Stokely Carmichael Discusses Black Power (1966)

down? We must move into the white community. We are in the black community. We have developed a movement in the black community. The challenge is that the white activist has failed miserably to develop the movement inside of his community. And the question is, can we find white people who are going to have the courage to go into white communities and start organizing them? Can we find them? Are they here? And are they willing to do that? Those are the questions that we must raise for the white activist, and we're never going to get caught up in questions about power. This country knows what power, knows it very well, and it knows what Black Power is because it's deprived black people of it for 400 years. So it knows what black power is. But the question of why do black people, why do white people in this country associate black power with violence? And the question is because of their own inability to deal with blackness. If we had said Negro power nobody would get scared.

Everybody would support it. If we said powerful colored people everybody would be for that. But it is the word black. It is the word black that bothers people in this country. And that's their problem, not mine. Their problem. Their problem. There's one modern day lie that we want to attack and then move on very quickly. And that is the lie that says anything all black is bad. Now you're all a college, university crowd. You've taken your basic logic course. You know about a major premise, a minor premise. So people have been telling me anything all black is bad. Let's make that our major premise. Major premise: anything all black is bad. Minor premise, or particular premise: I am all black, therefore, I'm never going to put that trick back. I'm all black and I'm all good.

Anything all black is not necessarily bad. Anything all black is only bad when you use force to keep whites out. Now that's what white people have done in this country and they're projecting their same fears and guilt on us and we won't have it. We won't have it. Let them handle their own fears and their own guilt. Let them find their own psychologist. We refuse to be the therapy for white society any longer. We have gone mad trying to do it. We have gone mad trying to do it. I look at Dr. King on television every single day, and I say to myself, now there is a man who is desperately needed in this country. There is a man full of love. There is a man full of mercy. There is a man full of compassion, but every time I see Lyndon on television, I saw Martin, baby, you've got a long way to go. So the question stands as to what we are willing to do? How we're willing to

say no, to withdraw from that system and begin within our community to start to function and to build new institutions that will speak to our needs. In Lowndes County we developed something called the Lowndes county Freedom Organization. It is a political party. The Alabama law says that if you have a party you must have an emblem. We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people. An animal that never strikes back until he's backed so far into the wall he's got nothing to do but spring out. And when he springs, he does not stop.