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. It will do this by bringing together the views, one from Carmicheal with is view on autonomy, and King with his view on integration and peace. By doing this we cover most of the important conflicts between the two views during the civil rights movement.  

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” by Thomas jackson reveals how King tried to support blacks with economic rights as well as civil rights non-violently. When King went to congress in 1966, he explained that the movement was demanding more than just civil rights: The African americans wanted the 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 then goes on to further explain that the acts and amendments that the government had put into place to increase the black’s right to vote does not help them financially. King 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. King then held the march on Washington to demand higher wages for blacks and integration into the work force. (Jackson 2008)  

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 movement 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 so they could 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.

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 recent conflicts, such as black lives matter for peace and integration. And the other is black power still influence and strong in its existence. Now the reason that these are still such prominent viewpoints is because the segregation is still quite high in the south, some want to integrate, whilst others vie for autonomy.     
