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” ° ay . * RE: COUNTERORIENTATION WEEY. iain aa aa aa But pretty soon, black people began to look around again. They said, okay, we got this, we got this integration to a limited degree, Our kids got freedom of choice and they can go to school wherever they want to, but something is still wrong, And a couple of kids in Alabama came up with a phrase to describe what was wrong and what was needed, STOKELY CARMICHAEL and WILLIE RICH screamed “black power" one day. And what they meant at that time was that we're involving ourselves in the aystem, but we still don't have any influence over it. Because all parts of the system that we need to be influencing are controlled by white folks. eae Sit Sas 2 ON TY ORE, IT a AL hela al 28 So we need some black power. We need to organize black people to the point where black pecple can go to the system with some sort of power base, present demands, and influence the decisions that the system is making. Influence white people to make the kinds of decisions that are going to be appropriate for black people. And so the drive was made for black power. And there was — a time when black power, when black power even as it was definted by white folks, wos totally unacceptable. And that hadn't been too long ago. I imagine for some folks, I hope nobody in here, that the concept of black power was really unacceptable, and when you said I'm a black power advocate, you know, folks started to shrink away from you. It was some real hip white folks and some crazy black folks who could get away with saying I'm a black power advocate, and everybody would say Yeah, okay, yeah, right on, you need black power. But pretty soon it became acceptable that black power is, in fact, what black people need to be fighting for. But this was black power as defined by white folks. This was the black power that said what black people need to be doing is trying to get in and influence the decisions that are made concerning their lives. Well a lot of tactics were used for that. The base of the whole thing was community organization or labor organization, and the tactics that were used to influence decisions ranged any place from petitions to burning buildings down. Pe eS : *. ’ ee ; a ; , st 2 eee EP tin Se veer ete a, Boe ak a aes 7 iat on aly 9 FS A OS Tg ae Bp ene 8 EL a Re RON CGAP TS age TRL ee sient