The term black power was not new. The writer Richard Wright published Black Power (1954) and Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. occasionally used it before the 1960 sit-ins. During a 1966 summer march “against fear” from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi, however, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) revitalized its meaning. Chairman Stokely Carmichael began chanting Black Power to exhort black consciousness and leadership in the liberation movement. He and other activists were frustrated with the progress of the southern freedom struggle. They argued that its nonviolent ideology mostly appeased the power structure and white liberalism compromised civil rights organizations. Campaigns of desegregation and voter registration also glossed over structural race and class poverty. Black cultural and political self-determination cried out for development, too.

Black Power had multiple meanings. The first Black Panther Party, founded in Alabama as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCOFO), worked to empower blacks mainly through the ballot, education, and jobs. The Black Panther Party for Self Defense of Oakland, California was known (and vilified in mainstream media) for taking up arms. To a majority of whites, therefore, Black Power meant retaliation with the gun. But armed self-defense was just one in a cluster of empowerment goals, including blacks’ economic control of their communities.

Activists convened a number of meetings: from the National Black Power Conference in Newark, New Jersey (1967) to the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana (1972). Delegates in Gary proposed slavery and Jim Crow reparations, boycotting the military draft, and a black state. At the same time, they advocated affirmative action in education and employment, expanding black-owned businesses, and electing black candidates to office. Although the movement declined in the 1970s, Black Power activists founded the National Black United Front (1980), renewing their “call for Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism.” Its central office in Calumet Park, Illinois works through local chapters. It remains a strong voice on public schools, women's equity, and police–community relations. It is also a leading advocate of African reparations.