1966 Black Power Speech By Stokely Carmichael

Stokely Carmichael, in his 1966 Black Power speech says that “every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people”. Taken at face value this statement seems to make little sense these laws guarantee essential rights to populations who for far too long had been deprived of them. However, upon further examination it becomes evident that Carmichael is drawing attention to systemic oppression that has become entrenched in the structures and institutions across the United States, not simply the impact of the laws. These institutions, which were predominately run and established by white men, he argues are the reason a civil rights bill is even necessary. Carmichael argues that under these current systems equity …show more content…
Let them handle their own fears and their own guilt. Let them find their own psychologists. We refuse to be the therapy for white society any longer. We have gone mad trying to do it. We have gone stark raving mad trying to do it.” Carmichael suggests that it is the White communities inability to deal with its own issues and insecurities that have forced black Americans to be suppressed. Carmichael is calling for the end of the institutions created at the founding of the United States and is declaring them all corrupt. In Carmichael’s view these political institutions allowed for the institution of slavery to exist in the U.S. and they cannot shake this aftermath; indeed they continue to carry forward that very legacy. For Carmichael, this makes established U.S. institutions inherently unbalanced and ill-equipped to produce …show more content…
This law mandated that all accommodations, including railcars, be segregated on account of race. Plessy intentionally violated the law and was arrested to bring suit and argue that the state law forcing segregation violated his thirteenth and fourteenth amendment rights. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. While the fourteenth amendment grants all citizens of the United States equal protection under the law and access to due process. Brown writes in the majority opinion of the court, “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” It was the opinion of the court that the institutions were not at fault as Carmichael suggests, but rather that the ‘colored race’ has brought their plight upon