This dissertation examines the early appearance and influence of black power on the ideology, leadership, strategy, and local alliances of Cleveland CORE since the 1940s. The study will explain how the local heritage of activism and Cleveland CORE's symbiotic interaction with more assertive nationalist organizations in the 1960s reconfigured the chapter's strategy of non-violence into a call for black power via community organization. As members of Cleveland CORE gained influence within the national CORE office, they helped to increase the internal pressure on national CORE to embrace community organization and black power. When national CORE finally advocated for black power, Cleveland CORE members became instrumental in crafting a national black power program – populist in nature – that succeeded in politically empowering Cleveland's black community, but failed to complete a vision for economic black power. Instead, internal power wrangling, financial instability, and the loss of key CORE leaders enabled the ascendancy of a conservative black nationalist agenda within the organization that eventually precipitated the final decline of CORE.