Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X are two of the most famous Black American Civil Right leaders who influenced the African-American's struggle for emancipation during their lifetimes and left even greater legacies after their premature deaths. The goals of both leaders were largely similar, i.e., emancipation of the black community but they had widely contrasting strategies for achieving them. This essay is a comparison of the messages of the two black leaders and their personalities.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of peace, and a passionate believer in Gandhian non-violence. He believed that under their skins the black and white people were the same and struggled most of his life to remove the barriers of segregation created by men of bigotry. (Norrell, 2002). Malcolm 'X' on the other hand was the quintessential radical, the Black Nationalist who did not believe that the white man would ever be persuaded to voluntarily allow an equal status to the black man. He did not desire de-segregation and taught...
He was, however, a man who went through many different phases in his life and towards the last years of his life toned down his message of violent confrontation with the white men and denounced the racist teachings of his former associates -- the Black Muslims. (Finkelman, 2002)
During the decade between the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm 'X' delivered widely contrasting messages on the theme of black emancipation. While King was ceaselessly endeavoring as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement to integrate the blacks into the mainstream of American life by removing the barriers of desegregation, Malcolm was doing exactly the opposite. He (Malcolm) believed that the Judeo-Christian religious traditions, on which Western culture is based, were inherently racist. He held the Christian church responsible for…
