Black Power 1968: “To Stumble is Not to Fall, but to Go Forward Faster”

Bayard Rustin feared that Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination would bring about a deepening sense of isolation on the part of black activists. Since Stokely Carmichael had transformed the rallying cry of militants from “Freedom Now” into “Black Power” two years earlier, the Civil Rights movement had been slowly dying. The year 1968 thus supposedly marked a new era, when the Black Power movement emerged. Unfortunately, the latter seemed too overtly radical and disorganized and, to Rustin’s despair, its proponents recommended that Blacks first “close ranks” in order to gain political leverage. Both movements are consequently viewed as antagonistic and distinctive ones and, in Peniel Joseph’s words, the Black Power movement appears as the Civil Rights movement’s “evil, ruthless twin”. By focusing on the largely ignored 1968 Philadelphia Black Power Conference, this study demonstrates that the Black Power movement has had a profound influence on black electoral politics. It should thus be recognized as a force that led the actors of the larger movement for black liberation to rethink both their goals and strategies.