Existing comment:
1967
Civil Rights at 50
"We were forced to build America, and if forced to, we will tear it down."
-- Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton
The crusade for racial justice grew more militant than ever in 1967.
A year after Black Power activists reshaped the civil rights movement with fiery demands for empowerment and racial pride, many black Americans were electrified by new calls to fight back against oppression. That summer, simmering tensions in cities struggling with inequality, poverty and police violence exploded in the deadliest rioting of the 1960s.
Riots in the streets and calls for black people to take up arms against racial injustice eroded public and press support for the civil rights movement. A federal investigation of the riots concluded the nation was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."
In Oakland, Calif., the Black Panther Party moved to channel anger into radical action, positioning itself as the new vanguard of the struggle for racial justice. |