This paper constructs a history of empowerment and critical pedagogies in U.S. composition studies, building on the idea that critical pedagogies arise out of social constructs and exigencies, and they are not divorced from the realities of students' academic concerns and growths. Primary sources for the paper are table of contents pages in "College Composition and Communication" (CCC), 1958-1997. CCC is one of the major journals for university first-year composition teachers. After defining relevant terms, the paper proposes a populist thesis for the social construction of empowerment and critical pedagogies: "It's all about power." It goes on to describe the Dartmouth Conference, a 1966 meeting of British and U.S. teachers and scholars to discuss the teaching of English in public schools. The paper looks at the issue of open admissions, then focuses on issues relevant to race and class. After discussing the beginning of empowerment strategies and the emergence of critical pedagogies, the article concludes that students deserve the power to appropriate their own education, to choose their own topics about what to write, and to assume the writerly authority that will lead to their own independence. (Contains 18 references.) (SM)