“Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” by James Brown (1968)

James Brown (1933-2006) was and is considered “The Godfather of Soul,” the self-proclaimed “hardest working man in show business.”

His smash hit “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” was released in August 1968, just 4 months after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968). The line “I’m Black and I’m Proud” is sung by a large chorus of children in the call and response tradition of Afro-American spirituals and gospel music. The song was n. 1 on the R&B Chart for 6 weeks and it hit n. 10 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

This song became an anthem for Black Pride and the Black Power Movement of the 1960s: “We won’t quit movin’/until we get what we deserve” and “we'd rather die on our feet/than be living on our knees." It put to music the ideas expressed in the 1966 “Black Power” speech by Stokely Carmichael, Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later a minister of the Black Panther Party, marking the adoption of the ideology of Black Power by the SNCC. Another slogan which became popular at the time was “Black is Beautiful.”