Abstract: According to Joseph, "’What We Want’ intellectually disarmed some of Carmichael’s fiercest critics and in the process announced SNCC’s Chairman as a formidable thinker." According to Joseph, Black Power is a "still-powerful diagnosis of America’s tortured racial history" and "an intellectually rigorous and theoretically subtle political treatise whose unexpected breadth and depth surprised critics." Devoting less than a page to this episode, Joseph alludes to it as if readers should be so familiar with the dispute that further elaboration isn’t needed. [...]whether or not readers are familiar with it, the contest between Lewis and Carmichael was so important and remains sufficiently divisive that it warrants comprehensive evaluation. According to Bloom and Martin: Police officers reacted, several flipping loose the little straps that held their pistols in their holsters.