On June 16, 1966, SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael, newly released from the Greenwood jail after defying city orders by putting up tents to house participants in James Meredith’s March Against Fear, delivered his famous “Black Power” speech here to an agitated crowd of about 600. Meredith had begun his solitary march from Memphis to Jackson on June 5, 1966, to protest racism, but after he was shot by a sniper, other civil rights campaigners, including Carmichael, continued the march in his name. In Greenwood, Carmichael, arrested for the twenty-seventh time, shouted “We want black power!” five times, and the crowd grew increasingly enthusiastic. Although SNCC members had already discussed the phrase and Willie Ricks had used it in earlier speeches, Carmichael’s use of it that day thrust him into the national spotlight, gave SNCC new visibility, and marked a major shift from the more understated style of former chairman Bob Moses. As the slogan spread, it exposed growing philosophical differences between the more nationalistic SNCC and more moderate organizations such as the NAACP and the SCLC, whose leaders, including Roy Wilkins and Martin Luther King Jr., criticized it to varying degrees. The idea of Black Power raised the question of whether American institutions could work for black Americans, called for black people to unite, recognize their heritage, and build a sense of community, and also sharpened questions about white participation in SNCC during Carmichael’s tenure; the following year he joined Charles V. Hamilton in writing Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America.
