Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

4 Pages 936 Words

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X ultimately became towering icons of contemporary African-American culture and had a great influence on black Americans. However, their approach to the civil rights movement was different in many ways. King had a positive attitude believing that through peaceful demonstrations and arguments, blacks will be able to someday achieve full equality with whites. Malcolm X's pessimistic belief was that equality is impossible because whites have no moral conscience. King basically adopted on an integrationalist philosophy, whereby he felt that blacks and whites should be united and live together in peace. Malcolm X, however, promoted nationalist and separatist doctrines. For most of his life, he believed that only through revolution and force could blacks attain their rightful place in society. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X both contributed to the Civil Rights movement in different ways because they had different philosophies and cours!
es of action, however King’s ideas were more beneficial to the movement.
Both X and King spread their message through powerful, hard-hitting speeches. Nevertheless, their intentions were delivered in different styles and purposes. King was basically a peaceful leader who urged non-violence to his followers. He led nonviolent demonstrations in Birmingham and in other places because he believed that “ the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative”. King also spread his nonviolent direct-action program to other states of the US as well. He believed that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere… whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”. Martin Luther King believed it was his duty to stop the injustice, and therefore was “compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond [his] home town”. Unlike Malcolm X’s demonstrations, all of King’s we...