Stokely Carmichael

Stokely Carmichael was one of the more controversial Civil Rights Movement leaders, as he believed that the non-violent approach Martin Luther King, Jr. was taking was not attaining results fast enough. He said that it only put them at a disadvantage and gave the white population more opportunities to shoot at them. While originally a figurehead along with MLK, he soon began preaching his own ideals about "black power." His vision of black power was the black community in America not only attaining equality, but seizing control and taking the power into their own hands. He wanted a total reversal of society in which African-Americans ruled, not whites, and saw it as a way of them repenting for their sins, a kind of justice. Later in his life, he became the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panthers, a protest group built to help and protect the black community in America through the use of force. Much of his inspiration came from Malcolm X, another black civil rights leader that believed in violence to attain rights. Carmichael was also one of the original SNCC freedom riders in 1961, and continued with activism until his death at age 57 in 1998.