Stokely Carmichael in the context of "Diane Nash"

The Black power movement or Black liberation movement emerged in the mid-1960s from the mainstream civil rights movement in the United States, reacting against its moderate and incremental tendencies and representing the demand for more immediate action to counter White supremacy. Many of its ideas were influenced by Malcolm X's criticism of Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protest methods. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, coupled with the urban riots of 1964 and 1965, ignited the movement. While thinkers such as Malcolm X influenced the early movement, the views of the Black Panther Party, founded in 1966, are widely seen as the cornerstone. Black power was influenced by philosophies such as pan-Africanism, Black nationalism, and socialism, as well as contemporary events such as the Cuban Revolution and the decolonization of Africa.

During the peak of the Black power movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many African Americans adopted "Afro" hairstyles, African clothes, or African names (such as Stokely Carmichael, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who popularized the phrase "Black power" and later changed his name to Kwame Ture) to emphasize their identity. Others founded Black-owned stores, food cooperatives, bookstores, publishers, media, clinics, schools, and other organizations oriented to their communities. American universities began to offer courses in Black studies, and the word Black replaced negro as the preferred usage in the country. Other leaders of the movement included Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, founders of the Black Panther Party.

Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of institutional discrimination based on race or ethnic group and can include policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, education and political representation.

The term institutional racism was first coined in 1967 by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. Carmichael and Hamilton wrote in 1967 that, while individual racism is often identifiable because of its overt nature, institutional racism is less perceptible because of its "less overt, far more subtle" nature. Institutional racism "originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than [individual racism]".

Institutional racism, also systemic racism, is a form of institutional discrimination based upon the person's race or ethnic group, which is realized with policies and administrative practices throughout an organization and a society that give unfair advantage to white people and unfair or harmful treatment of the non-white Other. The practice of institutional racism is manifested as racial discrimination in criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, education and political representation.

The term institutional racism was coined by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, in the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), which explains that whilst overt, individual racism is readily perceptible, institutional racism is less perceptible for being "less overt, far more subtle" in nature. That institutional racism "originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than [individual racism]".