“Black Power” is a powerful speech delivered by Stokely Carmichael on the topic of desegregation and underlying issues with white supremacy. Carmichael uses the integration of school systems, communities, the military, and other institutions to bash Civil Rights and democracy. During the Civil Rights movement, blacks were all of a sudden granted rights by the government (the whites). Stokely Carmichael emphasizes how blacks knew all along that they had these rights. The Civil Rights movement in his eyes fits a white agenda that neither eliminates racism nor properly integrates blacks with whites. “Black Power” reflects racial issues from slavery to the Jim Crow era and relates to the rocky path since Civil Rights. Carmichael warned the students at UC Berkeley in 1966 that racial tensions would not be lifted from simple laws put into place by the white men in charge. Now, fifty years later, it is evident through news of heightened murders and incarcerations among the black community, that Stokely Carmichael was not completely wrong. At the time of the speech, he was arguably the most influential black man behind Dr. King, respectively, having been the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a leader in the Black Panther Party. Stokely Carmichael makes his strongest points for his argument by reflecting historical context on the integration of African Americans in schools and military and international affairs. 

The “Black Power” speech was given during the Civil Rights period. The Civil Rights movement began in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of education court case that legally integrated schools. This was a huge step for black communities and was seemingly a win for progressive America. The Civil Rights movement progressed through the 1960s and 70s while more states integrated public and social institutions. It was a historic time where influential people such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X became household names as they fought for the equal rights of African Americans. This time period was different from any other in American history. While tensions rose throughout the southeast on domestic soil, America was fighting a violent war thousands of miles away in Vietnam. The Vietnam War is one of the most controversial wars in American history because many people protested it and did not believe in the cause that we were fighting for at the time. It seemed that the government was sending people overseas to die for the sake of spreading democracy. The Civil Rights movement intertwined with a massive counterculture trend that set America through an adolescent stage of free spiritedness. People were hoping this would all lead to the ultimate maturity of America leaving racism and bigotry behind. However, this was not the case, and Stokely Carmichael discusses exactly why in his speech. 

As mentioned earlier, the Brown v. Board of education judicial ruling is a large principle cause of the Civil Rights movement. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruling stated that it was illegal to segregate public schools. John Valery White, the former dean of UNLV, wrote an interesting scholarly article on the flaws and repercussions in Brown v. Board of Education nearly fifty years after the bill was passed. The decision to integrate schools was not a momentous triumph the way many people saw it in 1954 because of the way the decision was made. The segregation of schools was deemed unconstitutional, yet after the law was unanimously passed, not much was done to bring equality. At the time, the federal government was in a cautious stage of small government. The integration bill was placed at a state level weakening the law because states could make their own decisions and elect white officials against Civil Rights. Carmichael points out that the integration of schools and neighborhoods wasn’t real integration at all. There was no equal mix of diversity that brought cultures together. Instead, blacks were constantly trying to prove themselves by living “white” lives. Carmichael compares the white attempt of integration to that of Peace Corps missionaries. He says, “they (white people) come into our ghettos and they Head Start, Upward Lift, Bootstrap, and Upward Bound us into white society, ‘cause they don’t want to face the real problem which is a man is poor for one reason and one reason only: ‘cause he does not have money period” (Carmichael 316). After Brown v. Board, it took a long time to enforce any substantial integration. 

Another flaw in Brown v. Board is that the law was a law and not a human right. Many white people did not accept the law and there were protests for years after. Even after most Americans accepted the law, desegregation was an unnatural process. The Supreme Court limited the sanctions they put on segregated schools making the process slow because they could not force or allow schools to force integration. Stokely Carmichael recognized the flaws in the Brown v. Board bill because he saw that very few schools were fully diverse. Many schools stayed predominately white or black, and the common white man was blind to his own privilege because he could point at a law on a piece of paper to argue that the school system was equal. Carmichael used Brown v. Board to fuel his argument against the cloak words of diversity and integration. It fueled his fire on the poor execution of Civil Rights and time had proven him right due to the fact that John Valery White said in his article “Brown, nearly fifty, is nearly dead”(John White UNLV). Yes in reality, people do not protest against the desegregation of schools, but the peak of desegregation was in 1988, and based on a Harvard study, schools were more segregated in 2000 than they were in 1970 (Southern Poverty Law Center). Integration was a major issue that did not just involve the school system, but involved every public and social institution including the US military.

While the Civil Rights movement was changing America, the Vietnam War was affecting the world. Segregation in the military technically ended during the Korean War, but the Vietnam War was the first full major conflict where blacks were completely integrated in all aspects of the military. That was a momentous feat even if it was a war that caused a lot of controversy back in the US. African Americans fought in wars throughout American history, but like many things in African American history, racism divided and isolated them from the white soldiers. Long before the Vietnam War, there was the Philippine-American War from 1899-1902. This war was not nearly as influential as the Civil or Revolutionary wars that came before or the two World Wars that followed, but there are clear examples of racism within the military during this war. The Philippine-American War ignited roughly twenty years after the United States reconstruction period after the Civil War. Black troops were used much more in the Philippines because white Americans believed they would be immune to the diseases and heat of the tropical climate. They also thought that blacks would have better stamina and a beastly character. This fundamentally racist generalization suddenly made blacks a great asset in the Philippine-American War. However, at the military bases, there was still a large divide of racism with physical and verbal abuse (Ngozi-Brown 44-45). Facilities were segregated, and there was no reason to fight the racism out there because as soon as they returned home after the war, racism would only be worse. 

Stokely Carmichael expresses his deep abhorrence towards the Vietnam War in “Black Power.” First off, Carmichael did not believe in democracy because according to him it has not worked for anyone. Therefore it makes sense for him to be fundamentally against a war that is taking many lives just to fight for something that he does not even believe in. Layered into that, Carmichael explains how blacks still aren’t fully integrated into the military. He sees the blacks in the military as mercenaries because they are fighting for a country that they are not even fully welcome in. Carmichael describes how there are many times where the black bodies are left overseas instead of properly buried on US soil (Carmichael 319). He does not believe in the draft system and one has to think that his opinions on war, even after the military is fully desegregated, stem from racist accounts from wars such as the Philippine-American War. 

Stokely Carmichael was extremely successful and influential in his career. He developed strong opinions on race relations and issues in America and did not ever back down from saying them. “Black Power” is just a glimpse into the massive issues of the Civil Rights movement. There are many events in American history that could have influenced Carmichael’s rhetoric. Brown v. Board of education was a recent event for Carmichael. He felt the victory but saw the underlying flaws in the Supreme Court Ruling. He also remembered the desegregation of the US military. Both the school system and the US military took massive leaps forward in Carmichael’s lifetime. However, none of it felt right to him because the same white people that had oppressed his culture for so long were the ones that pushed the laws through. He was skeptical of the validity and true influence of the new laws passed in the Civil Rights movement based on what he saw and read about in history. He was right in the sense that racism has not been completely expelled yet. To truly rid of racism Stokely Carmichael believes America cannot just change their public and social institutions; the government has to start from scratch to make a better America without white supremacy and with true integration.
