Malcolm X Book Report

Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. A Brief History with Documents written by David Howard-Pitney is a great history book that gives us an entry into two important American thinkers and a tumultuous part of American history. This 207-pages book was published by Bedford/St. Martin’s in Boston, New York on February 20, 2004. David Howard-Pitney worked at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University in 1986, and that made him a specialist on American civil religion and African-American leaders ' thought and rhetoric (208). Another publication of Howard-Pitney is The African-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America. Howard-Pitney made this book interesting by representing

Organized into six topical groups, the author did an excellent job in comparing and contrasting King and Malcolm’s views on subjects including integration, the American dream, means of struggle, and opposing racial philosophies that needless any improvement. An interpretive introductory essay, chronology, bibliography, document headnotes, and questions for consideration provide further pedagogical support for students. The author explains how Malcolm X came closer than any social reformer in history to embodying and articulating the totality of the African experience in America while Martin Luther King was not only the most important figure in American religious history in the 20th century, he was arguably its most brilliant

This book brings together some of the best primary sources on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X that relate to what I’ve learned in history class. Through their writings and speeches, I appreciate the roles they played in the freedom crusade of the 1950s and 1960s. It is a good summary of its essential teachings that give me insight into their individual styles and personalities. The book is not one that tries to force ideas or a religion on the reader but instead offers new insight on two of these most important civil rights leaders of the century. It is a valuable effort that helps me both within and beyond the classroom, which focuses on the crucial years in the lives of quintessentially human