“Black power”
By Aliana Ramos
During a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2947 of the black community and encouraging all students, regardless of race, to succeed despite adversity.
But it’s the five minutes of his speech when he mentioned “black power” and said “black is beautiful” that has a handful of white parents upset.
So far at http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3234 High School there have been no reported incidents of racial disharmony since the school opened in 2000. The school is one of two formed after the U.S. Department of Justice issued a desegregation order in 1996.
Parents phoned the district late Thursday with complaints that their children had felt uncomfortable during the schoolwide assembly, when students raised their fists in the air and chanted “black is back.”Middleton said it was not his intent to make the white students feel uncomfortable.
“It was not a matter of trying to stir up an insurrection,” he said. “This was a Black History Month speech. The whole thing was tailored around the occasion. That is a part of black history. Highlighting achievements of black power, that doesn’t negate anybody’s culture. It’s not a bad thing to celebrate being black.”
The term black power was popularized by Stokely Carmichael in June 1966 during the civil rights movement. Carmichael was president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which organized several “freedom rides” to desegregate buses and sit-ins to desegregate restaurants.
The black power movement was conceived as an avenue for blacks to celebrate their own identies in a time when they were facing segregation and racism.
Some considered it militant and anti-white at the time.
In his speech, Middleton used the words “black power” in relation to an image that was on the “pick” or comb he used to tame his afro when he was younger. He told students during Thursday’s assembly there was a black fist on it that was a symbol of black power.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/news/local/story/353898.html