Black Power

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in a united manner for said purpose, they can prepare themselves for the effects attempting to influence the American political system will have on their leaders. In maintaining a resolute and predefined disposition, a Black political party can optimally keep itself from being transformed and molded into a shape that properly fits into the scheme of the American political system.

This begs one of the ultimate questions presented by Carmichael, and one of the most difficult to provide a proper answer for, the question of Reform or Revolution. Just as it would be required that Blacks be organized, signified, and have a firmly developed base of power as a political force before they could effectively attempt to foster allies towards their cause, the question of the ultimate goal of a powerful organized liberation movement would need to at least be considered.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, aka SNCC, was founded on Shaw University campus in Raleigh in 1960. It was created after a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University didn’t want to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been declined service. This created a series of sit-ins in college towns across the South. The SNCC expanded these sit-ins across the nation, supported their leaders, and made their activities public. SNCC attempted to support the philosophical and religious ideal of non-violence as the motive for their purpose. The political climate in the 1960’s was violently changing, so the SNCC strived to define its purpose as it fought with white oppression, which SNCC came to be a part of today’s black leaders, such as the former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry, NAACP chairman Julian Bond, and Congressman John Lewis. In conjunction with hundreds of other students, they left a long lasting impact on the history of America.

Bayard Rustin was a gay civil rights leader that worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the early days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rustin’s vast background in the theory strategies, and tactics of nonviolent direction action proved valuable to Dr. King.Mr. The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom was organized by Rustin in 1957, The National Youth Marches for Integrated Schools in the late 1950’s, and became the Deputy Director and chief organizer of the 1963 march on Washington for freedom and jobs which, was the largest demonstration in the nation’s history during that time. During the Civil Rights movement, the March on Washington served as the platform for Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech and helped insure pending civil rights legislation.

Works Cited

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/10/287320160/stokely-carmichael-a-philosopher-behind-the-black-power-movement

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sncc

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_student_nonviolent_coordinating_committee_sncc/

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_stokely_carmichael_1941_1998/

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/100-amazing-facts/who-designed-the-march-on-washington/

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