The following year, Carmichael and several other disgruntled SNCC leaders broke away from the SNCC and co-authored the book Black Power to promote Malcolm X’s message. Carmichael went a step further than Malcolm X and began campaigning to split the United States into separate countries—one for blacks, one for whites. The term black power, coined in Carmichael’s book, came to be synonymous with militancy, self-reliance, independence, and nationalism within the ranks of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Black Panthers

The militant philosophies of Malcolm X also prompted frustrated activists in Oakland, California, to form the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense—more commonly known as the Black Panthers—in 1966. Unlike the SCLC, NAACP, SNCC, or CORE, the Black Panthers demanded immediate equality for all blacks, including increased and fair employment opportunities, exemption from military service in Vietnam, health care, and educational services.

Whereas Malcolm X had merely preached revolution against white domination, the Black Panthers actually prepared for war. Clad entirely in black and armed with handguns, Black Panthers patrolled urban neighborhoods in northern and western cities, on the lookout for racist violence against blacks. The organization also operated education centers and health-care clinics in black neighborhoods to help the poorest members of these communities.

The Black Panthers’ extremism and willingness to use violence, however, alienated and threatened moderate whites in the North. The federal government also perceived the Panthers as a threat and cracked down on the group between 1968 and 1969, effectively dissolving the organization.

The Watts Riots

The philosophy of black power and the shift away from nonviolent tactics also reflected a growing restlessness among urban blacks. Poverty, unemployment, and the lack of education and basic health care provoked some inner-city blacks to launch riots throughout the country between 1965 and 1970. Perhaps the most destructive of these riots were the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles. For six days, more than 50,000 outraged blacks burned and looted the neighborhood, attacking whites, Hispanics, and other minorities. It took 20,000 National Guardsmen to restore order to the district, and more than thirty people lost their lives.

King’s Assassination

During the time of heightened black militancy, Martin Luther King Jr. had continued to promote racial equality in the South through nonviolent means. In April 1968, however, King was shot and killed with a high-powered rifle while making a speech from a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. After months of searching, police finally apprehended a young high school dropout named James Earl Ray, who had been seen running away from the commotion at the time of the assassination. Although Ray initially admitted to killing King, he later professed his innocence and claimed that another unnamed man had fired the shot. A congressional hearing ten years later found that it was likely others had been involved in the assassination plot, but investigators made no further arrests.

Popular pages: The Civil Rights Era (1865–1970)