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“With the video footage we are now seeing, even the typical voter who’s all for law and order is not going to be able to ignore the fact that in some police departments, in the department themselves, they lack law and order,” said Representative Anthony G. Brown, Democrat of Maryland.

Mr. Brown likened this moment to the violence that law enforcement inflicted on civil rights protesters in the 1960s, which he said was when “decent Americans woke up and said, ‘Hey, that’s wrong, we have to do something.’”

Just as there were divisions in the civil rights movement between older leaders and younger, more radical activists, however, some of the same generational differences exist today.

“I’ve seen this in neighborhood meetings where a young person will come in and say, ‘We have too many police officers here,’ and I’ll see a senior saying, ‘Oh, no, no, that’s not true,’” said Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, Ohio, a Democrat.

This split has also found its way into the ranks of Democratic lawmakers. On Monday, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina — who is now the highest-ranking black member of Congress but, in his youth, was jailed during protests — bitterly complained on a private conference call with other lawmakers about those trying to “hijack” the swelling movement with calls to defund the police.

Later on the call, however, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, 30, warned against actions that would “demoralize or undercut” protest leaders, according to a House Democratic official familiar with the conversation.

Mr. Biden has sought to avoid inflaming either constituency. In his speech last week, he was blunt that the story of America “isn’t a fairy tale.” Yet he invoked the Civil War, the Great Depression and often bloody civil rights protests to argue that “in some of our darkest moments of despair, we’ve made some of our greatest progress.”

Representative Colin Allred of Texas said that recalling past crises and the progress that emerged from them was a way to assure voters that better days are ahead while also recalling pre-Trump presidential leadership — “a call for change and a call for restoration,” as Mr. Allred, a Democrat, put it.