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The perception of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X is one where the two men are diametrically opposed figures in the battle against white supremacy (political insider vs. political renegade). The
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The perception of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X is one where the two men are diametrically opposed figures in the battle against white supremacy (political insider vs. political renegade). The truth is more nuanced. King and Malcolm X shared "convergent visions" for the betterment of Black America. However, their strategies to attain their shared goal were shaped by their disparate upbringings.
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From the very start, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had contrasting upbringings. King hailed from a prominent middle-class family deeply rooted in the community, representing the atypical experience of southern Black individuals. Conversely, Malcolm X endured a lifetime of trauma, commencing with his father's murder and the terror inflicted upon his mother and siblings by the Ku Klux Klan.
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These two men became each other's "alter ego." Malcolm X injected political radicalism into the national scene, which made Dr. King and his movement more acceptable to mainstream Americans.
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In 1955, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a prominent voice in the Civil Rights movement when he assumed leadership of the Montgomery Improvement Association as a newly appointed pastor in Montgomery, Alabama. The association was formed to coordinate the Montgomery bus boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger.
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As the primary representative of the group during the boycott, King successfully employed protest strategies that involved mobilizing the African-American community through their churches and drawing inspiration from the nonviolent protest methods pioneered by Indian civil rights activist Mahatma Gandhi.
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As Civil Rights protests spread across the South and the nation, King continued to blend peaceful methods of protest with his theological training, striving for equal rights for African Americans. On August 28, 1963, King participated in the March on Washington, a rally where 250,000 people of all races expressed their support for the civil rights bill pending in Congress.
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At the end of the day, standing at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now-legendary "I Have a Dream" speech. Rooted in biblical and constitutional ideals, his words conveyed the hope that his dream of equality for all would one day become a reality.
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Malcolm X's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement began after he transformed his life following a period of incarceration and aligned himself with the Nation of Islam. While in prison, his siblings wrote to him, sharing the beliefs of this new religious movement, which advocated for complete racial separation as the solution to the challenges faced by black Americans.
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The Nation of Islam preached self-reliance, non-destructive behavior, strict discipline, and advocated for the eventual repatriation of blacks to Africa to achieve true liberation from white supremacy. In 1950, having fully embraced the teachings, Malcolm replaced his birth surname "Little" with "X," symbolizing the African family name that had been denied to him.
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Malcolm X then became a convert to the Nation of Islam and significantly raised the religious movement’s profile, preaching his message first on street corners and then moving to larger venues as the movement grew in popularity.
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Although both men emerged as influential voices in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X differed significantly in their philosophies and approaches to addressing racial inequality. King advocated for nonviolent direct action and complete integration as the means to achieve full civil rights, contrasting with his fellow activist.
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Malcolm X championed complete racial separation, rejecting any form of integration, and opposing King's philosophy of nonviolence as a form of protest. Malcolm X viewed King's nonviolent approach as defenseless against white racism.
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Additionally, the two men diverged in matters of religion, which strongly influenced their respective philosophies. King, a Christian Baptist pastor, led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and delivered his message primarily within churches.
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Meanwhile, Malcolm X was a minister and prominent national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam. Nevertheless, their approaches to achieving racial justice and equality in the United States are widely perceived as divergent.
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One of the main criticisms against Malcolm X was his perceived advocacy for racial separatism. However, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam did not espouse segregation but rather separatism. In debates with figures like Bayard Rustin, Jim Farmer, James Baldwin, Louis Lomax, and others, Malcolm X argued that racial separatism was necessary because white people did not want Black people to be equal citizens with dignity.
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Malcolm X believed that if white people truly desired black Americans to be citizens, there would have been no need for protests, experiences of police violence, or brutality. Children wouldn't have had to face integration challenges at Little Rock High School, and young people wouldn't have had to endure arrests and brutality at lunch counters.
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His idea of separatism involved Black people fostering self-love and confidence, organizing and building parallel institutions. Due to the pervasive disease of racism in America, racial integration into American democracy was impossible.
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Malcolm X's "by any means necessary" approach to protest aimed to empower Black people to defend themselves against police brutality. He argued that Black people had the right to self-defense. Furthermore, he pointed to anti-colonial revolutions across Africa and the Third World in the 1950s and '60s to support the notion that utilizing self-defense was essential for true revolution against racial terror.
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On the other hand, King's stance on non-violent protest versus self-defense was nuanced. Although he championed nonviolence, King had people around him, particularly during demonstrations, who carried arms to protect him and other peaceful civil rights activists from racial terror. These individuals were not armed in the same manner as the Black Panthers would later be, but they aimed to ensure the safety of demonstrators.
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While King had armed guards during the Montgomery bus boycott after his home was firebombed, he usually did not have his own people armed. Nevertheless, there were civil rights activists in the Deep South who, although not directly associated with his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, protected him and other demonstrators against racial terror.
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In response to Malcolm X's critique of nonviolent civil disobedience, King maintained that nonviolence was both a moral and political strategy. He believed Black people should not succumb to the idea of becoming oppressors themselves. Given that Black people were a minority in the United States, engaging in an armed conflict would result in overwhelming force being used against them.
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For his part, Malcolm X publicly denounced Martin Luther King many times, calling the preacher a modern-day Uncle Tom stating that “B y teaching them to love their enemy, or pray for those who use them spitefully, today Martin Luther King is just a 20th century or modern Uncle Tom, or a religious Uncle Tom, who is doing the same thing today, to keep Negroes defenseless in the face of an attack.”
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In a speech in 1963, King responded to Malcolm X's labeling him an Uncle Tom by asserting that nonviolence was a weapon of strength. He viewed nonviolence as a powerful and courageous approach, capable of transforming America against its will.
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Peniel Joseph, the historian, suggests that Malcolm X served as the prosecuting attorney for Black America, accusing white America of crimes against Black humanity that stretched back to racial slavery. In contrast, King acted as the defense attorney for Black America, but he defended both sides of the color line.
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King defended Black people to white people, conveying that Black people desired inclusion in the body politic and citizenship, not Black supremacy or revenge. Likewise, he defended white people to Black people, emphasizing the presence of many good white individuals who fought alongside the movement and contributed to the pursuit of Black citizenship.
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In time, Malcolm X would become less confrontational with King and his philosophies, due in part to his growing estrangement with the Nation of Islam. Tensions grew when Malcolm X and the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammed, differed on the Nation’s response to a shooting of a Nation member by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1962; Malcolm X demanded action while Muhammed advocated caution and patience.
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The disagreement came to a head the following year in 1963 when it was revealed that Muhammed had been carrying on extra-marital affairs – a serious violation of the Nation of Islam’s strict teachings. Dismayed by Muhammed’s hypocrisy and realizing the Nation’s limitations due to its stringent doctrine, Malcolm X broke with the movement in 1964.
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After Malcolm X broke ties with the separatist Muslim movement, he began to speak more reverently of the viewpoints of Martin Luther King Jr. He publicly acknowledged, "Dr. King wants the same thing I want - freedom!"
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This new perspective prompted Malcolm X to arrange a meeting with King, but the meeting never happened. It was scheduled for Tuesday, February 24, 1965 but two days earlier Malcolm X was assassinated by Nation of Islam members. In a letter to Malcolm X’s wife following his assassination, King acknowledged their differing philosophies and approaches.
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The roles of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X intertwined in a captivating dance. However, after Malcolm X's assassination, a significant irony and transformation occurred: King assumed the role of Black America's prosecuting attorney.
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The visions of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King converged following Malcolm X's assassination. King experienced a "mountaintop moment" and realized that he needed to return to the valley. The Selma to Montgomery march became a crucial event, solidifying King's conviction.
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Despite the violent events of Bloody Sunday, where Alabama state troopers attacked nonviolent demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, King remained resolute. President LBJ eventually acknowledged the protesters as American heroes, and the Selma to Montgomery demonstration attracted thousands, including allies like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
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In his final nationally televised speech, delivered on March 25, 1965, King addressed American democracy, racial justice, and the challenges ahead. By August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act had passed, but just days later, the Watts uprising erupted in Los Angeles. Following the Watts uprising, King and Malcolm X's perspectives began to converge.
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While Malcolm X had criticized the March on Washington, King wrote an essay in 1965 expressing his intent to employ nonviolent civil disobedience as a peaceful means to paralyze cities and pursue justice beyond civil and voting rights acts.
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Resources
https://youtu.be/h4PqLKWuwyU
https://americanexperience.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Voices-of-a-Generation-Malcolm-X-and-Martin-Luther-King-Jr.pdf
https://www.livescience.com/martin-luther-king-jr-and-malcolm-x-similarities.html
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901632573/black-power-scholar-illustrates-how-mlk-and-malcolm-x-influenced-each-other
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1175833143/mlk-martin-luther-king-jr-malcolm-x-quote-biography
https://www.biography.com/activists/martin-luther-king-jr-malcolm-x-meeting
https://lbj.utexas.edu/black-power-scholar-illustrates-how-mlk-and-malcolm-x-influenced-each-other
https://www.openculture.com/2020/06/imagining-the-martin-luther-king-and-malcolm-x-debate-that-never-happened.html
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/learning-from-malcolm-x.htm
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/691298594/the-power-of-martin-luther-king-jr-s-anger
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Books
Goldman, Peter Louis. The Death and Life of Malcolm X. 2nd ed. University of Illinois Press, 1979.
Joseph, Peniel. The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Basic Books, 2020.
Malcolm X with Haley, Alex. Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1965.
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@Deglassco
Again Professor, thank you for the education and the time you spend doing this work.