Black Power

noun

variants or black power

: the mobilization of the political and economic power of Black Americans especially to compel respect for their rights and improve their condition

—often used before another noun

the Black Power movement

Black Power salutes

black power groups/organizations

Examples of Black Power in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Perhaps the most notable absence in the Rustin film—and in much of the writing about him—is the scale and the significance of his dispute with Malcolm X and, later, with the Black Power movement. —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023

And that goes back to the foundation of this country, whether its period of Reconstruction, Jim Crow Era, Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, every period of progress has always been followed by periods of oppression and suppression. —Okla Jones, Essence, 9 Oct. 2023

As the Black Power movement gained strength later in the 1960s, more militant labor groups like The League of Revolutionary Black Workers emerged to pressure White UAW leadership to respond to Black workers’ concerns and improve factory conditions. —Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN, 7 Oct. 2023

Still, Sargent says Hendricks’s works cannot be divorced from the time in which they were created: the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. —Stephanie Sporn, Vogue, 27 Sep. 2023

In My Feed - Nelson And Winnie Mandela Were The Ultimate Black Power Couple Black Celebrity Muslims Black Celebrity Greeks Ice Spice, Doja Cat, and Doechi turned up the heat! —Dominique Fluker, Essence, 15 Sep. 2023

In the 1960s and ’70s, Brantley recalled, Black Power activists sought to create a separate market as a form of economic self-determination, but ran into mainstream roadblocks in accessing bank loans and insurance. —Kathryn Joyce, The New Republic, 12 Sep. 2023

In the end, friends speculated the burden of living up to his own legend — the man who embodied Black Power to many — may have been too much for Newton and probably led him to what seems to have been a fatal final encounter with Oakland’s deadly cocaine cowboys. —Elvia Limón, Los Angeles Times, 22 Aug. 2023

The magazine was founded in the upheaval of the previous decade, which included the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, as well as the thick of the Vietnam War and the Black Power Movement. —Shelby Stewart, Essence, 19 Aug. 2023

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Word History

First Known Use

1954, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

black power

noun

often capitalized B&P

: the use of the political and economic power of American blacks especially to achieve racial fairness