Rethinking Martin and Malcolm
An Online Professional Development
Seminar
GOALS
 Deepen your understanding of the Civil Rights
Movement and the black freedom struggle as
represented by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.
 Compare and contrast the objectives and strategies
pursued by King and Malcolm X and rethink their
relationship to each other.
 Introduce primary sources that you can use in your
teaching.
Steven F. Lawson
National Humanities Center Fellow
1987-88
Professor Emeritus of History
Rutgers University
History of the Civil Rights Movement
Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in
America Since 1941, 3rd edition
(2009)
Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the
Black Freedom Struggle
(2003)
Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969
(1999)
In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks and Electoral
Politics, 1965-1982
(1985)
Debating the Civil Rights Movement
(with Charles Payne)
(1998)
Rethinking Martin and Malcolm
Overview
Differences
Integration vs. Nationalism
Nonviolence vs. Any Means Necessary
Christianity vs. Islam
Redemption vs. Revenge
Consensus vs. Polarization, Hope vs. Fear
Middle-Class Respectability vs. Working-Class Poor
Rhetorical Tone
Similarities
Importance of Religion
Recognition of Structural Interconnectedness of Racism, Poverty,
and Imperialism
Belief in Active Resistance
Recognition of Tenacity of White Racism
Goals of Freedom, Pluralism, Black Dignity and Pride
Importance of the Ballot, Economic Opportunity and Development
Inspirational (Charismatic) Leadership
Targets of Government Surveillance and Repression
Sexism
Rethinking Martin and Malcolm
Overview
Importance of Context
King: Pre and Post 1965
Malcolm X: Pre and Post Early 1950s and Pre and Post 1964
Interconnectedness
“Good Cop vs. Bad Cop”
Myths
King the dreamer, the White Man’s Negro
Malcolm X the Proponent of Aggressive Violence
They Were Irreconcilable Opponents
By the End of Their Lives They Had Totally Transformed
Themselves
Martin Luther King, Jr, Stride Toward Freedom, 1958.
”When I went to Montgomery as a pastor, I had not the slightest idea
that I would later become involved in a crisis in which nonviolent
resistance would be applicable. I neither started the protest nor
suggested it. I simply responded to the call of the people for a
spokesman. When the protest began, my mind, consciously or
unconsciously, was driven back to the Sermon on the Mount, with its
sublime teachings on love, and the Gandhian method of nonviolent
resistance. As the days unfolded, I came to see the power of nonviolence
more and more. Living through the actual experience of the protest,
nonviolence became more than a method to which I gave intellectual
assent; it became a commitment to a way of life. Many of the things that
I had not cleared up intellectually concerning nonviolence were now
solved in the sphere of practical action.”
Discussion Question
In explaining King’s core values, how much weight would you give to
religion, philosophy, and practical experience?
Malcolm X, The Autobiography, 1966
“The white people I had known marched before my mind’s eye.
From the start of my life. The state white people always in our house
after the other whites I didn’t know had killed my father . . . the white
people who kept calling my mother ‘crazy’ to her face and before me and
my brothers and sisters, until she finally was taken off by white people to
the Kalamazoo asylum. . . the white judge and others who had split up
the children . . . the Swerlins, the other whites around Mason . . . white
youngsters I was in school with, and the teachers—the one who told me
in the eighth grade to “be a carpenter” because thinking of being a lawyer
was foolish for a Negro . . . .”
Discussion Question
In explaining Malcolm X’s core values, how much weight would you give
to religion, philosophy, and practical experience?
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 1963
“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and
Africa are moving with jet like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and
buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never
felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers
and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen
curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million
Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you
suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old
daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see
tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous
clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality
by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five
year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a
cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your
automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs
reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy"
(however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the
respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro,
living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears
and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will
understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men
are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate
and unavoidable impatience.”
Discussion Question
How would King respond to the charge that nonviolent confrontations provoked violent reactions?
Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots,” 1963
“So I cite these various revolutions, brothers and sisters, to show you -- you don't
have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There's
no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. [The] only kind of revolution that's
nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution based on loving your enemy
is the Negro revolution. The only revolution in which the goal is a desegregated
lunch counter, a desegregated theater, a desegregated park, and a desegregated
public toilet; you can sit down next to white folks on the toilet. That's no revolution.
Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis
of freedom, justice, and equality.”
Discussion Question
Is Malcolm X correct that no revolution can be nonviolent?
How would King respond?
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 1963
“You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that
fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking
about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is
a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of
oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have
adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree
of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have
become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and
hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black
nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being
Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued
existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in
America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white
man is an incorrigible "devil." . . .I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we
need emulate neither the "do nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the
black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am
grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became
an integral part of our struggle”
Discussion Question
How does King use the Nation of Islam to promote his own
goals?
Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots,” 1963
“This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He'll pay
three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag
about "I'm the only Negro out here." "I'm the only one on my job." "I'm the only one in
this school." You're nothing but a house Negro. And if someone comes to you right
now and says, "Let's separate," you say the same thing that the house Negro said
on the plantation. "What you mean, separate? From America? This good white man?
Where you going to get a better job than you get here?" I mean, this is what you say.
"I ain't left nothing in Africa," that's what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa.”
Discussion Question
How does Malcolm X use King to promote his goals?
Martin Luther King Jr., “Give us the Ballot,” 1957
“Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic
rights.
Give us the ballot , and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an
anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the
South and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.
Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the
calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
Give us the ballot, and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the
sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a "Southern Manifesto" because of their
devotion to the manifesto of justice.
Give us the ballot, and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and
love mercy, and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who will, who have
felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine.
Give us the ballot, and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement
the Supreme Court's decision of May seventeenth, 1954 [Brown v. Board of Education].”
Discussion Question
What assumptions does King make about the casting of a ballot?
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” 1964
“It was the black man's vote that put the present administration in Washington, D.C.
Your vote, your dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an
administration in Washington, D.C., that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation
imaginable, saving you until last, then filibustering on top of that. And your and my
leaders have the audacity to run around clapping their hands and talk about how
much progress we're making. And what a good president we have. If he wasn't good
in Texas, he sure can't be good in Washington, D.C. Because Texas is a lynch state.
It is in the same breath as Mississippi, no different; only they lynch you in Texas with
a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with a Mississippi accent. And these
Negro leaders have the audacity to go and have some coffee in the White House
with a Texan, a Southern cracker—that's all he is—and then come out and tell you
and me that he's going to be better for us because, since he's from the South, he
knows how to deal with the Southerners.”
Discussion Question
What assumptions does Malcolm X make about casting ballots?
Compare them with those of King.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Give Us the Ballot,” 1957
“In the midst of these prevailing conditions, we come to Washington today pleading
with the president and members of Congress to provide a strong, moral, and
courageous leadership for a situation that cannot permanently be evaded. We come
humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil rights issue
is not an ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by
reactionary guardians of the status quo; it is rather an eternal moral issue which may
well determine the destiny of our nation in the ideological struggle with communism.
The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too
late.”
Discussion Question
What strategies does King use to make his point?
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” 1964
“And now you're facing a situation where the young Negro's coming up. They don't
want to hear that turn the-other-cheek stuff, no. In Jacksonville, those were
teenagers, they were throwing Molotov cocktails. Negroes have never done that
before. But it shows you there's a new deal coming in. There's new thinking coming
in. There's new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand
grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots, or it'll be
bullets. It'll be liberty, or it will be death. The only difference about this kind of
death—it'll be reciprocal. You know what is meant by reciprocal? . . . I don't usually
deal with those big words because I don't usually deal with big people. I deal with
small people. I find you can get a whole lot of small people and whip hell out of a
whole lot of big people. They haven't got anything to lose, and they've got every
thing to gain. And they'll let you know in a minute: It takes two to tango; when I go,
you go.”
Discussion Question
What strategies does Malcolm X use to make his point?
Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Ethical Demands of Integration,” 1962
“The word segregation represents a system that is prohibitive: it denies the Negro
equal access to schools, parks, restaurants, libraries, and the like. Desegregation is
eliminative and negative, for it simply removes these legal and social prohibitions.
Integration is creative, and is therefore more profound and far reaching than
desegregation. Integration is the positive acceptance of desegregation and the
welcomed participation of Negroes in the total range of human activities. Integration
is genuine intergroup, interpersonal doing. Desegregation, then, rightly is only a
short-range goal. Integration is the ultimate goal of our national community.
Discussion Question
How can King’s view of integration be considered a radical objective?
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” 1964
“Let me explain what I mean. A segregated district or community is a community in which
people live, but outsiders control the politics and the economy of that community. They
never refer to the white section as a segregated community. It's the all-Negro section that's
a segregated community. Why? The white man controls his own school, his own bank, his
own economy, his own politics, his own everything, his own community; but he also
controls yours. When you're under someone else's control, you're segregated. They'll
always give you the lowest or the worst that there is to offer, but it doesn't mean you're
segregated just because you have your own. You've got to control your own. Just like the
white man has control of his, you need to control yours.” You know the best way to get rid
of segregation? The white man is more afraid of separation than he is of integration.
Segregation means that he puts you away from him, but not far enough for you to be out of
his jurisdiction; separation means you're gone. And the white man will integrate faster than
he'll let you separate.
So we will work with you against the segregated school system because it's criminal,
because it is absolutely destructive, in every way imaginable, to the minds of the children
who have to be exposed to that type of crippling education.”
Discussion Question
Compare Malcolm X’s analysis of segregation to that of King’s.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here”? 1967
“The tendency to ignore the Negro's contribution to American life and to strip him of his
personhood is as old as the earliest history books and as contemporary as the morning's
newspaper. To upset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of
his own Olympian manhood. Any movement for the Negro's freedom that overlooks this
necessity is only waiting to be buried. As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never
be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon
against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian emancipation proclamation or
Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free
when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink
of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation. And, with a spirit straining
toward true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation
and say to himself and to the world, I am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity
and honor. I have a rich and noble history. How painful and exploited that history has been.
Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents and I am not ashamed of that. I'm ashamed of
the people who were so sinful to make me a slave. Yes, we must stand up and say, I'm
black and I'm beautiful, and this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling
by the white man's crimes against him.”
Discussion Question
How does King’s thinking reflect that of Malcolm X?
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” 1964
“The economic philosophy of black nationalism is pure and simple. It only means
that we should control the economy of our community. Why should white people
be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running
the banks of our community? Why should the economy of our community be in
the hands of the white man? Why? If a black man can't move his store into a
white community, you tell me why a white man should move his store into a black
community. The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-education program
in the black community in regards to economics. Our people have to be made to
see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a
community where you don't live, the community where you live will get poorer
and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and
richer.”
Discussion Question
How would King respond to this argument?
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” 1967
“It is perfectly clear that a violent revolution on the part of American blacks would find no
sympathy and support from the white population and very little from the majority of Negroes
themselves. This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about
freedom. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program
that will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far,
this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without recognizing this we will end
up with solutions that don't solve, answers that don't answer and explanations that don't
explain.
And so I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence. And I am still convinced that it is
the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country. And
the other thing is that I am concerned about a better world. I'm concerned about justice. I'm
concerned about brotherhood. I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about
these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but
you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish
truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot
put out darkness. Only light can do that.”
Discussion Question
Why does King continue to oppose violence?
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” 1964
“Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and
shotguns. The only thing that I've ever said is that in areas where the government
has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of
Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the
constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a
shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn't mean
you're going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks,
although you'd be within your rights—I mean, you'd be justified; but that would be
illegal and we don't do anything illegal. If the white man doesn't want the black man
buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job.”
Discussion Question
Under what circumstances does Malcolm X condone violence?
What would King say?
Martin Luther King, Playboy
Interview, 1965
“The world is now so small in terms of
geographic proximity and mutual problems
that no nation should stand idly by and
watch another’s plight. I think that in every
possible instance Africans should use the
influence of their governments to make it
clear that the struggle of their brothers in
the U.S. is part of a worldwide struggle. In
short, injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere, for we are tied together
in a garment of mutuality. What happens in
Johannesburg affects Birmingham,
however indirectly. We are descendants of
the Africans. Our heritage is Africa. We
should never seek to break the ties, nor
should the Africans.”
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the
Bullet,” 1964
“When we begin to get in this area, we
need new friends, we need new allies.
We need to expand the civil-rights
struggle to a higher level—to the level of
human rights. Whenever you are in a
civil-rights struggle, whether you know it
or not, you are confining yourself to the
jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from
the outside world can speak out in your
behalf as long as your struggle is a civilrights struggle. Civil rights comes within
the domestic affairs of this country. All of
our African brothers and our Asian
brothers and our Latin-American brothers
cannot open their mouths and interfere in
the domestic affairs of the United States.
And as long as it's civil rights, this comes
under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam.”
Discussion Question
In what ways do Martin Luther King and Malcolm X share common ground? In what ways do they differ?
Final slide.
Thank You.