What Are We Really Fighting For Today? Civil Rights or Black Power?

At the end of his life, Dr. King's philosophy had transcended voting rights in the segregated South. His vision was about a transformed humanity, and his philosophy was that nonviolence was the key to such a transformation. Those who were impatient with the nonviolent movement believed that the whites who held the reigns of power would not be pursuaded to let them go by peaceful demonstrations. For the last 50 years, major cities have secured political representation and yet poverty and injustice is still a plague for many African American communities. Some say integration is the cultprit for the economic disempowerment. Did the Civil Right Movement go astray by luring Black consumers into White owned stores, disintegrating the economic power base of African American communities? Why didn't Civil Rights lead to economic empowerment? Did Dr. King's followers misinterpret the vision for the Movement? Was the Dream greater than the right to integrate? How do we manifest justice, equality and empowerment today? Is the answer to African American empowerment in the hands of the lawmakers, or in the hands of the voters or in the hands of consumers? What should we learn from the lives and deaths of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and the many others who paved the way for empowerment of this present generation?