How Did The Black Power Radicalize The Civil Rights Movement?

In the post-World War II United States, there was an uproar in demands for racial equality and justice by black Americans. After fighting and defeating fascism abroad while still facing harsh discrimination at home, black Americans fiercely channeled their energies into civil rights. As nonviolent protests occupied much of the public eye and many civil rights organizations, a more radical Black Power ideology emerged among younger activists. Black Power emphasized racial pride, self-reliance, and self-determination to uproot racism (Gadsden, 2/27). Within this context of radicalizing movements, activists challenged local forms of oppression, which in turn played a vital role in advancing the civil rights movement on a national scale. Localized
Women of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) coming from urban Atlanta modified their dress in order to appeal to a rural southern black community. Abandoning their efforts to dress better than white women and follow strict hair and beauty regimens to maintain respectability and protest the social hierarchy (Ford 632-633), these women adopted denim and wore their natural hair to match that of the black sharecroppers they were trying to mobilize. In doing so, SNCC was rejecting the politics of respectability endorsed by the older middle-class civil rights leadership (Ford 638). This change of uniform for civil rights work reflects SNCC’s radical vision that aims to unify all black people, rather than only appealing to the urban population. Within the context of localized rural communities, this seemingly minor intragroup class protest strengthened SNCC’s ability to mobilize support for their cause. Further, bringing this denim uniform back to urban areas with more visibility, SNCC pushed themselves into the national spotlight to effect