The 1960's were a volatile time in the United States. African Americans were tired of being treated like second-class citizens. People began to take a stand, and equal rights for all people gained national attention. The Civil Rights Movement began, and two leaders emerged. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, had a common goal; both men wanted to change the way African American citizens were treated, but the similarities ended there. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X differed in how they were brought up, how they wanted to bring about change and how they viewed equality.
King and Malcolm X were raised differently. King was the son of a Baptist preacher who belonged to the NAACP. Malcolm X's father advocated political independence for African Americans and belonged to a group called the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) (Jordan, 1999, p. 3M). King's family was considered middle class and lived in a nice neighborhood in Atlanta, GA. In
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and Malcolm X both wanted change, but the two men took different paths to attain their goal. King organized peaceful demonstrations, and he urged his followers to be non-violent (Woon-Kwong, 2015). The path Malcolm X chose was a violent one. He encouraged the African American people to meet violence with violence and to take what was rightfully theirs. Where King encouraged racial harmony, Malcolm X encouraged his followers to protest against the whites. King approached the Civil Rights Movement with the belief that peace was the road to change. He did this by organizing sit-ins, and his speeches encouraged people to turn away from violence. On the other hand, Malcolm X believed that only a militant approach would bring about change. Malcolm’s speeches were often inflammatory, and he hinted that violence might be the only way to overcome racism. Although the goal was change, the way these men went about initiating that change could not have been any more