The nation had clearly refused to concede to the demands of the civil rights movement. Moreover, the refusal itself, at least from the vantage point of those disaffected with Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence, revealed that moral appeals did little to transform the circumstances of black people’s lives, since white Americans did not seem to view the issue of race in moral terms. In fact, white people seemed to give less than a damn about the sinfulness of racism. Power was at the heart of the matter, the Panthers maintained, and power should be pursued, morality be damned. Who controlled
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