Every Black Leader Was Not a Civil Rights Activist

I think it’s safe to add this to our world’s watering down of the black history category.

The history books went from eliminating key events in Black history to only talking about MLK and the Civil Rights Movement.

Now, everyone considered a leader in the struggle for Black freedom was a Civil Rights activist.

For example, when Malcolm X’s birthday passed this May, the blogs and tweets mentioned he was a Civil Rights Leader.

No. He. Was. Not.

The Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Power Movement are separate movements with different ideologies and methods of liberation for Black people.

Civil Rights activists like Dr. King followed the nonviolent philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi (who was racist toward Black people, by the way,*), and Malcolm X was a Muslim who identified more with Black independence and an “eye for an eye” philosophy. In other words, if you hit me, I am hitting you back.

*Gandhi said Black people were “troublesome, very dirty, and live like animals” when he was in South Africa in 1903. He also said that white people should be “the predominating race.” 

In fact, Malcolm was a major critic of the Civil Rights Movement:

“You don’t have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. [The] only kind of revolution that’s nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. The only revolution in which the goal is a desegregated lunch counter, a desegregated theater, a desegregated park, and a desegregated public toilet; you can sit down next to white folks on the toilet. That’s no revolution. Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.”

– Malcolm X, December 10, 1963, Speech at a rally in Detroit, Michigan

Referring to all Black leaders as Civil Rights Activists implies that Black people were always willing to be nonviolent in our quest for equality (or that we all sought to be equal with those who oppressed us), and that’s not true.

Our children must know that there were several ways in which we went about acquiring freedom for ourselves beyond the Civil Rights Movement, from Marcus Garvey’s Pan-African Movement to Slave Revolts to the Black Power Movement.

I admire all of these movements and the people who led them, for they all impacted where we are today.

And this is why I do not believe in leaving any of them out.

Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey are just as important to the history of Black freedom as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but they’ll tell you they were crazy and eliminate their story so you think there weren’t any Black people who stood up and fought, just marched.