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Similarities Between Martin Luther King Jr And Malcolm X

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Tyler Solomon Professor Teague HIST1152 April 7, 2024 Civil Rights Paper During the twentieth century, the United States was a battleground for African Americans as they fought for civil rights while defining their different visions of freedom and liberation. These debates were not only verbal confrontations but were also shown through texts and speeches that offered competing visions of freedom. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and his "Where Do We Go From Here" speech outlined a philosophy of nonviolent resistance and a call for economic and social equality. Compared to Malcolm X's "Ballot or the Bullet" and the ideas shown in Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton's "Black Power", which represented self-determination, …show more content…

Hamer also points out the hypocrisy in the United States as she states, "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives are threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?" Testimony Before the Credentials Committee. In this question, Hamer points out the hypocrisy of a nation that prides itself on freedom, yet denies basic human rights and safety to its African American citizens. In his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet," Malcolm X presented a vision of freedom that emphasized self-determination, racial pride, and economic empowerment for African Americans. His approach was also different from the nonviolent strategies favored by other civil rights leaders, advocating instead for a form of radical self-reliance that could, if necessary, include armed self-defense. Malcolm X stressed the importance of understanding one's rights and using the ballot as a tool to enforce these rights, but he also didn't rule out the bullet if justice and equality continued to be

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From the first line of the speech Malcolm X mentions the assertion that Afro-Americans have the right to self-defense, which is a vile point of him bring up to notice inequality in the United States. Throughout the speech he constantly references that a black man is either “unable or unwilling” to defend themselves, due to the unfairness of how the government is viewing the Afro-American race. He alludes to the constitution by expressing “The constitution of the United States of America clearly affirms the right of every American citizen to bear arms.” He pretty much illustrates to the black men to use your freedom to assure your civil rights, makes it important that they have to do something now and not wait because it won’t change with the

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The Ballot Or The Bullet Essay

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Introduction: Malcom X urges the Negro community to fight to gain the equal rights they deserve by taking action against their white oppressors. He emphasizes that blacks will gain their rights either thorough voting, with the ballot, or else through the inevitable violence with the bullet. Thesis [part a] Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., also fighting for the civil rights of black Americans in the 1960s, but in a more peaceful manner, Malcom X takes a different approach.

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