Leaders like King and Malcolm don’t arise every day. Both these men came out of the struggle against the system of legally segregated and second-class citizenship prevailing in the Southern states and the fact of segregation in the North. They both led and learned from the struggled of the masses.
Martin and Malcolm’s discrepancies of approaching racism and the discrimination faced by their race were different due to the essential differences in their personal backgrounds, upbringings and the differences in which racism manifested itself in each individual’s situation. Martin's comprehension and study of Christianity, with a combination of his blind faith in human goodness, and the example of Gandhi he had learned in graduate school, led to his contribution in the fight for civil rights and his strategy of non-violent exploit. Martin believed that God was on the side of the oppressed and working to bring about a pending justice which also gave him hope to fight back the disappointments. Martin approached the situation what I myself consider extreme tolerance assured diplomacy to some extent and delivered and upheld his messages through his strong willed, powerful speeches.
Although Malcolm did deliver powerful speeches of his own kind, he on the other hand, in my opinion, due to his cruel upbringing and very strong and harsh feelings towards whites, was a contribution to his violent and ‘hands on’ approach to dealing with the state of affairs. Malcolm strongly felt that there was no way that whites would ever share their power with blacks. In the north, white liberals had been proclaiming equality for years and yet there seemed to be no real form of improvement in black people’s lives. Malcolm refused to concede and beg the white race to share white power and instead called for the black race to proudly develop their own power and uphold it with utmost strength and determination, separate from whites. He felt freedom had to be taken by force. Malcolm as a child had a front row seat to racism and experienced the evils of it first hand where as Martin attended a segregated school and was hardly exposed to much discrimination, and certainly not as intense as that of Malcolm. Malcolm's self-esteem and character was shattered by whites who called him nigger so often, he thought it was his name, and a white teacher who obliterated his dream of becoming a lawyer, by telling him that it was an unreasonable aspiration for a black man. Malcolm grew up extremely poor and without the prosperity and love of both parents as Martin did. His father died in a car accident when he was six, and his mother raised the children through the support of friends and public relief, until she became institutionalized when Malcolm was twelve, Malcolm also lived through an ignored childhood and did not receive as much attention as Martin due to his several brothers and sisters.
Malcolm lived through the lurid nightmare of an America closed to black people, although not legally closed as in the south, and thus open to legal solutions, but closed in practice, systematically, and institutionally as no white man would stand up for them and neither would the system which claimed equality. With no family, education, or middle-class economics to protect him, Malcolm never developed the hope that sustained Martin. In an effort to revolt against the institutional racism of the north, Malcolm despaired, turned to crime, and eventually to jail.
In jail, Malcolm discovered the words of Elijah Muhammad. In the Nation of Islam's strict moral code Malcolm found freedom from alcohol and crime. In Elijah's account of the history of the black race and his words of inspiration, Malcolm found a foundation on which to re-build his self-esteem. Malcolm learned that the white man was the devil, which at the time he felt could have been easily proved by examining his own life, and he learned that Allah would destroy them, this is similar to the comfort that Martin found in Ghandi’s teachings that God would help the oppressed. In Black Muslim theology God needs no help in overcoming injustice, thus Malcolm was not called to develop practical solutions whereas Martin believed that blacks could not depend on God to do all the work, but that they also needed to do their part. However, Malcolm believed the solution would come super-naturally; and much like Martin, he believed that the Islamic God was also on the side of the oppressed. Although Malcolm’s faith taught him that all the black people needed to do to bring about justice, was to get out of the way and let God work.
Martin Luther King Jr. criticised that there was no difference between Malcolm's voluntary separation, and the enforced segregation of the southern states. Martin saw Malcolm's method of encouraging blacks to create black societies of their own in North America as capitulating to the racists who would have been more than happy to see them gone. What Martin Luther King Jr. didn't at first understand was that racism in the north manifested itself in an obvious segregation of ghettos, similar to those of the world war. Distant from the Promised Land, North America could have been viewed as a prison of racism so systematically embedded. Martin's non-violent tactics made a powerful impression against the evident and legally supported racism of the south but could not address the insubordinate racism of northern Americas.
In contrast to the latter, Malcolm X saw Martin Luther King Jr’s tactics of non-violence as a form of surrender to the whites, who themselves did not practice the non-violence he preached. On the other hand what Malcolm didn't see was that Martin's non-violence did not render the blacks any more helpless because they had no weapons o fight back with to begin with. Martin knew that violent expression in the south would be swiftly won by the whites who were already more powerful and extremely skilled in violent tactics. Martin saw that black people lacked the experience power and will to inflict even a dent of fear in the white man’s mind. While in the north, Malcolm saw that the whites could forever hide behind their hypocritical liberal statements while the blacks forever languished in their non-violent ghettos.
Martin's ideas were based on an understanding of human goodness and capability. Malcolm's revelation was formed in a cycle of hypocrisy and powerlessness. Martin's theology led him to look for practical solutions; Malcolm's theology excluded any need for practicality. The two men truly began to see eye to eye and understand each other when Martin’s closed mindedness ended and he began to broaden his view beyond the segregated south, where he was situated, and expanded to the injustice suffered by the North America blacks, and how their involvement in the Vietnam war, which was essentially the white man’s war, was forced upon the blacks and the terror of urban race riots; and another factor that led to a moment of mutual agreement between Malcolm and Martin, was when Malcolm, after splitting from Elijah Muhammad, learned that his hatred for whites and the racial separation which he was supporting were adverse to those of the true teachings of Islam, he found that Elijah was in relationships with as many as six women, whilst Malcolm had faithfully and loyally remained celibate until his marriage to Betty Shabazz in 1958. He was extremely hurt and shocked by the deception which Muhammed proved capable of and whom he had considered a prophet, and felt pure guilt for leading so many a stray.
The very fact that the two men indirectly criticised each other and publicly expressed their views, forced them to engage in a healthy competition which lead them to fine tune and perfect their proposals. Malcolm's criticism towards Martin of non-violence as passive and cowardly caused Martin to illuminate that his non-violent method included and essentially required direct action. Martin's criticism of Malcolm's violence caused Malcolm to clarify that his encouragement of violence was only as a means of self-defence against years of white aggression.
Although I doubt that either party realised the strength they were providing each other, each side was strengthening one another with their critiques and creating remarkable arguments and opportunities for blacks to be able to flex the muscle of freedom which had not been exercised for too long. Martin's system did not become more like Malcolm's, following any comments and criticisms made by Malcolm, rather it helped Martin highlight the distinctiveness and strengthen his party and argument, and vice versa.
In this way Martin and Malcolm are able to teach us a lesson that no one man alone could have changed the world. The lesson is that it is necessary that each and every single human should reach out from their shells and express their own personal perspectives as well as trying to understand the broader human experience. Every one of us has the gift of a unique identity and position in our lives, and thus every one of us is called to contribute our inimitable understanding of the human situation to the others. However, we must be exceptionally careful not to presume that our unique perspective is alone correct. It is only through the honesty of sharing our own views combined with overtly hearing and considering those unique views expressed by other individuals, thus a glimpse of the larger truth would be revealed to us.
The popularity of the blacks oppression rose greatly and caused leaders from various corners of the globe to comment on this, Leon Trotsky, a Russian Revolution Bolshevik once commented: “I do not propose for the party to advocate, I do not propose to inject, but only to proclaim our obligation to support the struggle for self-determination if the Negroes themselves want it.”
Bibliography
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Autobiography of the life of Malcolm X – Malcolm X 1925 - 1965
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Malcolm X - By any means necessary – by Walter Dean Myers
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Malcolm X – by Jack Rummel
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Martin Luther King, Jr. I have a Dream Writing and Speeches that changed the world – Edited by James M. Washington
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Martin Luther King Jr – A man who change things – Carol Greene
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Website on the life of and experiences of Martin Luther King Jr
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Malcolm X and his life and work -
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The official website f Malcolm X -
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The life of Martin Luther King - http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/mlking.htm
Malcolm X during an interview with A.B. Spellman once said, when Spellman asked about his program for achieving ‘your goals of separation.’ Malcolm said:
“A better word to use than separation is independence. This word separation is misused. The 13 colonies separated from England but they called it the Declaration of Independence; they don’t call it the Declaration of Separation, they call it the Declaration of Independence. When you’re independent of someone you can separate from them. If you can’t separate from them it means you’re not independent of them.”
(to be placed in bibliography)
