King privately read Black Power as a cry provoked by unmet promises

Evidence

King was initially wary of the idea, commenting in public that “the slogan was an unwise choice.” To his staff, he described Black Power as “a cry of pain. It is in fact a reaction to the failure of White Power to deliver promises and to do it in a hurry.” But he could not avoid the predicament Black Power created for his movement. Meanwhile, for white churches, Black Power raised a different concern: that perhaps the nonviolence of the civil rights movement would give way to something more aggressive. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1049

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing study of how movement leaders privately interpret outgrowth movements they publicly resist — parallels internal clergy disputes elsewhere in this project.