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Article: African-Americans need a revival of `black power'
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- January 9, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1966, an angry young black man named Stokely Carmichael
caused tremors among some white and black civil rights leaders when
he made a strong appeal for "black power."
Not only did his pronouncement irritate Roy Wilkins, the late
head of the NAACP, but it also made Martin Luther King Jr.
uncomfortable.
Wilkins went so far as to declare that, "We of the NAACP will
have none of this. (Black power) is the ranging of race against race
on the irrelevant basis of skin color. It is the father of hatred
and the mother of violence."
I agreed with the contrasting position of Whitney Young, late
director of the National Urban League, who interpreted the expression
to mean ...