httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9AmuYqjRyg
A half-century after their deaths, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X remain two of the world’s most revered political activists.
a.t the start of the 1960s, the media were constructing a conflict that stirred the civil rights debate: Malcolm X versus Reverend Martin Luther King.
While King advocated non-violent direct action and passive resistance to achieve equal civil rights, Malcolm X was the spokesman for the Nation of Islam, the black Muslim movement which violently rejected white America and its Christian values, and preached the supremacy of blacks over whites.
“Malcolm comes from a black nationalist tradition that does not believe that you can get your freedom, your self-respect, your dignity by simply letting somebody beat up on you, and you do not try to defend yourself. That’s why Malcolm emphasised self-defence. But King emphasised non-violence because if blacks had responded, tried to defend themselves, that would have brought the police department down on those demonstrators and whites would have loved to have the chance to kill black people indiscriminately. So King and Malcolm had that tension,” says Cone.
“The white man pays Reverend Martin Luther King, subsidises Reverend Martin Luther King, so that Reverend Martin Luther King can continue to teach the negroes to be defenceless. That’s what you mean by non-violent: be defenceless. Be defenceless in the face of one of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken a people into captivity. That’s just the American white man,” Malcolm X said.
Malcolm X always wanted to meet King, but King never responded to Malcolm’s repeated requests for debate.
“Those two people Martin and Malcolm, symbolised something that is in all African Americans. Each of us has a little bit of Martin and a little bit of Malcolm in us. Malcolm represents that blackness in us, that sense that we don’t want white people messing with us. Malcolm represents that fire, that fight that refuses to let anybody define who we are. King represents our desire to get along with everybody, including whites. Our desire to want to create a society for all people, defined by non-violence, love and care for all people in the society,” says Cone.
Martin Luther King gave his public reaction a few days later: “I think Malcolm X did serve a role, I think he played a role in pointing out the problem, calling attention to it, but his great problem was an inability to emerge with a solution. He had slogans that were catchy and that people listened to, but I don’t think he ever pointed out the solution to the problem.”