Civil Rights Movement the "Integrationist" Term Paper

Right after the success of Martin Luther King's fight against racial segregation through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Black Power phase of the civil rights movement rapidly ascended to contest the congenial stance of King's SCLC.

The Black Power phase was best embodied by one of its leaders, Malcolm X, a Muslim convert who used the Islam religion as his philosophy in promoting the Black Power movement's objectives, which promotes the use of violence as replacement to moral idealism in the black Americans' fight against discrimination and prejudice. More than anything else, the Black Power movement promoted the use of violence directly against white Americans -- that is, black Americans need to use violence in order to protect themselves against the oppressive white American society.

Under Malcolm X's leadership, the Black Power civil rights movement developed more radical goals. While under King's leadership, creating a society wherein both black and white Americans are equal is the social ideal of black Americans, the Black Power movement re-focused its demonstrations and protests to a more radical and idealistic goal: create a new social order wherein black Americans will dominate, solely assuming control of this new society's economic and political activities and decisions. Combining both his Muslim beliefs and his being black American, Malcolm X argued for a new social order -- the Nation of Islam -- wherein this new society will have Islam's religious philosophy and traditions as the dominant and prevalent social order. Ultimately, the Black Power movement negated King's call for an integration of black and white Americans within one nation and territory, the United States.