
“Black Power” was a commencement by Stokely Carmichael who was immigrated to the United States at only 11 years old. He became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was also the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party. “Black Power” was given at UC Berkley in 1966 to depict the transition from nonviolent integrationist politics to a politics of Black Power. Stokely believed in the Black Power Movement in which black Americans should not rely on whites to give them the rights they deserve, blacks should be able to build their own communities without interference from whites, they should also be prepared to defend themselves no matter the level of violence, and lastly, they should be able to develop a sense of pride in their own separate identity and culture. Darrius D. Hills and Tommy J. Curry discuss the importance of Black Lives and Black Power in their piece called, “Cries of the Unheard: State Violence, Black Bodies, and Martin Luther King’s Black Power.” Another important piece that puts the Black Power Movement into perspective is “The Class Politics of Black Lives Matter” by Barbara Ransby. 

“Black Power” was an important commencement to help advertise the Black Power Movement. Carmichael gave this speech with the intention of his audience being the white population, to help them realize that everyone is born a human and they should all be treated equally. Although Carmichael thinks that they should still remain separate, they should all be equal. He says, “Now, several people have been upset because we’ve said that integration was irrelevant when initiated by blacks, and that in fact it was a subterfuge, an insidious subterfuge, for the maintenance of white supremacy” (Carmichael 314). This really stands out in that whatever the black population tries to accomplish or get, they don’t get the respect they deserve. It’s basically saying how the whites are the only thing that matters and whatever they say is what goes, and that they will always be the ones on top. Carmichael says, “And then, therefore, in a larger sense there’s the question of black people. We are on the move for liberation” (Carmichael 326). That line is important because Carmichael is trying to give hope to the black population and set themselves free from the whites. Stokely Carmichael’s main objective is that everyone comes out a human, no matter what the color, but they should at least get the chance to be separate but equal. 

In the article “Cries of the Unheard: State Violence, Black Bodies, and Martin Luther King’s Black Power” there is an important section that stands out in relation to the topic of the black power movement, as discussed in Carmichael’s commencement speech, “Black Power”, called “Beyond the Reactionary Assertion: Black Lives and Black Power.” The authors, being Darrius D. Hills and Tommy J. Curry, use important historical situations related to the black lives such as Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner to show that black lives do matter. These historical situations show that discrimination is still heavily used with authorities, and has even caused individuals to be killed. “The debate over the extent to which #BlackLivesMatter, as a transformative movement, needs the Black Panther Party’s paradigmatic focus on economic empowerment…”. This quote relates to Carmichael’s speech most because they both bring in the Black Panther Party in effect. Carmichael was the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party. This particular article shows that they held a lot of power and needed to follow the pattern involving economic empowerment. A part that personally stands out to me in this article is, “Black Power called for justice and insisted on love” which depicts how powerful this movement was intended on being. It shows that the blacks were to stick together and fight for what they believe in, no matter how many times people try to shut them down. This connects to Carmichael’s speech because he believes that they should stay together in able for the black power movement to be successful. The excerpt in the article titled, “Beyond the Reactionary Assertion: Black Lives and Black Power”, and the commencement speech by Carmichael, “Black Power”, relate in many ways including that they both discuss the importance of the Black Panther Party and that they both explain how the black population needs to work together in order for their black power movement to work the way it should, being separate but equal. 

The article by Barbara Ransby, “The Class Politics of Black Lives Matter”, is about the black power movement in relation to economic justice. Ransby believes that in order for there to be economic justice, there needs to be racial justice. Ransby says in the first paragraph, “Its message is, in part, that there can be no real economic justice without racial justice”. This is true because the economy isn’t going to be fair until the problem of racial justice is solved. Economic justice is necessary for the black population so that the working community in America can be fulfilled. “In speech after speech, the leading voices of this movement have insisted that if we liberate the black poor, or if the black poor liberate themselves, we will uplift everybody else who’s been kept down”, depicts how in “Black Power” by Carmichael he believes that the whole black population needs to stick together, no matter what their economic standing is. The two pieces of literature relate by their point of view of the black power movement of being separate but equal, portrayed by the black population should stick together in order for the movement to be successful through economic justice through racial justice. 

The main purpose of this writing is to demonstrate the importance, separate but equal, of the black power movement through the commencement speech by Stokely Carmichael called “Black Power”, and the articles called, “Cries of the Unheard: State Violence, Black Bodies, and Martin Luther King’s Black Power” by Darrius D. Hills and Tommy J. Curry, and lastly, the article “The Class Politics of Black Lives Matter”. They are all centered on the same main idea about the black power movement, being that the matter between races things should be resolved as separate but equal through social justice. 
