3

[column one]
A Symposium
BLACK POWER
Its Meaning and Measure

Editor's Note:

We think that the racial situation in this country has reached a
critical point long predicted by a line of writers from W. E. B.
Du Bois to James Baldwin and Lerone Bennett Jr., and we feel
that thoughtful consideration now must be given to the nature
and direction of the struggle against racism. NEGRO DIGEST invited
the following dozen people, all contributors to the magazine at
one time or other, to comment on the following two questions in
the belief that their ideas will be clarifying and provocative:

1. Is the Civil Rights Movement at the crossroads?—And, if
so, what are the practical alternatives to it?

2. What is your own reaction to the term, "Black Power," and
why do you feel that national press and the white public
reacted as they did to the term?

JULIAN BOND
Julian Bond is the former communi-
cations director for the Student Non-
violent Coordinating Committee who
has twice been elected a representative
to the Georgia Legislature and twice
been refused his seat by the over-
whelming vote of white legislators.
Mr. Bond's crime in the eyes of his
white peers is his support of a SNCC
statement opposing the war in Vietnam.

[column two]
BLACK POWER as de-
scribed by its initiator,
Stokely Carmichael,
Chairman of the Stu-
dent Nonviolent Co-
ordinating Committee (SNCC), is
both a slogan and a political and
psychological technique. As a slo-
gan it has the value that others do;
but as a technique for achieving
change and rallying together the
most powerless groups in American
society—the Negro poor—it has
enormous potential.

The national reaction to both the
slogan and technique has been di-
rected, for the most part, by advo-
cates of a counter position in the
white and Negro communities,

[column three]
those who are spokesmen for
"white fright."

Contending for the national title
as leading spokesman for the
"white fright" advocates is Eugene
Patterson, editor of the Atlanta
Constitution. Believing, as do most
"white frighters," that Negro mili-
tancy equals riots, rape, and in a
favorite phrase of "white fright"
supporters "irreparable harm to the
Negro movement," the Constitu-
tion under Patterson has devoted
almost more editorial space in re-
cent weeks to denouncing "Black
Power" than he has to supporting
his paper's hawkish position on the
Vietnam war.

It is too easy to characterize the
(Continued on page 81)