Black Power Movement The fight for equality has been fought for many years throughout American history and fought by multiple ethnicities. For African Americans this fight was not only fought to gain equal civil rights but also to allow a change at achieving to live the American dream. The Black Power Movement was vitally important in American history. During the 1960s, African-Americans changed their views in how they should achieve economic power, political power, and their basic civil rights. The movement had grown during a time when blacks were said to be “equal citizens” of the United States of America, but unfortunately, the realities of life proved otherwise. The Black Power Movement grew out with two important leaders W.E.B Du Bois
…show more content…
W.E.B Du Bois had a strategy in which he did not want the black community to fight for segregation rights and should just accept that segregation is a way of life in the mean time. Du Bois wants blacks to recognize that the whites need the black for economic advances. He believed they needed each other in the meantime. As W.E.B Du Bois says, “In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” Dubois (26). As for Carmichael, he was tired of white Americans not accepting them and treating them with violence. He wanted to protest to fight for his basic rights to show how powerful they can be when shown that they were treated unequally. Activist Carmichael states, “For too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken and got shot. They were saying to the country , “Look at you guys are supposed to be nice guys and we are only going to do what we are supposed to do—why do you beat us up, why don’t you give us what we ask, why don’t you straighten yourselves out?” After years of this, we are at almost the same point—because we demonstrated from a position of weakness” Carmichael (58). Carmichael does not want the African American people to be seen as fragile instead should be seen as a community coming together to make a change for black
W.E.B Du Bois had a strategy in which he did not want the black community to fight for segregation rights and should just accept that segregation is a way of life in the mean time. Du Bois wants blacks to recognize that the whites need the black for economic advances. He believed they needed each other in the meantime. As W.E.B Du Bois says, “In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” Dubois (26). As for Carmichael, he was tired of white Americans not accepting them and treating them with violence. He wanted to protest to fight for his basic rights to show how powerful they can be when shown that they were treated unequally. Activist Carmichael states, “For too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken and got shot. They were saying to the country , “Look at you guys are supposed to be nice guys and we are only going to do what we are supposed to do—why do you beat us up, why don’t you give us what we ask, why don’t you straighten yourselves out?” After years of this, we are at almost the same point—because we demonstrated from a position of weakness” Carmichael (58). Carmichael does not want the African American people to be seen as fragile instead should be seen as a community coming together to make a change for black