What were the strategies and achievements of the civil rights movement in the 1960s? What divisions emerged among its activists during the decade?We now think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a beacon of hope. But when Dr. King first burst into the national realm of consciousness, many Americans viewed his audacious activism as dangerous to the fabric of American society. The civil rights movement aimed to boldly highlight racial inequality, pushing America into living up to its founding ideals of equality for all. His tool was non-violence, but his goals were revolutionary; the overturning of centuries of accepted and legally enforced racially based oppression.However, not all African Americans believed that King’s approach was the most effective. Some even questioned King’s goals, black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael were not convinced that the goals and tools of the nonviolent integration movement spoke to the needs of people struggling in the urban ghettoes of America’s cities. What was needed, he asserted, was a complete revolution in the minds of African Americans themselves. African Americans needed to develop a sense of pride in themselves and their history and culture. They also needed to become economically self-reliant. The rhetoric of black power activists was often quite strident, and there was even some support for violent action against the white power structure, in the same vein as anti-colonial movements then taking place in Africa and Asia.The two approaches to the advancement of civil rights represented in this Primary Source Exercise are very different from each other. African Americans experienced America differently according to where and how they lived. The documents and oral history video clips in this exercise provide insight into a far more complicated history of the civil rights movement.DOCUMENTSDocument 1 is a video oral history of C.T. Vivian, a veteran of the civil rights movement, reflecting on a time in his life when the philosophy of nonviolent resistance and action was put to the test.Document 2 is an op-ed article by civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael published in the New York Review of Books in 1966, in which he lays out a more militant brand of African Americans’ fight for freedom and equality.Document 3 is the video oral history of veteran activist Alvin Poussaint, as he reflects on the important moment when the black power movement gained steam.INSTRUCTIONS1. Read/View Document 1 on nonviolent resistance; read Document 2 and watch Document 3 on the black power movement.3. Answer the focus question.DOCUMENT 1C.T. Vivian, oral history interview (video), 2011Interview accessed at the Library of Congress website or YouTube.http://www.loc.gov/item/afc2010039_crhp0006/Civil Rights History Project: C. T. VivianPlease watch this video from 1:45:00 to 2:09:00.DOCUMENT 2Stokely Carmichael, “What We Want,” 1966One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young blacks. None of its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to. In a sense, I blame ourselves, together with the mass media, for what has happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha. Each time the people in those cities saw Martin Luther King get slapped, they became angry; when they saw four little black girls bombed to death, they were angrier; and when nothing happened, they were steaming. We had nothing to offer that they could see, except to go out and be beaten again. We helped to build their frustration.DOCUMENT 3Alvin Poussaint, Beginning of the Black Power Movement (interview), 2010Interview accessed at Alvin Poussaint: Beginning of the Black Power Movement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcw3PZxI6Y4)