Black Water Rising

It was after 9:00 p.m. by the time Stokely took the podium,

after Bumpy and Marcus Dupri gave two fiery introductions.

Some of the rebels had pushed their way to the front row. The air

in the hall was muggy, thick with the breathy heat of anticipation,

everyone waiting and wondering . . . just what was this brother

gon’ say? Stokely came onstage dressed clean as a whistle, in a

pressed suit and thin black tie, not a wrinkle on him, and he was

wearing shades, black and wide, like Ray Charles. Dude looked

like the bass player for Booker T. and the MG’s, like a blues phi­

losopher. He leaned over the podium, into the mike, pushing his

shades up on the bridge of his nose as if they were prescription

glasses, as if their darkness helped him see things clearly. Jay can still remember his first words.

Stokely looked directly at the white rebels and said, “One of

the most pointed illustrations of the need for ‘black power’ in a

society that has degenerated into a form of totalitarianism is to

be found in the very debate itself.” Then to everyone else, “Wel­

come, brothers and sisters.”

The crowd went hog wild, black students whooping and

cheering.

The white students in the audience, rebels and liberals alike,

were struck dumb, silenced by the sheer force of words they

didn’t understand, their own language turned against them.

Backstage, Jay felt his whole world was busting wide open. Here

was this brother onstage, achingly hip and capable of intellectu­

ally skating over all of their heads. No one had heard a speech

like this, a framing of the fight for justice in such fundamentally

political and theoretical terms. The term “black power” was rela­

tively new; it had started at a rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, the year before, one night after Stokely was arrested for the twentyseventh time. “The only way we’re gonna stop these white men from whuppin’ us is to take over,” he’d said. “We been saying ‘freedom’ for six years and we ain’t got nothing. What we gon’

start saying now is . . . black power.”

The term caught on and contributed to Stokely’s militant

reputation, but as he began to lay it down that night in Cullen

Auditiorium, to lay out his case, it sounded less radical to Jay and

more like good old common sense. It was, frankly, gospel. The

black students waved their hands in the air, clapping and calling

out to Brother Carmichael as if they were in church. “The concept of integration is based on the assumption that

there is not value in the Negro community . . .”

Mm, hmm. That’s right.

“So they siphon off acceptable Negroes into the middle

class...”

Preach on it, brother.

“And each year a few more Negroes, armed with their pass­

ports—their university degrees—escape into middle-class Amer­

ica . . .”

Come on now. Tell it.

“And one day the Harlems and the Wattses and the Fifth

Ward s will stand empty, a tribute to the success of integration.” Right on, man.

“You know, Marx said that the working class is the first class