Compare And Contrast The Civil Rights Movement And The Black Power Movement

Throughout American history, African Americans have been treated as unequal to whites and were not given the same rights. People suffered through this belief for a long, difficult time. During the twentieth century, African Americans realized living in a segregated society was unjust and finally decided to make a change. Several individuals rose to power to speak out against segregation and give a voice to those unheard. African Americans unified and fought to create a future in which they were equal.

Namely, the most popular organizations that are active in America is the Black Lives Matter movement, born from the cries of the Trayvon Martin case. This organization’s motivation is to create solutions that end systematic discrimination in America (McClain). These organizations are criticized for being radical, trying to solve a problem that critics say do not exist. All Lives Matter is an example of backlash, created for the sheer fact of refuting Black Lives Matter. However, what those who oppose Black Lives Matter fail to recognize is that the movement was created to elevate the status of the black community in society, not bring down everyone else that is not black.

For example, in the 1960s and 1970s there have been lots of unfairness games playing against the blacks called the Black Power Movement. The Black Power Movement happened during the 1960s and the 1970s in the United States of America. The blacks were affected the most because of their race but both the blacks and the whites were involved in this event. This movement proved to the whites that blacks are as equal as them and should get the same freedom. The Black Power Movement of the 1960s-70s, goals centered around protecting African-Americans from the racist white society.

Reform or Revolution: Two Sides of the Civil Rights Coin The most famous mass movement in the history of the United States would certainly be the Civil Rights Movement. During the period of its highest activity, many different groups fought for racial equality. The movement started in relative unity, yet it splintered into different factions, which all different tactics in reaching the goal of equality. Bolstered by disillusionment with the nonviolent and gradualist tactics of mainstream civil rights organizations, groups such as the Black Panthers combined Marxism and Black nationalism to fight aggressively for the civil rights of African-Americans. The splitting of a movement into two separate factions is not something new.

The involvement of younger people in the Civil Rights Movement, like that of the SNCC, initiated an understanding that equal rights for blacks was not impossible. The SNCC created a valuable space for black people to create monumental steps on the path to better rights, “SNCC organizers drew equal inspiration from the self-determining cultural practices of black southerners “ (P.56) With official reprimands towards unfair rights, the SNCC was able to grab the attention of both whites and blacks. The SNCC had Ella Baker, “Two years earlier in the summer of 1963, Bernard Lafayette, a veteran of the Nashvile student movement, and his wife, Colia, a Mississippi organizer who had worked closey with NAACP leader

Emmett Till was more than just an unlucky African-American, he was a symbol. He did more than represent what was wrong with the United States, he represented how life in the United States should have been. He was in the mindset that a black person should have the right to freely speak to a white person without fear for his or her life. Right now that kind of thinking just seems like a right, but it didn't start that way. We got that right by people putting their lives on the line to protest for what they believe in, to try a way of life that has never been attempted before.

In this speech he talked about how racism was affecting people’s lives in a negative way and he wanted to create a better place where everyone felt welcome and equal. (History.com Staff.) This was one of the major things Martin Luther King Jr. did to end segregation. Even though he himself was a black man, he used that as an opportunity to lead this movement and show that anyone can change something, and it does not have to matter what color you are, size, weight, religion or where you are from. Martin is not just remembered because he made a change in the lives of people in the U.S., but because he used non-violence and believed that people could be more powerful with their words than their physical actions (using guns/hurting other people).

The Black Power movement is recognised as a more radical group of civil rights campaigners who believed in separatism amongst black and white Americans. They were known to approach the civil rights issue using more revolutionary tactics than those of other civil rights seekers, for example, Martin Luther King’s. However, their intent was not always violent; their goal was to give black Americans equal health service, education, etc. Although most of their efforts resulted in bringing negative impact on the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement also had positive impact on the social and economic status of African-Americans. Black Power divided the Civil Rights Movement.

In considering this extract, it is obvious that The Ku Klux Klan firmly believed that autocracy was to be exclusive to their race and that other races were lesser and therefore should revere them. Amidst these perspectives it is a lengthy process in order to gain social change and progress to a more equal environment. Although social change has occurred, there are still a percentage of the American population that partakes in these views. It conceives it increasingly more difficult to accomplish unabridged views within their society on the concern of racial

We are oppressed because we are black. “ Stokely said this because he wanted people to realize that blacks were all put into the same category just because they are black. There was no other reason to not like blacks besides the fact that they were black . People's minds were manipulated by society and what other people thought. Many whites looked down on black men and women without getting to know them for who they really were.