Stereotypes: The Civil Rights Movement

“There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time” (Malcolm X). The civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties was an era of enlightened equality and while many shared the common goal of equality, not everyone shared the same vehicle to achieve it. In the March Trilogy that outlines John Lewis’s rise to prominence, there were many instances of internal disputation between leaders within the movement during that time. Consequently, creating sources of conflict between various civil rights organizations and within them. Freedom activists, Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael shared the same goal as other civil rights

For instance, many felt that self-defense or the active pursuit of violence should be used as a viable option to combat inequality between blacks and whites. John Lewis narrates that Malcolm X was not invited to the March on Washington and describes his feeling towards him as thus, “I shared his belief that our struggle was not simply in the courts...but violence, no matter how justified, was not something I could accept.. But I could understand his appeal” (Lewis and Aydin 2:149). Lewis states here that he understands the emotions and general appeal that Malcolm X has, and that it is an appeal that he on a basic level shares. However, he cannot promote or participate the violent rhetoric in which he actively pursues. Stokely Carmichael while initially joining and later chaired the presidential position of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and held their non-violent principles, began to drift away from those ideals and instead adhering to and advocating similar methods Malcolm X shared. Giving a speech at Greenwood, Mississippi during the walk against fear protest, he gave this famous speech "We been saying 'freedom' for six years, What we are going to start saying now is 'Black Power.'" (Stokely Carmichael). At that moment, Stokely Carmichael was upset at the beating he and other protesters endured and deemed that

Arguably, they felt that the old methods of protest were not effective enough to produce lasting results, effectively holding back that curtain. In John Lewis's graphic novel The March, he recalls the protest in Nashville over fair employment practices. John Lewis narrates a moment at the protest in which he had to chastise Stokely Carmichael for breaking the rules establish within Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on how to handle yourself during protests. “ Stokely later said he never saw it as his responsibility to be the moral and spiritual reclamation of some racist thug” (Lewis and Aydin 2:112). Even though Carmichael felt that nonviolence was an excellent strategy or tactic to employ, he did not view it as a basic principle that others within Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Southern Christian Leadership Conference did. Although, Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X shared the same beliefs when it came to methods and ideologies of black power and black independence. Carmichael once described this at a protest "When you talk of black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created,'' (Stokely Carmichael). Regrettably, Carmichael is explaining that all black people must come together and create segregated cells away from whites to carve