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It is in this context that the expression of Black Power brought anguish to the moderate civil rights organizations. Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called Stokeley Carmichael's kind of Black Power "racism in reverse." He deplores the attitude of the black radical fringe, which has lost all faith in the democratic process, and is convinced that it must be scrapped. "I can't help viewing the unilateral black philosophy as being as open to question as the unilateral white system," he says. But Wilkins takes an entirely different attitude toward the more respectable approaches to black consciousness, pride and influence and points out that this is what the N.A.A.C.P. has been championing for decades. "Pride of race and history and the riddance of self-denunciation are good and needed," he says. "The thing to guard against is black arrogance."
The National Urban League's Whitney Young Jr. similarly distinguishes between defiant nihilism and the firm, orderly assertion of Black Power that, he maintains, has been an Urban League goal for all of its 57 years. He favors the formation of Negro unions and other organizations, partly to "give the Negro a sense of security that he can compete and organize," but mainly for the "mobilization of Negro political and economic resources into a significant bloc to achieve goals." He draws an elemental difference between the two opposing approaches to Black Power: "Where the builders differ from the burners is that we want to win victories within the framework of the system." Martin Luther King Jr., who began by counseling his people to "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you," embraces the new Negro ethic in its most reasonable application: "Black Power is a call to black people to amass the political and economic strength to achieve their legitimate goals. No one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power."
Some of the more militant of the civil rights organizations, while still refusing to go all the way with the violent breed of Black Power advocates, take a stand that is a considerable distance from that of the older organizations' leaders. "Black Power," says Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality, "is the control of black people exerted in order to bring about change and execute their own self-determination. Like in the schools—to hell with bussing kids. Improve the school system where it is."
There are serious dangers of violence among the new approaches to Black Power. Still at work are extremists who could shatter every vestige of positive action. Street riots shook Philadelphia when a recent Black Power demonstration abruptly degenerated into a free-for-all with the police. The toll: 22 injured, 57 arrests. In the Oakland-San Francisco area, the Black Panthers, the Black Students Union and other young, activist, Negro organizations have prompted deep concern among both state and local authorities.