Here’s what Black power looks like right now. We’re responding to this political climate by drinking water and minding our business. We’re focused on self-care and our own economic interests. We’re learning new skills. We’re starting businesses. We’re staying away from stores like Target that consistently disrespect us. We’re making a huge impact. I love that for us.
But it’s power without a program. Starting in the 60s, Black power was an ideology. It had a definition, a program, and a crowd that could recite both. I keep asking one question. Can we rise to that level of clarity again?
Let me define it plain. Black power means Black people hold the power to decide the direction of their own communities. Politically, economically, and culturally. Stokely Carmichael said it out loud on June 16, 1966, in Greenwood, Mississippi. A year later he and Charles Hamilton put it in a book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation.
Malcolm X got there in spirit first. He left the Nation of Islam in 1964 and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity that June. He said Black people would win freedom “by any means necessary.” He was assassinated on February 21, 1965. He was 39.
Then two men in Oakland turned the idea into a program. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party in October 1966 and handwrote a Ten-Point Program. Point one read, “We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.” Full employment. Housing fit for human beings. An end to police brutality and murder of Black people. Read it now. Tell me what’s out of date.
They didn’t just argue. In 1969, they started feeding children breakfast before school.
Fred Hampton saw the next step. In Chicago, he helped build the Rainbow Coalition, linking the Panthers with the Young Lords and the Young Patriots, an organization of poor white Southerners. Police killed him in a raid on December 4, 1969. He was 21.
Institutions followed. In 1971, 13 Black members of Congress formed the Congressional Black Caucus. In March 1972, about 8,000 of us gathered in Gary, Indiana, for the National Black Political Convention. Elected officials, nationalists, and organizers sat in one room with a 68-page agenda.
That’s the clarity I’m talking about. Ten points a person could memorize.
Here’s what I’m about to outline: a framework in five parts. Healing first. Then safety and justice. Then money. Then opportunity. Then community on top, holding the rest. It’s one Black woman’s opinion, not a final answer.
It covers the same ground the Panthers did. Work. Housing. Justice. Education. The difference is the starting line. They started with power. I start with healing.
Why a framework, and why now? We’ve talked about belonging and about how we treat each other. Belonging needs something to stand on. I believe you can’t ask a hurting people to build wealth, run institutions, or trust each other until the hurt is addressed. Get the order right, and the rest has somewhere to stand.
I like to say we need group therapy, not group think. I saw my first therapist at eighteen, so when I say healing comes first, I’m not guessing. A baseline is the entry point of a concept. It isn’t the finish line. It’s the door.
We have many brilliant people who understand how enslavement, segregation, and bias have shaped the Black community. Dr. Joy DeGruy is one of them. Her 2005 book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, argues that enslavement left an injury that passed down through generations, and that ongoing discrimination keeps adding to it. I believe we are still severely hurt as a people. We need Dr. DeGruy and others like her to help us link our plight to our healing.
Reparations has layers. I believe the clock starts with targeted medical and mental health care for every one of us. Mental health parity comes first. Mental health outreach is the baseline of care. The gap is already there. SAMHSA’s national survey data, as reported by BlackHealth.org, show that 40.5 percent of Black adults with a mental illness got treatment, against 50.9 percent of U.S. adults overall.
Safety and justice for all follows close behind. We need a thorough audit and recalibration of our peace officers, so the job matches the title. A peace officer should keep the peace. In the South, police work grew out of the slave patrols. What we don’t need is the current biased system built on slave-catchers of old. Prison should focus on recalibration. People need to learn how to return to the community in a positive way, with counseling alongside.
Then comes money. People need to learn how to manage it effectively, and how to set and manage goals. Then comes opportunity. Open the doors for our people to learn about different trades and careers, and help make it happen with hard work and support.
At the top sits community. It’s the overarching concept. Community means something different to different people. The objective is for everyone to tap into one. Find the one that speaks to you. We advertise it, and we make access easy. These already exist in pockets. Small collectives operate all over the country in each of these areas. Finance clubs. Real estate collectives. Communities like Oyotunji African Village in South Carolina, where people join around a shared viewpoint.
Now here’s what the history teaches about a framework like mine. A single person can start a movement. Malcolm did. Carmichael did. Hampton was building the next one. But look at who survives. Malcolm died at 39. Hampton died at 21. Their ideas lived because other people picked them up and organized around them. A person starts it. A coalition outlasts the person. Cut off an arm and it grows back kind of thinking. Nobody builds all five parts alone, and nobody should try.
You can see it today. In July 2013, after George Zimmerman’s acquittal, Alicia Garza wrote “A Love Letter to Black People.” Patrisse Cullors turned a line of it into a hashtag. Opal Tometi built the platform. Three women, one network. In 2016, LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright founded Black Voters Matter, which is credited with lifting Black turnout in Georgia in 2020 and 2021. Stacey Abrams and the Georgia groups beside her added about 800,000 new voters to the rolls. None of them did it alone, and none of them could have.
One voice plus a coalition equals power that lasts. The 60s gave us clarity in ten points. This is my five. Come in where you can.
If you wrote the ten points today, how would they differ from my five? Tell me in the comments.
