"Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none."
The exact type of rhetoric from a Black Panther that doesn't help his cause one iota. This is why MLK gets a national holiday and Carmichael is a footnote.
Stokely Carmichael is 100% correct in this. Black people and communities have suffered violence from US society and the state for a long, long time. Carmichael may be a footnote to you, but he is one of the most influential activists in modern history.
At any rate, MLK didn't exist in a vacuum. It is quite possible that the movement, if it only consisted of people that aligned with MLK, wouldn't have been as successful?
MLK being assassinated doesn't doesn't change the fact that his focus on non-violence was more successful than the contrary position taken by the Black Panthers.
I tend to believe that things happen because they must. It was undeniable that the CRA was going to happen but without strong support from all over the nation due to the tempered approach espoused by MLK, who knows when it would've been realized.
This is incredibly revisionist. There was no strong support for CRA in US at the time. Entire south switched its party affiliation after the vote, and many northern congressmen only voted after incredible arm-twisting by LBJ and executive branch. The senate faced 83 days of filibuster from opposing senators, and few of them stood and talked for 10+ hours to stop its passage. Only by forgetting the entire history of how the act came to be can one claim that their was strong support in entire country.
-- Stokely Carmichael