In the speech “black power” by Stokely Carmicheal talks about how black people should rise above white supremacy and fight for their rights. This paper will examine and reveal how Carmicheal sees the civil rights movement differently than other non-violent civil right activists such as Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most widely known civil rights activists for black integration and equality in history. The journal “bread of freedom” reveals how Martin Luther King Jr. tried to support blacks with economic rights as well as civil rights non-violently. When Martin went to congress in 1966, he explained that the movement was demanding more than just civil rights: they wanted rights that all humans have “the right to live in a decent house” and to earn “an adequate income.” (Jackson 14) The African Americans at that time were facing extreme mass poverty, along with large cities posing issues for black equality. He goes on to further explain that the previous acts put in place so the African Americans can have access to civil rights and voting are not helping the black financially. Martin pushed the movement towards economic equality as well as civil equality, as rights to work for the same amount as white Americans become a primary demand in the movement. Martin then held the march on Washington to demand higher wages for blacks and integration into the work force.  

John Lewis is a black civil rights leader that worked with education and helped black kids and white kids eat together at local food counters. John Lewis became a civil rights activist due to his appetite for education. When john Lewis graduated from high school he decided he was going to be a preacher, he decided to go to the school that Martin Luther king Jr graduated from. Due to the bus boycott in Montgomery Martin had become John Lewis’ role model. However because he could not afford tuition or earn a scholarship he decided to go to the American Baptist Theological Seminary.   

The journal entry of “Congressman John Lewis: An American Saint”  reveals how Lewis fought for African American rights and equality in society during the civil rights movement. In 1959, John, along with the Nashville student movemen,t planned to try and desegregate the lunch counters in stores around the town. In three months and multiple arrests, he finally won over one of the department stores and integrated blacks into the white lunch lines.

Stokely Carmicheal, takes a different approach in comparison to Martin Luther King and John Lewis. Their approaches to African American civil rights are non-violent and about integration, while Stokely’s is about autonomy, power, and aggression, to overcome white supremacy. During the beginning, he talks about how a “man can not condemn himself, because if he does he will end up harming himself.” (Carmicheal 314) by using this, he says that a racist America cannot say its racist. He then later goes on to say that black should not go on to integrate but instead rise above white supremacy. Near the end of his speech, he shows how he sees non-violence as useless against whites. He explains to the audience that the reason non-violence is useless is “the whites fail to make non-violence work.” (322). He says blacks have been non-violent for too many years. All throughout this speech, Stokely’s words are aggressive towards everyone in the audience as he calls the blacks to fight, and the whites to flee, because of a black uprising.

This paper, by using summaries and information from other civil rights leaders shows how different Stokely was compared to his peers. While they stood for non-violence and compromise, he stood for aggression an autonomy. This created two sides to the civil rights movement, one side with Martin Luther King Jr and John Lewis is for non-violence and integration. While the other, with Malcolm X and Stokley Carmicheal is about aggression and autonomy. These two sides are still prominent in racial conflicts today.

