New Black Power

Abstract

In 1966, the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee stood in Mississippi and raised a call, “What do we want?” A resounding response poured from hundreds of voices, “Black Power!” (Jeffries 171). This was the first time that the two words came together as a public rallying cry, a punctuating symbol in political struggles in the United States. In the decades after Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) led that chant in Mississippi, the slogan “Black Power” became an activist mantra throughout the Black Diaspora....