In the seventeenth chapter of A People 's History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, he discussed the anger and emotion in African Americans. He implored how it can erupt in big ways. Even though, the government created reforms, they were not fundamental and the laws passed were not enforced. This developed two different ideologies in society about how to deal with the problem of discrimination and racism. In society, African Americans had been oppressed for a long time, leading to the ultimate question "Does it explode?"
During the 1950s and 1960s, the black revolts in the North and South occurred. It came as a surprise, even though it shouldn 't have because regardless of everything being taken away from them one thing
…show more content…
In 1963, many blacks participated in the March in Washington D.C. to hear Martin King Jr. 's famous speech. President John F. Kennedy praised it for its "quiet dignity." After two weeks, a bomb exploded in which four young girls were murdered in Birmingham church at Sunday school. Since, there was a lack of enforcement of Civil Rights laws and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. violence ensued. The nonviolence approach became less popular due to increase of unemployment and the growing concentration of African Americans in urban centers. In Los Angeles, in August 1965, the Watts Riots occurred. Howard Zinn commented, "It seemed clear by now that the nonviolence of the southern movement, perhaps tactically necessary in the southern atmosphere, and effective because it could be used to appeal to national opinion against the segregationist South, was not enough to deal with the entrenched problems of poverty in the black ghetto." This was why there was so much distrust towards progress given or correlated by whites. Even though, Martin Luther King Jr. was immensely respected, the preachings of revolutionary radicals like Malcolm X, and Huey P. Newton of the Black Panthers became more accepted as the solution to the discrimination in