How to Use Black Power in a Sentence

Black Power

noun
  • The most popular movie in the world is about black power and our schools are still segregated.
    — Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic, 1 Apr. 2018
  • There would be no Black Power balled fist thrown at the TV cameras.
    — Wil Haygood, Washington Post, 11 Apr. 2024
  • One hand is open, while the other is closed into the iconic Black Power fist.
    — Leilah Babirye, Artforum, 1 Jan. 2025
  • By its final lines, thousands of fists are raised in the air in a solidarity salute to black power.
    — Janelle Harris Dixon, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Aug. 2020
  • The history of black power and the movement that bore its name can be traced back to the summer of 1966.
    — Jamil Smith, TIME.com, 8 Feb. 2018
  • Carmichael’s black power position is clear when his followers refuse to let a white Harlem resident join the march.
    — J. Hoberman, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2018
  • Yet the end of the war did not bring peace but only a return to the jittery status quo of plots, uprisings, and white anxieties about black power.
    — Fara Dabhoiwala, The New York Review of Books, 3 Aug. 2020
  • The hoodie featured Greek-lettering on the front and a crest on the back, complete with symbols of black power like a black panther and a fist.
    — Emilia Petrarca, The Cut, 20 Apr. 2018
  • Newton paused after the score – the 50th rushing TD of his career – and raised his left fist in a salute to black power.
    — Joseph Person, charlotteobserver, 1 Oct. 2017
  • On Sunday Bennett responded after a sack with a black power salute instead of his usual sack dance.
    — Bob Condotta, The Seattle Times, 20 Sep. 2017
  • The moment was seen as a gesture of solidarity with the Black Power movement.
    — Jemele Hill, The Atlantic, 20 Feb. 2026
  • Stapp’s portrait and the peacock chair itself have since become an enduring symbol of Black Power.
    — Lucy McKeon, New York Times, 3 June 2024
  • The ideas of socialism and black power are discussed with a sense of urgency that hadn’t been seen since the days of Public Enemy.
    — Mark Elibert, Billboard, 23 Feb. 2018
  • Because of this, guns would ultimately become a key component of the Black Power movement.
    — Grace Byron, New Yorker, 3 Oct. 2025
  • At he 1968 Olympics two American sprinters raised their fists for black power at the height of the civil rights movement.
    — CBS News, 27 Sep. 2017
  • His victory complete, T’Challa closes the film with an assertion of black power—and black permanence—on the world stage.
    — Jason Herbert, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Dec. 2019
  • Then, during the black power movement of the ’60s and ’70s, natural hair became a front-and-center statement.
    — Collier Meyerson, WIRED, 18 June 2019
  • Black organizers have put in work beyond the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.
    — Malaika Jabali, Essence, 2 Sep. 2024
  • This made the store a popular gathering place in the community during the civil rights and Black Power movements.
    — Duante Beddingfield, Detroit Free Press, 10 Oct. 2024
  • Now that scholars have worked to rehabilitate the Black Power movement, Rustin’s critique of it has been muffled.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023
  • More than 30 years later, John Carlos and Tommie Smith threw up the Black Power fists seen all over the world.
    — Ken Makin, Christian Science Monitor, 27 Mar. 2025
  • Jones himself had joked about the casting of a Black actor as the Black Power Ranger, according to footage from the documentary.
    — Cheyanne M. Daniels, The Hill, 11 Apr. 2025
  • The first big push for Black people to embrace their natural texture took place during the 1970s as part of the Black Power movement.
    — Annie Blay-Tettey, Allure, 14 May 2026
  • Standing for the first time free of coffles on his feet, a man holds his broken chain aloft in a gesture that predates the Black Power fist that would become popular a century after this sculpture was hewn from rock.
    — Tyehimba Jess, ARTnews.com, 17 Apr. 2026
  • On the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power political aesthetic had forced its way from the streets and into households, with good reason.
    — Robyn Mowatt, Essence, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Critics interpreted the shirt’s design—a white hand in a posture reminiscent of a Nazi salute raised above a Black Power fist—as symbolizing racial dominance.
    — Melissa Fleur Afshar, MSNBC Newsweek, 17 Nov. 2025
  • These ventures can be heroic, as when Tommie Smith and John Carlos valiantly raised their fists as a Black Power salute in Mexico City in 1968.
    — Steve Buckley, New York Times, 8 Feb. 2026
  • By the mid-1960s, the school, located in the center of Harlem, was among the few schools in the United States to publish a yearbook directly engaged with the civil rights and Black Power discourses of the era.
    — Literary Hub, 25 Nov. 2025
  • Watani Stiner is a memoirist and former Black Power activist whose writing explores revolution, exile, captivity, and reconciliation with family and history.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 8 Apr. 2026
  • Women’s roles in the Black Power Movement, a new novel from Atlanta’s own Tayari Jones, a magic library where book characters come to life, and an essential book on the growing challenges to voters are all on Atlanta’s literary agenda for February.
    — Gina Webb, AJC.com, 1 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Black Power.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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