The Black Power Movement vs the Civil Rights Movement

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Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were two of the most important people

in black history. With their struggle to make America view black

people as equals, their speeches were inspirational and always made

their message clear.

The two men joined the fight for equality for similar reasons. King’s

family were terrorized by all the whites in his area, and X’s father

was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan This inspired and motivated both to

challenge society. Whilst fighting for the same thing - equality for

blacks - the movements they became involved with went about achieving

their goals in completely different ways.

The Civil Rights Movement is most commonly linked with Martin Luther

King and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP). The NAACP was founded in 1909, with King becoming the “face”

of the society in 1955 during the bus boycott.

The NAACP wanted integration between the black and white communities.

Black power is a term usually linked with Malcolm X and the Nation of

Islam (NOI). The NOI was founded by Wallace D Ford in 1930, with

Elijah Mohammed as the “prophet,” later replaced by the more famous

Malcolm X.

The Nation of Islam hated white America as much as white America hated

them. They campaigned for equality but segregation - to remain

separate, but to gain the same facilities as white people had and not

to be treated as inferior.

Their argument was that if Christianity was the religion of white

people, then God must be Satan as white culture sired the Ku Klux

Klan, Jim crow laws, racism, murder, castration and the unrestricted

exploitation of Negro workers. They also stated that white, Anglo –

Saxon protestants (WASPs) discriminated against anyone not a WASP

themselves, when Jesus was not only black, but a Jew as well.

In NOI opinion, all blacks should convert to Islam, with their God

Allah, and their holy book the Qur’an. They taught that black people,

both individually and as a race, were God.

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