In nearly every grade of school, we learn about the inhumane and oppressive acts committed against the Black community. Slavery, segregation, and injustice. One can only wonder what it must have been like to live in those times. Now, in the wake of mistrust, violence and a country that has become almost as divided as it was during the Civil war, we are realizing that this is one of those times. Just as the Black Power movement arose during the civil rights era, the #blacklivesmatter has been established as an act of defiance and general outrage at the racial injustice flooding our country. After analyzing Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power and gathering information from sources such as Jelani Cobb’s The Matter of Black Lives and Carl Chancellor’s #blacklivesmatter deeply connects to Black Power Movement it is clear that the #blacklivesmatter movement has been unable to amass the same amount of societal change as the Black power movement due to its lack of stable and effective leadership.

The Black power movement of the civil rights era was able to make an impact on society because of the fact that they had stable leaders, and these leaders formed extremely organized groups. Stokely Carmichael is an example of one of these leaders, being the Chairman of the SNCC. Other obvious leaders in the movement of the Civil Rights era were Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. This allowed the non-violent organizations to distinct themselves from the irrational acts of those who expressed their beliefs in harmful ways, such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. MLK Jr. and Carmichael took advantage of this separation, deeming themselves unaccountable for those actions. Carmichael preaches both the importance of leadership and the importance of it coming from a young age. “Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today. God knows we need to be leaders today, because the men who run this country are sick.” (Carmichael 318). Carmichael elaborates on Douglass’ idea questioning why it is always the job of the black man to ignite change. “We are not going to wait for white people to sanction Black Power. We’re tired of waiting; every time black people try to move in this country, they’re forced to defend their position beforehand. It’s time that white people do that. They ought to start defending themselves as to why they have oppressed and exploited us.” (Carmichael 316) This may attest as to why the #blacklivesmatter movement has been unable to gain any traction. 

The #blackpower movement is extremely similar to the Black Power movement, in terms of goals and how they went about achieving those goals, however they have not been able to amass the same success. In his article #Blacklivesmatter Deeply Connects to the Black Power Movement Carl C. Chancellor compares the two movements, analyzing the differences and similarities between them. He even talks about Stokely Carmichael in the beginning of his article, stating “In June 1966, Stokely Carmichael, … , channeled the deepening anger over unabated racial violence against blacks and called forth a new, more muscular brand of activism.” comparing it to the circumstances that established the #blacklivesmatter movement. Chancellor states that it is prominent that “the activist spirit and in-your-face energy of Black Power is alive in the #blacklivesmatter movement.” Chancellor explains how closely the tactics of protestors in the #blacklivesmatter movement mirror that of the Black Panthers in the Black Power movement. In the article Chancellor quotes Sherie Randolph, who states “What they are doing to confront police violence is textbook Black Power,” and that their dramatic and fearful tactics directly relate to that of how the Black Panthers carried out their plans in the sixties. Chancellor makes a point of noting that something is different between the two movements, as if something crucial is missing. He quotes Peniel Joseph who states “Every generation does it differently, shaped by the time they are in, young black activists today are updating the tradition on their own terms.” Chancellor theorizes this as the reasoning behind a lack of centralized leadership. He quoted Joseph again, stating that “is being waged in the ‘long shadow’ of the civil rights movement in the quest to do nothing less than to redefine American Democracy” (Chancellor). This goes to explain why the #blacklivesmatter movement is not as successful as the Black Power movement.

The only way for the #blacklivesmatters movement to gain any social and political traction is if they are able to mirror the actions of movement in the sixties and adapt to this generation. The movement has been unable to establish any organization or form of leadership. The one person attributed to creating the movement, Alicia Garza, did not even mean to do so. After the events of the Treyvon Martin shooting and the Zimmerman trial, Garza took to Facebook saying that she was surprised at how little black lives mattered and ended by saying “black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” Which was then condensed into the hashtag that dominated various types of social media. After going in to detail on the life of Garza, Cobb states that “the movement did not reach the rest of the country until the events of the Michael Brown shooting and the Ferguson riots came into fruition. Cobb then depicts the main distinction between the #blacklivesmatter movement and the civil rights movement in the sixties is a lack of organization and establish chapters across the country, with the focus of carrying out the beliefs of the movement. He attributes this to be the reason that this modern movement has not been as successful as the Black Power movement. He explains that this lack of leadership is due to the fact that this generation believes that the civil rights black power movement relied too heavily on a handful of main leaders, and wanted this movement to be about the people. Cobb then compares the two movements, explaining how during both movements there was “no neat distinctions between the activities of formal organizations and those incited by an atmosphere of social unrest.” Cobb explains that the reason this is so detrimental to the #blacklivesmatter movement is that there is so organization to disassociate from the rioters, leaving everyone to be clumped together in the eyes of the public. He states that these riots and this generalization produces a negative relation between the public and the movement, keeping them from being successful, and that if some form of leadership does not arise, then the movement will never be successful. 

Due to the recent events that have transpired, such as all of the cop-on-African American violence and the outcome of the election, it is more prevalent than ever that the African American has need to come together under one movement. Similar to the establishment of the Black Power movement during the civil rights era, the appalling amount of racial unrest has brought about the creation of the #blacklivesmatter movement. All of the sources, Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power, Jelani Cobb’s The Matter of Black Lives and Carl Chancellor’s #blacklivesmatter deeply connects to Black Power Movement show that establishing an organization under some form of leadership has been a problem for this generation. It is clear that the #blacklivesmatter movement has been unable to amass the same amount of societal change as the Black power movement due to its lack of stable and effective leadership.
