CORE Director Gives Definition Of Black Power

"CORE's position on Black Power is that black people must be able to determine for themselves the direction and pace of their progress," Floyd McKissick, National Director of CORE told a meager, Young Dems audience last night.

Black Power, McKissick continued, has come to mean many things to different people. CORE, however, defines Black Power as having six major characteristics: political power, economic power, an improved Negro self-image, development of militant leaders, enforcement of Federal laws, and creation of a black consumer block.

"Washington can pass as many laws as it wants," McKissick said, "but as long as they're not enforced the situation is just as bad as when there weren't any laws."

McKissick explained that CORE had gone through a major re-evaluation of its work in 1965, and found that all that they had helped to accomplish--a civil rights bill, two voting bills, and an anti-poverty program--would benefit only about ten per cent of the Negro population even under the best conditions.

"This talented tenth," McKissick continued, "is the only segment in the Negro population which has the money and mobility to take advantage of our work." The other 90 per cent of the American Negroes, he said, are incapable of enjoying the gains from CORE's work.

Since most Negroes are stuck in the ghettos, McKissick said, "we have to turn our attention to improving the conditions in which the mass of the Negroes live."

One of the most important problems facing Negroes today is that of forming a self-image in a white society, he said. McKissick told the story "of the beautiful black girl with a figure like a Coka Cola bottle . . . who asks the mirror on the wall, 'mirror mirror on the wall who's the most beautiful of them all,' and the mirror answered 'Snow White and don't you forget it.'"

The same problem exists in the New York School System where predominantly Negro schools have a white principal "Negro school children need someone they can identify with so that they can aspire to being a principal one day," McKissick said.

Every image is white in this society, he continued. "Even when you go into the church and pray to Christ, you look up and sure enough he's white too, and you wonder 'will he hurt me'" McKissick said.