ABSTRACT
King and the SCLC's 1965 Selma campaign marked the culmination of its southern-based Birmingham strategy, which it had developed since 1963. While the Chicago campaign was under way, the slogan of 'Black Power' was popularised by new SNCC chair Stokely Carmichael on the James Meredith-inspired march against fear through Mississippi. In 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson took part in the Selma campaign, and when the SCLC began to turn its attention to Chicago he became involved in its activities there. The controversy over black power among marchers meant that the event was beginning to highlight internal movement divisions more than it was dramatising the need for civil rights. King attempted to ease these divisions by exploiting black power's main weakness, which was also in many ways its greatest strength: its lack of any coherent meaning or programme. Over the following years, King would play his own part in closing that chapter of the black freedom struggle.
