Prominent Leaders In The Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement and its Prominent Leaders

When we think about the Civil Rights movement we normally don’t take into account actually how many civil rights members there actually were. The two prominent leaders in our mind we associate the civil rights movement is Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. The film Black Power Mix tape: 1967-1975 looks at the different accounts of very well known Civil Rights leaders who had a voice and changed the movement in a positive direction. The first to be featured in the film is Stokely Carmichael during one of his talks in 1967. Stokely Carmichael is known for being one of the more active leaders of the Student
Martin Luther King on the other hand, imagined what America would look like if those who were correlated with the Civil Rights Movement take the non- violent route, because according to King violence was not the answer nor will anything change for the better through violence. During one of his speeches he spoke about America’s well being. He continued his speech mentioning the issues that America shouldn’t be facing during this time in life. He continued his speech by saying, “ America shouldn’t have any poor people, no one should go to bed hungry, access to health with no charge, as well as free education.” (17: 44) These issues bothered Dr. King and began weighing him down. Dr. King’s final speech was the night before his assassination, which took place on April 3, 1968. He mentioned to the attendees that he wanted to live a long life. He didn’t fear any man. After Dr. King was assassinated, things began to turn to the worse. There was more violence than ever before that included police brutality. Dr. King made sure everything was done peacefully. To King doing any boycotts and or speeches needed to be as non-violent as they could be because he feared that if they were violent at all the outcome of the movement would go downhill. Many individuals of the movement kept going where Dr. King left off. In 1968, “ they called in the combined police force of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco, California Highway Patrol and 3,000 National
Many schools throughout the United States adopted this program in the following years to come. This wasn’t the only program they created. One of the main purposes of the party was to teach those who were apart of it how to deal with police brutality. With this, they fully trained all members of the party how to use weapons in order to protect them. Things seemed to be turning to a positive direction until 1970. It was in 1970 when J. Edgar Hoover the director of the FBI gets involved. He “states that the Free Breakfast Program was the most dangerous internal threat to the United States. “ (35:54) It was also during this year when a female civil rights activist, Angela Davis became the third woman to appear on the FBI’s Most Wanted