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A newspaper in education Supplement to THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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WEDNESDAY • AUGUST 28 • 2013
“Black Power” Speech
Stokely Carmichael, July 28, 1966
There is a psychological war going on in this country and it’s
whether or not black people are going to be able to use the terms
they want about their movement without white people’s blessing.
We have to tell them we are going to use the term “Black Power”
and we are going to define it because Black Power speaks to us. …
We are going to build a movement in this country based on the
color of our skins that is going to free us from our oppressors and
we have to do that ourselves.
Everybody in this country is for “Freedom Now” but not
everybody is for Black Power …We have got to get us some Black
Power. We don’t control anything but what white people say we can
control. We have to be able to smash any political machine in the
country that’s oppressing us and bring it to its knees…That’s Black
Power!
Excerpt - Full text at:
the country to avoid criminal charges, he returned
as a Christian anti-communist and became a
Republican Party member.)
In addition to being known for its revolution-
ary rhetoric and violence, the Panthers became a
national organization that operated food, educa-
tion, and healthcare programs in poor African
American communities.
Interracial Marriage Under Jim Crow
In the South, Jim Crow laws and discrimina-
tion controlled every aspect of black life includ-
ing marriage. Most southern states had laws
forbidding inter-racial marriage.
In Florida the statue stated: “All marriages
between a white person and a Negro, or between
a white person and a person of Negro descent to
the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forev-
er prohibited.” Virginia had a similar law, which
included a provision banning interracial couples
who married in another state from returning to
Virginia.
In 1958, deeply in love, a couple from Vir-
ginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Rich-
ard Loving, a white man, were married in the
District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to
Virginia, where they were charged with violating
the state's statute banning interracial marriages.
The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a
year in jail. The trial judge agreed to suspend the
sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and
not return for 25 years.
To avoid jail, the Loving’s agreed to leave
Virginia and relocate to Washington, D.C. where
they lived for 5 years and Richard worked as a
bricklayer. The couple had three children. Yet
they longed to return home to their family and
friends in Caroline County, VA.
That's when the couple contacted Bernard
Cohen, a young attorney who was volunteering
at the ACLU. They requested that Cohen ask the
Caroline County judge to reconsider his decision.
"They just were in love with one another and
wanted the right to live together as husband and
wife in Virginia, without any interference from
officialdom. When I told Richard that this case
was, in all likelihood, going to go to the Supreme
Court of the United States, he became wide-eyed
and his jaw dropped," Cohen recalled.
Cohen and another lawyer challenged the
Lovings’ conviction, but the original judge in
the case upheld his decision. Judge Leon Bazile
wrote: "Almighty God created the races white,
black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them
on separate continents. ...The fact that he sepa-
Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court
Decision
rated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
The case was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,
which on June 12, 1967 ruled unanimously in the Loving Decision,
declaring that laws prohibiting interracial marriage are unconstitu-
tional.
After the ruling, the Lovings moved back to Caroline County,
VA to be near their families. Richard’s life was cut short in a car
accident in 1975.
(Source: NPR)
