[1] 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.

Others founded Black-owned stores, food cooperatives, bookstores, publishers, media, clinics, schools, and other organizations oriented to their communities.

The movement never had a central authority or structure, and its influence was diluted by legislation such as the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the expansion of federally funded welfare programs, and police action against its activists.

The first popular use of the term "Black power" as a social and racial slogan was by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Willie Ricks (later known as Mukasa Dada), both organizers and spokespeople for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

On June 16, 1966, in a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi, during the March Against Fear, Carmichael led the marchers in a chant for Black power that was televised nationally.

[5] Kevin Gaines has argued that in the 1950s, an early version of the Black Power movement was restrained due to Cold War tensions.

[14][15][16][17][18] After the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee decided to cut ties with the mainstream civil rights movement.

[21] Numbers grew slightly starting in February 1967, when the party provided an armed escort at the San Francisco airport for Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow and keynote speaker at a conference held in his honor.

In 1968, the Republic of New Afrika was founded, a separatist group seeking a Black country in the southern United States, only to dissolve by the early 1970s.

At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medalists, respectively, in the 200 meters event, each raised a black-gloved hand as the American national anthem was played during their medal ceremony.

In the same year, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, creating nationwide riots, the widest wave of social unrest since the American Civil War.

Founders Pun Plamondon and John Sinclair were arrested, but eventually freed, in connection to the bombing of a Central Intelligence Agency office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that September.

[30] In 1970 the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party, Stokely Carmichael, traveled to various countries to discuss methods to resist "American imperialism".

This was the only active year of the Black Revolutionary Assault Team, a group that bombed the New York South African consular office in protest of apartheid.

[35] On May 21, 1971, five Black Liberation Army members participated in the shootings of two New York City police officers, Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones.

[citation needed] Late in the year Huey Newton visited China for meetings on Maoist theory and anti-imperialism.

On November 3, Officer James R. Greene of the Atlanta Police Department was shot and killed in his patrol van at a gas station by Black Liberation Army members.

On January 27, the Black Liberation Army assassinated police officers Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie in New York City.

[39][citation needed] On July 31, five armed BLA members hijacked Delta Air Lines Flight 841, eventually collecting a ransom of $1 million and diverting the plane, after passengers were released, to Algeria.

From March 1975 to December 1977, the Brigade robbed at least seven banks and detonated about 20 pipe bombs—mainly targeting government buildings, electric power facilities, Safeway stores, and companies accused of racism.

[43] MOVE developed in Philadelphia in 1972 as the "Christian Movement for Life", a communal living group based on Black Liberation principles.

Several months later M19CO arranged for the escape of William Morales, a member of Puerto Rican separatist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña from Bellevue Hospital in New York City, where he was recovering after a bomb he was building exploded in his hands.

The Black Liberation Army was active in the US until at least 1981 when a Brinks truck robbery, conducted with support from former Weather Underground members Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, left a guard and two police officers dead.

[50] The police then bombed the house, killing several adults and children, and causing a large fire that destroyed the better part of a city block.

In the same year on August 22, Huey P. Newton was fatally shot outside by 24-year-old Black Guerilla Family member Tyrone Robinson.

[52] The fifth point of the Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program called for "education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.

[54] The American Black power movement influenced Aboriginal Australian activists from the late 1960s onwards, especially in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

[55] The term became widely known after the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (AAL), led by Bruce McGuinness and Bob Maza, invited Caribbean activist Roosevelt Brown to give a talk on Black power in Melbourne in 1968, causing a media frenzy.

The Australian "Black power movement" had emerged in Redfern in Sydney, Fitzroy, Melbourne, and South Brisbane, following the "Freedom Ride" led by Charles Perkins in 1965.