whites to accept African-Americans as equals, at least in the
behavioral sense. King, on the other hand, believed that this
transformation of society could not occur unless morality guided the
development of power in the black community. He argued that
blacks could never achieve justice as long as the values of society
remained the same. Rather than forcing change by revamping power
relationships, King advocated the use of moral suasion buttressed by
nonviolent coercion as the best means to bring about an alteration of
values. Carmichael wanted blacks to force whites to accept them on
their own terms through power relationships: economic and political
force. King relied much more on the power of love, morality, and of
people on the march.

In some sense, though, both leaders were looking in the same
direction to find the solution to black oppression. Although they
offered drastically different means of empowering black people and
achieving equality, the fundamental recognition that the ultimate
solution to racism required a societal transformation of values linked
both leaders. This is interesting in that King, generally portrayed as
a moderate, was actually suggesting a very radical solution to the
problems facing black people. Minor tinkering with programs, or the
reformation of an otherwise sound paradigm of values, were not
enough. King advocated a fundamental alteration of American
society. This is not a moderate goal. At the same time, Carmichael,
who for the most part argued from a materialistic position of amoral

power relationships, came to a fundamentally moral conclusion as a

7 5
solution. A change of values is in some sense not strictly moral: he

could simply be advocating a rejection of all elements of white
society outright. Still, the moral element was apparent in his.
arguments for how change must occur. In the end, he realized that
only a change in the spirit of white America could bring true equality
for blacks, even if blacks developed their own sources of power as he

suggests.

Nineteen sixty-eight saw both King and Carmichael leave the
African-American freedom struggle. James Earl Ray murdered King
in Memphis on April 4, ending his leadership of the movement but
not his influence. Stokely Carmichael, after a brief relationship with
the Black Panther Party, left the United States for exile in Ghana later
that year. Both leaders had fought for the rights of black people.
Their ideas had changed over the course of the sixties in response to
experiences and each other. In the end, despite differences over
method, both men sought the same goal. Although differing on
specifics, both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael agreed
that the best means to achieve racial equality was to empower black
people. Black power was not simply a slogan; it identified an ideology
that drove the civil rights movement of the late sixties to challenge

the very foundations of American society.

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