The Black Power Movement In The 1970's

The late 1960s and early 1970s and the 2010s were very different from each other in
many ways. Those differences from different decades, centuries even, varying from the way that
people talked, the way that people dressed, the way that people thought, and most importantly,
the way that people acted on those thoughts.
In the late 1960s to early 70s, the black power movement began to get a more extensive
crowd than ever before. African American people began to realize that their voice would make a
difference. In this time period the older African Americans looked up to and lived by the words
of Martin Luther King Jr., an advocate for the black power movement, who sought equality for
the people by peaceful, nonviolent
protests. According to Stokely

Carmichael in 1967, Dr. King
was a “great man, full of compassion, full of mercy and very patient man” Stokely also stated
that Dr. King’s policy was “Nonviolence
would achieve the gains for a black people in the
United States.” “His major nonassumption
was that if you were nonviolent,
if you suffer, your
opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart” “He only made one
fallacious assumption, in order for nonviolence
to work, your opponent must have a conscience,
the United States has none.” Now, in 2010 looking back at Martin Luther King Jr.’s ways, it
shows that nonviolence
did in fact work for the black power movement.

But, Dr. King began to
switch up how he thought about the black power movement. He started to believe that militarism
and racism were one and affected each other.
Yet, at the same time that Dr. King was living and advocating the nonviolent
protests of
the black power movement, the younger African Americans looked up to and lived by the words
of Malcolm X, an advocate of the Black Panther Party who sought equality by violence.
Malcolm X saw that nonviolence
was not an option, and this younger generation of African
Americans weren’t as patient as Dr. King and sought equality as soon as possible, no matter what
way they needed to use. These people saw violence as the only way to get the African American
people to be equal with the white people. Malcolm X stated that “As long as a white man does

it,
it’s alright. A black man is supposed to have no feelings, but when a black man strikes back, he
is an extremist. He’s supposed to sit passively and have no feelings, be nonviolent,
and love his
enemy no matter what kind of attack be it verbal or otherwise, he is supposed to take it. But if he
stands up and in any way tries to defend himself, [laughter] he is an extremist.”
In 2010 Erykah Badu states “It is right to defend yourself against anything and anyone.
No we don’t believe in violence, we don’t believe in killing, we don’t believe in harming or
hurting, we weren’t the ones who inflicted pain and harm on people. We weren’t the ones who
kidnapped a whole culture of people and brought them to do services for us. And because we
stand and fight back and want...peace, we want to work with pride, love and live and grow with