Saying It Loud: 1966 - The Year Black Power Challenged The Civil Rights Movement, Whitaker - B+

                      "After a decade of watching the Civil Rights saga play out in the South, a restless generation of Northern Black youth would demand their turn in the spotlight. Before the year 1966 was over, the story would alter the lives of a cast of young men and women, almost all under the age of thirty, who in turn would change the course of Black - and American - history."

                       Sammy Younge, a student at The Tuskegee Institute, and son of local Black elites, began working for the civil rights movement in 1965 as a student organizer. He met, and was mentored by, Stokely Carmichael, the New Yorker who worked for the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On January 3rd, 1966, Younge spent the day registering Blacks to vote. Later that night, he left a party to go out and buy some mayonnaise and cigarettes. The owner of a service station shot him after he asked to use the restroom and fill up his car. His murder shook a lot of younger Blacks who were losing patience with Martin Luther King Jr's.  philosophies of integration and nonviolence. John Lewis, the SNCC chair, issued a statement on Younge's murder and the continuing deaths of Black Americans in the Vietnam War. In Atlanta, newly elected state ep. and former SNCC press liaison, Julian Bond, was expelled from the legislature, before being sworn in, for supporting Lewis and opposing the war and the draft. January also saw Martin Luther King, Jr. move into a slum apartment in Chicago, and Huey Newton and Bobby Seale get together in Oakland to begin to sort out how to approach all of the injustice they faced. In Lowndes County, Alabama, Carmichael worked on a project that he and Younge had begun. He organized a Black party to counter Wallace's control of the Democratic Party. Under state law, parties had to select an animal image to help their illiterate voters make a selection. Carmichael selected a black panther. Over 2,000 Blacks were enrolled to vote, and in the May primaries, Blacks voted in the county for the first time since Reconstruction. A month later, the SNCC rewarded Carmichael by electing him chairman. On a march through Mississippi initiated by James Meredith and featuring Dr. King and Carmichael, Stokely took the advice of a SNCC staffer, Willie Ricks, and made a dramatic night time speech. Instead of demanding 'freedom now,' he shouted out that "what we want now isBlack Power." Within a week, the phrase appeared in hundreds of newspapers and in the national magazines. The Meredith March continued and successfully registered over 4,000 new voters. However, extreme official hostility led to a tear gassing, the further radicalization of Carmichael, and some rejection of King's middle of the road approach to civil rights. The 25 year old Stokely embarked on a two month tour of the country and his friends and colleagues began calling him 'Stokely Starmichael.' By the end of the summer, the national press was focused on just what the catchphrase meant and what its impact on the movement was. In Chicago, Dr. King's northern crusade was faced with violence from white ethnics and the police leading him to make a deal with Mayor Daley. Many viewed it as a 'sellout.' As the summer wound down, Newsweek reported an in depth poll that showed whites were less enthusiastic about civil rights than they had been, and that Blacks were less and less patient. Carmichael became further radicalized when jailed for eight days in Atlanta as the SNCC tried to rein in his more over the top statements.  In October, he went to Berkeley after an invitation from the SDS to speak, and a telegram from candidate Ronald Reagan asking him to not come and "stir strong emotions." He spoke against the war without any emotions being stirred. Reagan won his election, as did many law and order Republicans in a clear backlash against civil rights. In Oakland, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton started wearing berets and wrote up the Ten Point Program, the founding document of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Early the following year, they were joined by Eldridge Cleaver. In December, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of seating Julian Bond, and in an upstate NY conference, the SNCC dismissed all of its white staffers.  In December, the first Kwanza was celebrated in Los Angeles.

                    In 1967, the FBI ratcheted up its efforts against Black nationalism and virtually declared war on anyone they feared may become "messiah" in the Black community. They particularly focused on the Panthers. The Black Power movement needed a charismatic leader to take it forward, and it never found one.  Stokely Carmichael, the person Hoover feared could be the messiah was targeted by the Bureau and left the country in 1968. This is a truly superb book.