Ghettos and black American radicalism Violent activities during the 1950s and 1960s

From the early 1960s onwards, divisions started to appear in the civil rights movement. There were several reasons for this:

• Martin Luther King began to doubt whether non-violent protests were worth the risk of human life.
• Efforts to end discrimination in the southern states had been successful.
• Many northern black people were attracted by a more aggressive approach to achieving equality.

The video below shows a black teenager, James Cross take a walk around Harlem and describe what its like living there in 1964.