Also, there's a practical reason the Black Power movement emerged out of people involved in CORE, SNCC and other student activist groups, i.e. the people on the front lines of these integration efforts. The closest the handful of openly armed groups ever came to actual "belligerence" or the "militancy" they were so often ascribed, was stockpiling guns. And even with that, turns out guns guy Richard Aoki, one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party, also just so happened to be an FBI informant at that time.

Who in the heck wants to keep getting coffee poured on them and cigarettes put out on them to make it legal to sit at a lunch counter, while so-called "moderates" tell them to be civil and patient?
This country demands civility behavior from minorities that too many people of the majority don't even engage in, themselves. And yet, we could each be Mother Teresas. We'll still be labeled uncivil or whatever.
The Panthers (The Black Panther Party For Self Defense), for all their militant pretense, supported some very good programs in East Oakland. The Free Breakfast Progam, Pre-School and Child Care for working Mothers.
Stokely Carmichael (aka "
Kwame Ture") finally broke the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (
S.N.C.C.) over their Non-Violent approach to the violence used against Civil Rights Workers, Black and White. His speech making after the break with S.N.C.C. was mainly based on Rhetoric, but he was a strong presense in the American Civil Rights Movement for many years.
Walking around with Rifles and Pistols scared the living crap out White Nationalists who see themselves as the vicitim. Whites like David Duke have tried to mainstream the Klan, but we still see the Klan for what it is. Racists hiding under their hoods and bleating about how the Poor Put Upon White Man is the real victim.
I like how Duke was portrayed in "
Black Klansman". A White Man desparate to prove how the color of skin make him somehow better just because he was White.
You cannot have a "
Civil Discussion" with people who view you as less than human because of the Color of Your Skin or How You Choose To Worship Your Version of Your God.
These people do not to talk, they want to hurt, to torture and to kill.
There is no room for civility with these people.