One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young blackpeople in the urban ghetto. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young blacks. None of  its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to.  In a sense, I blame ourselves - together with the mass media - for what has happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha.   Each timet he people in those cities saw Martin Luther King get slapped, they became angry, when they sawf our little black girls bombed to death, they were angrier; and when nothing happened, they were steaming. We had nothing to offer that they could see, except to go out and be beaten again. We helped to build their frustration.

For too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken and got shot. They were saying to the country, "Look, you guys are supposed to be nice guys and we are only going to do what we are supposed to do - why do you beat us up, why don't you give us what we ask, why don't you straighten yourselves out?" After years of this, we are at almost the same point because we demonstrated from a position of weakness. We cannot be expected any longer to march and have our heads broken in order to say to whites: come on,  you're nice guys.  For you are not nice guys. We have found you out.

An organization which claims to speak for the needs of a community - as does the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - must speak in the tone of that community, not as somebody else's buffer zone. This is power as a slogan. For once, black people are going to use the words they want to use - not just the words whites want to hear. And they will do this no matter how often the press tries to stop the use of the slogan by equating it with racism or separatism.

An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community - as SNCC does - must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan.

Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it. We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two problems: they are poor and they are black. All other problems arise from this two-sided reality:   lack ofeducation,  the so-called apathy of black men. Any program to end racism must address itself  to that double reality.

Almost from its beginning,  SNCC sought to address itself to both conditions with a program aimed at winning political power for impoverished Southern blacks. We had to begin with politics because black Americans are a propertyless people in a country where property is valued above all.  We had to work for power, because this country does not function by morality, love, and nonviolence, but by power. Thus we determined to win political power, with the idea of moving on from there into activity that would have economic effects. With power, the masses could make or participate in making the decisions which govern their destinies, and thus create basic change in their day-to-day lives....

SNCC  is today working  in both North and South on programs of voter registration and independent political organizing.  In some places, such as Alabama, Los Angeles, New York,  Philadelphia, and New Jersey, independent organizing under the black panther symbol is in progress. The creation of a national "black panther party" must come about;  it will take time to build, and it is much too early to predict its success. We have no infallible master plan and we make no claim to exclusive knowledge of how to end racism; different groups will work in their own different ways.  SNCC cannot spell out the full logistics of self determination but it can address itself to the problem by helping black communities define their needs, realize their strength, and go into action along a variety of lines which they must choose for themselves....

Ultimately,  the economic foundations of this country must be shaken if black people are to control their lives. The colonies of the United States - and this includes the black ghettoes within its borders, north and south,  must be Liberated. For a century, this nation has been like an octopus of exploitation, its tentacles stretching from Mississippi and Harlem to South America, the MiddleEast, southern Africa, and Vietnam;  the form of exploitation varies from area to area but the essential result has been the same - a powerful few have been maintained and enriched at the expenseof the poor and voiceless colored masses. This pattern must be broken.  As its grip loosens here and there around the world, the hopes of black Americans become more realistic. For racism to die, a totally different America must be born.

This is what the white society does not wish to face; this is why that society prefers to talk about integration. But integration speaks not at all to the problem of poverty, only to the problem of blackness. Integration today means the man who "makes it," leaving his black brothers behind in the ghetto as fast as his new sports car will take him. It has no relevance to the Harlem wino or to the cottonpicker making three dollars a day....

Integration, moreover, speaks to the problemof blackness in a despicable way. As a goal, it has been based on complete acceptance of the fad that in order to have a decent house or education, blacks must move into a white neighborhood or send their children to a white school   This reinforces, among both black and white,  the idea that "white"  is automatically better and "black" is by definition inferior. This is why integration is a subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy.  It allows the nation to focus on a handful of Southern children who get into white schools, at great price, and to ignore the 94 percent who are left behind in unimproved all-black schools. Such situations will not change until black people havepower to control their own school boards, in this case. Then Negroes become equal in a way that means something, and integration ceases to be a one-way street.  Then integration doesn't mean draining skills and energies from the ghetto into white neighborhoods;  then it can mean white people moving from Beverly Hills into Watts....Then integration becomes relevant....

Whites will not see that I, for example, as a person oppressed because of my blackness, have common cause with other blacks who are oppressed because of blackness. This is not to sayt hat there are no white people who see things as I do, but that it is black people I must speak to first. It must be the oppressed to whom SNCC addresses itself primarily,  not to friends from the oppressing group.

From birth, black people are told a set of lies about themselves. We are told that we are lazy - yet I drive through the Delta area of Mississippi and watch black people picking cotton in the hot sun for fourteen hours. We are told,  "If you work hard, you'll succeed" - but if that were true, blackpeople would own this country. We are oppressed because we are black - not because we are ignorant, not because we are lazy, not because we're stupid (and got good rhythm), but because we're black.
The need for psychological equality is the reason why SNCC  today believes that blaclcs must organize in the black community. Only black people can convey the revolutionary idea that black people are able to do things themselves. Only they can help create in the community an aroused and continuing black consciousness that will provide the basis for political strength. In the past, white allies have furthered white supremacy without the whites involved realizing it - or wanting it, I think.   Black people must do things for themselves; they must get poverty money they will control and spend themselves,  they must conduct tutorial programs themselves so that black children can identify with black people.  This is one reason Africa has such importance:   The reality of black men ruling their own nations gives blacks elsewhere a sense of possibility, of power, which they do not now have.

This does not mean we don't welcome help,or friends. But we want the right to decide whether anyone is, in fact, our friend. In the past, black Americans have been almost the only peoplewhom everybody and his momma could jump up and call their friends. We have been tokens, symbols, objects - as I was in high school to many young whites,  who liked having  "a Negro friend."  We want to decide who is our friend, and we wil lnot accept someone who comes to us and says: "If you do X, Y. and Z. then I'll help you."  We will not be told whom we should choose as allies. We will not be isolated from any group or nation except by our own choice.  We cannot have the oppressors telling the oppressed how to rid themselves of the oppressor....

Black people do not want to "take over" this country. They don't want to "get whitey";  they just want to get him off their backs, as the saying goes.... The white man is irrelevant to blacks, except as an oppressive force.  Blacks want to be in his place, yes, but not in order to terrorize andl ynch and starve him.  They want to be in his place because that is where a decent life can be had.

But our vision is not mercy of a society in which all black men have enough to buy the good things of life. When we urge that black money go into black pockets, we mean the communal pocket. We want to see money go back into the community and used to benefit it.  We want to see the cooperative concept of banking. We want to see black ghetto residents demand that an exploiting landlord or storekeeper sell them, at minimal cost, a building or a shop that they will own and improve cooperatively; they can back their demand with a rent strike, or a boycott, and a community so unified behind them that no one else will move into the building or buy at the store. The society we seek to build among black people, then, is not a capitalist one.  It is a society in which the spirit of community and humanistic love prevail. The word love is suspect;  black expectations of what it might produce have been betrayed too often. But those were expectations of a response from the white community, which failed us.  The love we seek to encourage is within the black community, the only American cornmunity  where men call each other "brother" when they meet.   We can build a community of love only where we have the ability and power to do so: among blacks.

As for white America, perhaps it can stop crying out against "black supremacy,"  "black nationalism,"  "racism in reverse," and begin facing reality. The reality is that this nation, from top to bottom,  is racist;  that racism is not primarily a problem of  "human relations"  but of an exploitation maintained - either actively or throughsilence - by the society as a whole....

We have found that they usually cannot condemn themselves,  and so we have done it.   But the rebuilding of this society, if at all possible,  is basically the responsibility of whites - not blacks.  We won't fight to save the present society,  in Vietnam or anywhere else.  We are just going to work, in the way we see fit, and on our goals we define, not for civil rights but for all our human rights.