Obviously non violent resistence is ideal, but ther comes a point where you do have to defend yourself or die. We have the luxury of looking back on history and knowing the progress that was made before we even open a history book, but they were living it, with no guarantees about if things would get better or worse. Given how the usa has treated black people, it absolutely makes sense that they would look at the situation and decide that the best thing to do is arm themselves. And, it worked. The reality is that MLK was as popular and effective as he was bc Malcolm X also existed. Basically, change was coming to the usa and it could either be MLK’s way or Malcolm X’s way. People tend to choose the peaceful option in that situation.