Black Power Now

Last weekend I went to a Howard University basketball game. It was big fun - a good game and even better African-American cultural experience with a marching band and cheerleaders quite different from what you’d find at say..Harvard.

Before the game the band played a jazzy version of the Star Spangled Banner, during which everyone stood respectfully. Next, however, the band launched into a stately version of "Lift Every Voice and Sing", aka the Negro National Anthem. While the band played, many people stuck their right fists in the air, including the ballers, the cheerleaders, those band members who didn’t have instruments and about half the audience.

I was surprised. And thrilled. I hadn’t seen a good old-fashioned black power salute in...well, never. I felt like my mother must have attending Black Panther rallies during the 1960's.

But I wonder what black power means to the Howard kids, and to my students at George Washington, indeed to any African-American students today.