Non-violence to Black Power Civil Rights Protest in the 1960s – Changing Ideologies

“Non-violent is another word for defenceless” Malcolm X

Although segregation and discrimination was being challenged in the South, the inner city ghettos continued to suffer from poverty and unemployment. America’s cities saw serious rioting in the late 1960s. Many black groups became frustrated with the lack of progress and used new ways of protesting. Watts Riot, 1965

“We must hear the words of Jesus when he said ‘Love your enemies’. We must protest bravely and yet with dignity.” Martin Luther King “I don’t go along with any kind of non-violence unless everybody’s going to be non-violent.” Malcolm X Non-violent protest was beginning to give way to violent protest.

The Nation of Islam believed that blacks should keep themselves separate from whites and set up their own schools, shops, businesses and churches. They wanted a separate black nation on land to be given to them by the USA. Elijah Muhammed, leader of the Nation of Islam

“We don’t go for desegregation. We go for separation. Separation is when you have your own. You control your own economy, you control your own politics, you control your own society.” Malcolm X

Black Muslims replaced their surnames with ‘X’ or took an Islamic name. Aggressive attitudes towards white people meant that many whites lost sympathy for the civil rights movement. Malcolm X frequently referred to white people as “devils”; “What do you want me to call him, a saint? Anybody who rapes, and plunders, and enslaves, and steals, and drops hell bombs on people... anybody who does these things is nothing but a devil.”

“The white man supports Reverend Martin Luther King, so that he can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless—that’s what you mean by non-violent—be defenseless in the face of one of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken people into captivity.”