In the 1950s and 60s, we saw a rise in the African American communities to level racism and segregation in America. This movement was called the Black Civil Rights movement and Mr. Carmichael was an advocate of it. Also during this timeframe, America was actively engaged in the Vietnam War. After reading two separate articles; The Black Civil Rights Movement by George Burson and Vietnam War and US: Haunting Legacy by MSS; it gave me a better understanding of the tone of voice during Mr. Carmichael 1966 speech. During this essay I will describe the atmosphere of the 1960s and the reasoning for Mr. Carmichael aggressiveness and hostility.

During Mr. Carmichael speech at the UC Berkeley, it’s obvious that he was very frustrated over the inequality between blacks and whites. He labels this act as “white supremacy.” This has been an issue that has been occurring in this country for many decades and Mr. Carmichael has reached a point where he can’t take it anymore. George Burson’s article really gives you an idea of how long white supremacy has been occurring in this country. From the day the Europeans discovered this country, white supremacy was in effect starting with the killing and the capturing of the Indians for no justifiable reason. Now fast forward to the 1960s and white supremacy still remains, though not as ruthless but still dangerous nonetheless. Mr. Burson’s article tells us that the three biggest achievements the Black Civil Rights Movement wanted to gain were, equality between black and whites, integration between black and whites, and the right to vote for blacks throughout the whole country. Mr. Carmichael address these same issues throughout his speech. Now these are not easy to accomplish goals in an era where white is right is the mentality of the people in power. People involved in the Civil Rights Movement, whether white or black, experienced a lot of violent attacks for their participation. In the Black Civil Rights Movement article Mr. Burson stated “Citizens of the United States have been shot, set upon by vicious dogs, beaten and otherwise terrorized because they sought to vote.” Along with the physical attacks you have the economic attacks on blacks participating in the civil rights movement. Being that all businesses were owned by whites they had complete control over the job market. As a result, any blacks that supported or were active in the movement ultimately got fired from their job. Now think of how unethical that is and how situations like those may have angered Mr. Carmichael. Here you have a group of people not wanting superiority but equality and because of that reason they’re getting abused and fired from their jobs. With that in mind, you can’t help but think that Mr. Carmichael and many other leaders in the Civil Rights Movement felt provoked and that’s why you hear the aggression during his speech. Now let’s take a deeper look into how the blacks losing their jobs set them farther back from achieving their goals. Legally during this time all blacks had the right to vote, but the frustration came from the fact that there were specific laws in place to discriminate the blacks from voting. Poll tax and literacy test were barriers that African Americans could not leap during this time. Poll taxes required anyone wanting to vote to pay a fee, which was unaffordable predominately to colored Americans and literacy test were test taken to prove you had a certain education level which blacks did not have because of the low quality education institutions in their communities. How would you have a shot at paying a poll tax if you just got fired from your job? How would you have a shot at passing a literacy test when you’re in an all black school and the education you are receiving is of far less quality than the all white school in which the literacy test derived from? Even though the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed to alleviate these issues you can tell Mr. Carmichael felt disrespected that this had to happened for blacks to vote. During his speech, he stated “I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill for white people to tell them, "When a black man comes to vote, don’t bother him."” I think it would have been extremely difficult for anyone experiencing these countless acts of discrimination and abuse to not have any distain in their heart.

Another major event occurring during this time period is the Vietnam War. As you can tell during Stokely Carmichael speech, he opposes Americas involvement in the war. He especially despises blacks being recruited to participate in this war. After reading the Vietnam War and US: Haunting Legacy, I could understand why Mr. Carmichael was so against the war. According to the article, the Vietnam war was the first ever televised conflict to the US and the entire world. The war is being brought to the homes of every citizen in America that owns a television. Along with that, the article stated that the media is only focusing on displaying negative events that is occurring with the war. Now what are the negative events? The biggest and most impactful one is the killing of unarmed civilians, more importantly women and children. Now take everything into consideration, this is the first time a war is being televised and all you are seeing is the killing of women and children in this foreign country. It’s no wonder so many people were against this war, the media had made America seemed like a monster. So now let’s take a look at things from Mr. Carmichael perspective. In the United States, we have the mistreatment of blacks through physical and economic abuse, and miles away in Vietnam you have Americans killing civilians and raping women who are also people of color. Now on top of that you have blacks being drafted to participate in this war which appear to be another form of racism by America. America purpose in the Vietnam war was to stop the spread of communism from North Vietnam to South Vietnam and promote democracy. But it appears to Mr. Carmichael that America is trying to force democracy on Vietnam and ultimately killing anybody in the way of it. This is confirmed when he stated in his speech, “We have become the policeman of the world.... if the Vietnamese don’t want democracy, well dammit, "We’ll just wipe them the hell out…."” The war shined another negative light on America and that was the reason for Mr. Carmichael opposition throughout his speech.

The 1960s was a dark time for America. We had the discrimination of colored Americans and the ideology that white Americans were superior which activated the Black Civil Rights Movement. Alongside that, we had the Vietnam war which took the lives of many innocent civilians and was focused on by mainstream media. When you take both these things into consideration no wonder Mr. Carmichael speech at the UC Berkley in 1966 was aggressive and slightly hostile. How much can one man take before he reaches his boiling point. Was Stokely Carmichael at his boiling point, no one in present day can say for sure but one thing I am confident in saying is that he wasn’t too far from it.
