The Civil Rights Movement occurred due to the constant oppression that white people put on blacks in the south during the Jim Crow Law era, but it took leaders like Stokely Carmichael, MLK, and Marcus Garvey to make blacks realize their potential. Stokely Carmichael’s speech ‘Black Power’ helped transcend African American lives from living externally to internally, by speaking of black unity and power. In his speech he is able to zero in on, and show specifically how the hate crimes will not stop until blacks have a stronger say in politics. He then explains that the only way for change to work for African Americans to make organizations and come together. External blacks which were blacks that continued to be persecuted by the system due to how external people rely on others to live while internals can live alone and are self-sustainable.

The logic that explains why black people allowed white people to abuse them results from becoming externals due to being looked at as a piece of property. Stokely Carmichael was one of the few blacks in his time that realized the power of being an internal. Many blacks in his day still were externals because they followed and completed whatever the white man asked of him. Carmichael helped push black people into becoming humans again by believing in “Black Power.” Although external blacks started the violent riots (Macdonald); it was Carmichael who was able to make people realize that the black power they used in the riots meant that blacks were humans that had choices too. He promotes this when he says, “Don’t nobody talk about nonviolence. But as soon as black people start to move, the double-standard come into being.” (325). Carmichael was educated enough to know that Americans at one point were in the same ship as African Americans with the British. It was these educated black leaders that helped external blacks, who did not know any better due mistreatment, to start thinking about how to control their own destiny. On the flip side though the internal black leaders needed the external blacks just as much in the civil rights movement because external blacks are what actually caused changed through violent riots. Violence is the last answer to everything, but an external’s background includes an upbringing of hostility and aggression which correlates to how the riots were violent. (Macdonald). Carmichael saw how violence actually made the black power movement have power and from that point used that to his advantage to make black people realize how they were taken advantage of. This information adds more elements to the civil rights movement regarding how every person played a meaningful role in fighting for black rights. Pushing blacks to become more internal allows for more knowledge to spread because more people will now have opinions which in turn will form groups and even organizations. 

Typically, the average American will probably tell you that the Civil Rights Movement lasted from about the 1950s to the end of the 1960s. The movement goes so much further back because in the 1920s Marcus Garvey creates the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which is the largest non-religious organizations in African-American history. This proves that this sense of social unrest did not just occur, and that it built from when blacks got to the Americas in the 1800s because blacks like Garvey were so tired of the oppression in the south that he organized associations like the UNIA to help connect blacks, and even organized ships to take African Americans back to Africa. Blacks in America, specifically in the southern states, were still not even recognized as full citizens for nearly a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. In the 1950s and 1960s communities were still heavily segregated and hated on, so many black leaders attacked by holding demonstrations. Rosa Parks refuses to give her seat up to a white man which sets off the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Martin Luther King then led this demonstration until the city of Montgomery, Alabama finally complied. This showed other blacks that change was possible, and more importantly there was hope. Garvey’s organization efforts in the 1920s lead to Martin Luther King being able to lead peace rallies which in turn allows for Stokely Carmichael along with Malcom X take ahold of the movement towards the end in creating organizations such as the black panthers to exert retaliation to finally attain rights. 

What separates Carmichael from many other black civil rights leaders was that he was able to recognize how blacks could in fact unite and just live separately from white people. “Negroes are no longer willing to rely on whites for their political emancipation, and find it necessary to achieve their freedom, in both economic and political terms, on their own.” (Albacht). This quote shows the frustration that has built in the black community was now unrepairable, which sets the stage for Carmichael’s speech at University of California in Berkeley. As soon as Carmichael begins to speak to the crowd he acknowledges how some Nazis were able to kill Jews, and get off charges, due to how they were only following orders. Well, he then draws a direct comparison to how three black men in Neshoba County, Mississippi were killed due to Sheriff Rainey and other officers. They could not be punished for their actions because the people elected Mr. Rainey to commit those actions, so as Carmichael puts it, “for them to condemn him will be for them to condemn themselves.” This quote is incredibly powerful because it shows the flaws in the system are so deep that black people have to unite in order to defeat the corruption hurting lives for no reason. 

Having an organization, club, or even group is crucial to making strides because stopping one voice is a lot easier than thousands. To this day the amount of lives impacted by the “Black Power” speech is probably in the millions due to the unity, and plan he put forward in the speech. The Lowndes County Freedom Organization is the perfect example of how black communities needed to follow a similar model. No longer did it matter what the white opinion was in this party. Black people having an establishment to meet, and express ideals only allows for them to enhance the overall quality of the black life. The white establishments had no care in the world for the black community so by making political parties the black community can help black people directly. The symbol, a black panther, as said by Garvey, “symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people” (324). Black people at this point are still externals, so these groups and symbols only encourage internal behavior which in turn pushes for change. Martin Luther King Jr. had his own movements and groups, but they preached nonviolence. A reporter from the 1960s, Philip G. Altbach, wrote an article in 1966 of the growing increase in black power and has this to say, “There is little indication that rioting has had any organized leadership and it has defied the attempts of civil rights and religious leaders to supply leadership.” Carmichael goes against the black activists for his time by directly threatening anyone who wants to hurt his people. Violence whether we like it or not is all over the world, and will continue to be because that is the easiest way for people to get their point across. The Civil Rights Movement in the beginning consisted of mostly nonviolent demonstrations and protests, but Carmichael calls for something more. On September 15, 1963 four innocent kids were killed in the Birmingham Church bombing, and the perpetrators were white Ku Klux Klan members. Blacks are stuck in a hole because as Carmichael puts it, “The first time a black man jumps, that white man gonna shoot him.” 

One of the most interesting points I had never thought of during the Civil Rights Movement has to do with how black people in general went from being mostly externals to internals. This shows how atrocious slavery was for black people in America because physiologically it took so much time for blacks to realize how their lives mattered too. It is also fascinating that the externals actually made the movement shift to a more violent side. “Black Power” by Stokely Carmichael is similar to the historical side of the movement in how it all began and shifted towards an almost rebirth for blacks in America. There is still racism in America today, but is different than the racism that occurred during Stokely Carmichael’s time. We have the leaders who stepped up during the Civil Rights Movement that have allowed us to move on to more progressive laws. 
