Fifty summers ago, SNCC鈥檚 chairman, Stokely Carmichael, joined civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to steer the treacherous Mississippi March Against Fear.聽 The massive protest careened through Mississippi cotton towns, organizing residents and battling segregationists.聽 By June 16, 1966, the March had stopped in Greenwood, Mississippi, one of the many majority Black polities still ruled by White minorities.聽 鈥淲e been saying freedom for six years and we ain鈥檛 got nothing,鈥� Carmichael shouted at a Greenwood rally.聽 鈥淲hat we gonna start saying now is Black Power!鈥澛� 鈥淲hat do you want?鈥� Carmichael screamed.聽 鈥淏lack Power!鈥� disempowered Greenwood Blacks screamed back.
Carmichael鈥檚 exclamation rang true in 2016–the year that marked its fiftieth anniversary. 聽Nearly a half a century later, activist Alicia Garza wrote a love letter that proclaimed that 鈥淏lack Lives Matter,鈥� igniting a movement that would mature in Black Power鈥檚 golden anniversary. Like Sixties Black power activists, Garza has been led by notions of self-determination, 鈥渟elf-actualization, self-love and being really rooted in who we are unapologetically.鈥� This ethos has spread like wildfire, with cities and college campuses ablaze with sit-ins and protests filled with activists demanding universal recognition of black people鈥檚 humanity and rights. 聽In 1966, Carmichael ignited a movement. Today鈥檚 activists are channeling his unequivocal demand into a new movement that both pays homage to and expands Black power鈥檚 central ideals and symbols.
The Black Power Series is the first scholarly series dedicated to chronicling Black Power, its antecedents, and its capacious legacy. For more information on submissions, please visit .
