2010/01/01 by Tracy E. K’Meyer · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Race, History, and American Society
paper · doi:10.1057/9780230102309_8
openalex publication_date 2010/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
I n the summer of 1967, residents of the majority African American West End neighborhoods of Louisville, Kentucky, were feeling increasingly frustrated and powerless. The local drive for open housing legislation was stalled. Despite residents’ complaints, the city’s Urban Renewal Authority scheduled the building of more public housing units in an already overcrowded section of the neighborhood. School officials refused to replace the inadequate, fire-trap facilities that served the children of the area. The Community Action Commission (CAC) was in the process of shifting power away from representatives of poor communities. In response to the growing sense of crisis: members of a neighborhood integrationist and antipoverty organization called the West End Community Council (WECC) hosted a workshop to consider what new strategies they might try to address the problems in the community. Approximately fifty people, a mix of black and white, attended the “Citizens’ Power Conference.” At the end of the all-day meeting the group made two decisions. First, they resolved that henceforth WECC “should become a force for Black Power,” making it the first local civil rights organization to publicly declare its support for the rising militant movement. Then, the group voted to hire a white Episcopal priest, the Reverend Charles Tachau, as the new executive director. 2 One year later, at a time when nationalist sentiment among African Americans engendered calls for separate institutions and led to demands for blacks-only civil rights organizations, the new “voice for Black Power” in Louisville found itself at the head of abroad-based interracial coalition formed to defend six of its members accused of conspiracy that united white and black activists from across the political spectrum. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.