Stokely Carmichael Quotes
We have been saying "Freedom" for six years. What we are going to start saying now is "Black Power". We have begged the President. We've begged the federal government. That's all we've been doing, begging and begging. From now on, when they ask you what you want, you know what to tell them.
This was the speech that started the "Black Power" Movement. The rally was held in a city park to Protest the murder just 10 days before of the civil rights activist, James Meredith. It also marked the break between the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the nonviolent movement lead by Martin Luther King. Because of that, the speech received so much publicity that "Black Power" became a significant political term instantly.
Speech, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Rally, Greenwood, Mississippi, June 16, 1966
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
His strategy was to fill the jails of Birmingham, and asked the young people to help. The next days saw virtually all the Birmingham high school students our of school and in the streets protesting which was then against the un-Constitutional laws of Birmingham and Alabama. The students were arrested by the droves and the white authorities, believing that they were being firm against “radical lawbreakers”, fell into the trap, and became a travesty to most of the country and the rest of the world and the hundreds of jailed students beaten and assaulted raised the consciousness of whites as well as Blacks.
This phrase was also to be used over 100 years later by Malcolm X. See {624101} and {38291}.
Freedom Rides were interracial groups of Civil Rights advocates who boarded public interstate busses in Washington and rode South through some of the most segregated communities in the country. As the bus stopped at the segregated rest stops, the Black Freedom Riders would use the “white” waiting rooms, toilets, and other facilities which was against the local custom and law. Racist segregationists often brutalized and assaulted the Freedom riders whose leaders demanded Federal Protection. The Attorney General and others were trying to get the local politicians and law enforcement officials to protect the Freedom Riders, but often these were the worst of the racist segregationists. Kennedy thought if he could have a “cooling off period” for a few days, he could persuade the locals to protect the Freedom Riders from the mobs with the threat of sending Federal Marshalls or troops for the protection. So he asked Farmer and other Freedom Ride organizers to stop the Freedom Rides for a few days. This was Farmer’s famous response. The Freedom Rides continued and forced the Federal Government to respond on a timetable they did not prefer.
Kennedy was initially very opposed to a civil rights march on Washington and seemed very annoyed to the Blacks in attended. But when faced with the reality of the fact that the March was going to take place and he could not prevent it, he turned around and did everything he could do to protect the marchers and enable the historic event.
This was one of the first calls for a slave strike in America.
He was warning about the desire of so many Black young men at the time to be entertainers or professional athletes.
Hoover and the FBI were supposed to be enforcing Federal law. However, they could not find any criminal activity on the part of Martin Luther King Jr. They regarded the Civil Rights Movement as a revolutionary threat to the nation. See {620621} and {74219} . So the FBI in an incredible abuse of power, had a meeting of its top officials to plan a strategy for destroying King as a Negro leader in America. We look back on this era where officials who were never elected by anyone, and having no authority from an elected official, took it upon themselves to decide who leaders in America would be.
He had written this text on a newspaper when he was jailed in Birmingham for violating a court order not to demonstrate. A common tactic of the Southern segregationists was to have local segregationist judges issue injunctions against civil rights demonstrations on the grounds that they would promote violence. These were generally unconstitutional, but King and others were jailed until the legal appeal could even be heard.
This speech is often referred to as the “Ballot or the Bullet” speech. It was the first time that Malcolm X used the “Ballot or the Bullet”. He was not the first African American to use the “Ballot or the Bullet” phrase. See {624102} for a use over 100 years ago. However, he was really arguing to allow Blacks to vote in the South where it was almost impossible at the time. There was no Voting Rights Act at that time and it was his actions that helped pass one shortly thereafter.
Kwame Ture was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global Pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending the Bronx High School of Science. He was a key leader in the development of the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and last as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).
