Compare And Contrast Martin Luther King Jr And Malcolm X

American citizens during the 1960’s were either completely for desegregation, or completely for segregation. There was no middle ground between the two. The Civil Rights Movement was reinstituted after the Brown vs. Board of Education supreme court case declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. This gave a new, and vigorous offense, to the African American community in their fight for independence. With the conclusion of the Brown vs. Board of Education case, a new, modern era of equal rights initiated and two leaders emerged as the front runners. They were: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm Little(x). Their objectives for attaining equality were actually pretty similar.

Capitol(Document 1). As discussed in the introduction paragraph, King’s philosophy of equality for all is demonstrated in his many famous speeches including the “I Have a Dream Speech”given in Washington D.C., and his “Our God is Marching On” speech given at the Alabama State Capitol(Documents 2,4). He desired for every black man and every white man to unite. King only desired for every American to be judged by their character and not by the color of their skin. King’s philosophies, however, greatly differed from Malcolm X’s

King preached non violence no matter what the circumstances are. Malcolm X claimed violence was an appropriate action to free the black community(Document 9). On January 18, 1965, Malcolm X was interviewed in “The Young Socialist” where he stated his idea that all white men are violent and that is their only language. Therefore, in order for black people to gain their equality, they had to speak in the white man language of violence as well. Countering that, King gave a speech at a staff retreat approximately two months prior to Malcolm X’s interview, in which he spoke on the importance on the negativity of violence(Document 8). He believed that the white man would eventually grow tired of abusing the black man and give up. He did however say that the way to get the attention of the whites was to boycott, march, and altogether stop buying from all white companies(Document 6). This caused major losses in the business which forced companies not to discriminate against African Americans. The reason that Dr. King’s methods were more fitting for the 1960’s was because it was centered on nonviolence and peace. Nobody was ready for more bloodshed, especially since World War Two and the Korean Conflict had just ended. Also during this time in history, the Vietnamese Conflict was occurring and people were already ready to get out of that struggle because of the massive amount of casualties. Therefore, peace was