Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

THE MEETING It was news on March 26, 1964, when the nation’s preeminent civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., and his 1 harshest critic, Malcolm X, met for the first time face to face. Reporters’ surprise was amplified when the two opposing leaders chatted amiably and shook hands. Each had earlier observed some of that day’s US Senate debate on what would become the historic Civil Rights Act, which largely dismantled legal racial segregation and discrimination in the United States. Each was intensely interested in the bill and wished to show support by attending the debate. After observing part of the floor debate and conferring with key senators supporting the bill, Dr. King held a press conference elsewhere in the Capitol building to urge the civil rights bill passage. Unknown to King and his staff, Malcolm entered the room and took a seat in the back. After finishing his statement, King, amid a cloud of reporters, began to exit. Meanwhile, Malcolm ducked out a side door, putting himself directly in King’s path in the corridor, and extended his hand. “Well, Malcolm, good to see you, King smiled, taking the proffered hand. “Good to see you,” Malcolm replied, grinning widely. As reporters begged for pictures, the leaders posed and made pleasant small talk amid rapidly flashing cameras. “Now you’re going to get investigated,” Malcolm kidded just before they separated. Both were unaware that King, like Malcolm, were under heavy surveillance by the FBI. Thus, these two key leaders and symbols of the era’s African American freedom struggle briefly meet and part, never to meet again. The press clamored for pictures that day mainly for the shock effect of capturing a friendly image of two leaders widely thought to embody the opposite ends of their era’s surging African American protest. The media was fascinated by Malcolm’s contrast with King – especially their perceived different attitudes towards whites. Whereas King and his compatriots fought for the goal of racial integration, Malcolm’s Muslims seemingly spurned integration with “white devils” and urged separation (or, at least, that’s how they were viewed by the white community). During the early sixties, King and Malcolm themselves seem to have seen each other as completely opposed leaders. King had deep misgivings about many of Malcolm’s words and views and resented the many slighting remarks that Malcom had made against the integrationist, nonviolent Civil Rights movement and about him personally. Malcolm had called King, among other things, “a fool,” “a chump,” “a clown,” “a traitor,” “a false shepherd,” “a Reverend Dr. Chicken-wing,” and “a twentieth century Uncle Tom.” Martin Luther King rose to fame amid the new mass African American protest and social movements during the 1950s and 1960s. Events, including a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, which King helped lead and which ended segregated seating on the city’s buses, set in motion the Civil Rights movement, a rising tide of social activism and protest among blacks that began in the South and spread across the nation (including, up North). Civil rights demonstrations and violent racist resistance rocked the South and challenged the nation’s conscience. For more than a decade, many thousands of African Americans determinedly marched, demonstrated, broke discriminatory laws, willingly went to jail, and otherwise challenged racist systems and practices and militantly pushed for change The southern movement’s dramatic victories for civil and political equality raised expectations for improvement among African Americans everywhere; but the oppressive realities of life for many African Americans – slums, unemployment substandard education, and substantial segregation – were untouched and worsening (especially in the North). The denied expectations of black “ghetto” dwellers began exploding in outbursts of rage directed at white-owned property in America’s urban core from 1964 to 1968. The African American mass revolt and rising impatience and anger at white racist treatment was the hurricane both King and Malcolm rode and tried to guide. King worked to channel blacks’ explosive discontent into non-violent campaigns for social reform while Malcolm tried to turn black people’s dissatisfaction with whites into support for, first, the Nation of Islam and, later, Malcolm’s more general secular brand of black nationalism. "You don't integrate with a sinking ship." This was the young Malcolm X's curt explanation of why he did not favor integration of blacks with whites in the United States. As the chief spokesman of the Nation of Islam, a Black Muslim organization led by Elijah Muhammad, this early Malcolm X argued that America was too racist in its institutions and people to offer hope to blacks. The solution proposed by the Nation of Islam was a separate nation for blacks to develop themselves apart from what they considered to be a corrupt white nation destined for destruction. To be sure, Malcolm’s views did soften as he grew older, as reflected in the sequence of speeches in this packet. In contrast with Malcolm X's black separatism, Martin Luther King, Jr. offered what he considered "the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest" as a means of building an integrated community of blacks and whites in America. He rejected what he called "the hatred and despair of the black nationalist," believing that the fate of black Americans was "tied up with America's destiny." Despite the enslavement and segregation of blacks throughout American history, King had faith that "the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God" could reform white America through the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement. We will be exposed to several speeches and essays by King that, much like Malcolm X, reflect a worldview that adapted to meet the events of the time, and reflected a growing intellect and maturity. This lesson will contrast the respective aims and means of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. It will also incorporate other voices of the Civil Rights Movement, and will, hopefully, force us to move us past an over simplistic view of the Civil Rights Movement and two of its major voices. In the process, I also hope that you develop a nuanced and more informed view of modern racial relations.

Guiding Questions

• To what extent is our memory of the civil rights movement, especially what we perceive to be the stark differences between the thoughts and ideas proposed by Malcolm X in contrast with Martin Luther King, Jr., laced with mythology? In other words, to what extent do our memories of the movement and its two biggest names differ from the reality? • Why do we need to learn this? How does it benefit us today? Overall Activity: A Journalist's Report: The Civil Rights Movement: Myth Versus Reality

Ultimately you will write reports in which you evaluate our memory of the civil rights movement and the thoughts and beliefs (i.e. the ideology) of perhaps its two most famous activists: Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the process you will do a few things: (1) You will discuss to what extent our memories of King versus Malcolm may differ from the reality, and (2) you will discuss the evolution and the maturity of the civil rights movement through the lens of the changing ideologies of King and Malcolm X, and (3) discuss, at the end of your essay, how and why we need to understand this; in other words, how knowing this stuff can help us today. In the activity for this lesson, you will be playing the part of a columnist -- a thinker -- from a large magazine (think New York Times Magazine, the Nation, the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and Rolling Stone) and you will be set in the present day. As a reporter you have extensive knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement, the history of slavery and Jim Crow, and the origin and persistence of the urban crisis and inner-city problems, primarily in the North (then and today). You are keenly aware of the racial conflict that is, at times, tearing at the seams of society (again, both then and today). You know, during the civil rights movement, that the black community heard two persuasive voices: those of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose approaches, in our memory, are poles apart (or are they?). Your editorial board assigns you the task of writing a feature essay on the way our memory mythologizes the civil rights movement, how it mythologizes Dr. King, how it demonizes Malcolm X, and how this all relates to today.

The final report will be graded as per the rubric.

Formative Influences and Ideas:

People are always speculating – why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that has happened to us is an ingredient. -- Malcolm X

It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where … lovely relationships were ever present… It is quite easy for me to lean more toward optimism than pessimism about human nature mainly because of my childhood experiences. -- Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King:

Directions: We will read the excerpts, and you will answer the questions that follow.

Annotation Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929, into a prominent middle-class family. Both his maternal grandfather, A.D. Williams, and his father, Martin Luther King Sr., pastored the upscale Ebenezer Baptist Church and were prominent in their denomination’s largest organization, the National Baptist Convention, making young King a virtual prince of the black church. King’s upbringing was materially secure and anchored in strong African American institutions of family, church, and community. King benefited from an extensive higher education, first from 1944 to 1948 at Morehouse College, a black institution in Atlanta. From 1948 to 1951, he attended Pennsylvania’s predominately white Crozer Seminary, then Boston University from 1951 to 1953, where he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy. As a student King studies, besides the Bible, theories for social change advanced by such thinkers as socialist Karl Marx and Mohandas Gandhi, the Indian independence leader and proponent of nonviolent civil disobedience as a tool for social-political change. In 1954, at age twenty-six, Martin Luther King became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. This was the year of the Brown v Board of Education decision and the bus boycott in Montgomery, during which King became president of the organization heading the boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association. In this position, in the glare of national and international publicity, King swiftly emerged as the movement’s most compelling and articulate figure. In 1957, King and other African American leaders, mostly ministers, founded the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to mount and coordinate civil rights activities using mass nonviolent actions and civil disobedience across the South. King headed the SCLC Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

the rest of his life. For a crushingly busy decade or so, King traveled and spoke extensively around the country, drumming up support for African Americans equal rights cause and raising large sums of money for the SCLC and other civil rights groups. In 3 mass protest campaigns, King constantly risked prison, injury, and death as he helped lead the swelling American social movement against racial discrimination and inequality. King not only led many specific civil disobedience campaigns, but he also served as the movement’s foremost strategist, theorist, interpreter, and symbol maker. His charismatic leadership and inspirational oratory helped create black unity and resolve to keep demonstrating, often amid danger and adversity. Equally crucially, King became the movement’s chief interpreter to white Americans. Television was still a novelty in the 1950s and early 1960s, and King proved adept at its use for affecting (causing) social opinion and bringing about change. By artfully presenting local civil rights campaigns to distant third parties (i.e. white Americans) through the media, King and others could leverage sympathetic outside opinion to increase pressure against local segregation forces. Besides being black in white-dominated America and having received socially aware religions/philosophies form their parents, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had little in common during their formative years. King came from the black professional classes and experienced material comfort and social stability. By contrast, Malcolm Little as a child experienced much conflict, violence, and instability. In the urban petty-criminal world, he saw the worst of human nature and grew suspicious of people’s self-interested motives. All influences on King built on the foundation laid by his family, church, and community. His favorable formative conditions disposed him toward a positive outlook. Later encounters with philosophies stressing the reality of human evil and his own sobering experiences with others’ cruelty during social protests, especially as his activism moved North in the mid to later Sixties, led him to qualify, but never abandon, his essential optimism. We are going to begin by reading excerpts from a 1950 essay King wrote as a young man at Crozer Theological Seminary. It is a revealing self-statement. In it, King stressed the profound influence that family and religion had on his all his life. He described his home life with parents, siblings, an grandmother as warm and loving; characterized his middle-class neighborhood and community; and related his social and spiritual development in his “second home,” the black church. A precocious youth, King came to question – and ultimately discard – many of the teachings of his childhood religious environment. It is in this essay he recounts shocking his Sunday school class when he was thirteen by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Although King would move on to far wider social and intellectual circles, he would always feel “the affects of the noble moral and ethical ideas that I grew up under. They have been real and precious to me, and … I could never turn away from them.

1 King, “An Autobiography of Religious Development” November 22, 1950: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_501122_00/

My birthplace was Atlanta Georgia, the capital of the state and the so-called "gate-way to the south." I was born in the late twenties on the verge of the great depression, which was to spread its disastrous arms into every corner of this nation for over a decade. I was much too young to remember the beginning of this depression, but I do recall how I questioned my parents about the numerous people standing in bread lines when I was about five years of age. I can see the effects of this early childhood experience on my present anti capitalistic feelings.

I was the second child of a family of three children, having one brother and one sister. Because of {our} relative closeness of ages we all grew up together, and to this day there still exist that intimate relationship which existed between us in childhood. Our parents themselves were very intimate, and they always maintained an intimate relationship with us. In our immediate family there was also a saintly grandmother (my mother's mother) whose husband had died when I was one years old. She was {very} dear to each of us, but especially to me. I sometimes think that I was his favorite grandchild. I can remember very vividly how she spent many evenings telling us interesting stories.

From the very beginning I was an extraordinarily healthy child. It is said that at my birth the doctors pronounced me a one hundred percent perfect child, from a physical point of view. Even today this physical harmony still abides, in that I hardly know how an ill moment feels. I guess the same thing would apply to my mental life. I have always been somewhat precocious, both physically and mentally. My I.Q. stands somewhat above the average. So it seems that from a hereditary point of view nature was very kind to me.

The same applies to my environment. I was born in a very congenial home situation. My parents have always lived together very intimately, and I can hardly remember a time that they ever argued (My father happens to be the kind who just won’t argue) or had any great fall out. I have never experienced the feeling of not having the basic necessities of life. These things were always provided by a father who always put his family first. My father has always been a real father. This is not to say that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth; far from it. My father has never made more than an ordinary salary, but the secret is that he knows the art of saving and budgeting. He never wastes his money at the expense of his family. He has always had sense enough not to live beyond his means. So for this reason he has been able to provide us with the basic necessities of life with little strain. For the past three years he has had the tremendous responsibility of keeping all of us in school, (my brother in college, my sister in graduate school, and me in the Seminary) and although it has been somewhat a burden from a financial angle, he has done it with a smile. Our mother has also been behind the scene setting forth those motherly cares, the lack of which leaves a missing link in life.

The community in which I was born was quite ordinary in terms of social status. No one in our community had attained any great wealth. Most of the Negroes in my home town who had attained wealth lived in a section of town known as "Hunter Hills." The community in which I was born was characterized with a sought of unsophisticated simplicity. No one in our community was in the extremely poor class. This community was not the slum district. It is probably fair to class the people of this community as those of average income. Yet I insist that this was a wholesome community, notwithstanding the fact that none of us were ever considered member of the "upper upper class." Crime was at a minimum in our community, and most of our neighbors were deeply religious. I can well remember that all of my childhood playmates were regular Sunday School goers, not that I chose them on that basis, but because it was very difficult to find playmates in my community who did not attend Sunday School.

I was exposed to the best educational conditions in my childhood. At three I entered nursery school. This great childhood contact had a tremendous effect on the development of my personality. At five I entered kindergarten and there I remained for one year until I entered the first grade.

One may ask at this point, why discuss such factors as the above in a paper dealing with ones religious development? The answer to this question lies in the fact that the above factors were highly significant in determining my religious attitudes. It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present. It is quite easy for me to think of the universe as basically friendly mainly because of my uplifting hereditary and environmental circumstances. It is quite easy for me to lean more toward optimism than pessimism about human nature mainly because of my childhood experiences. It is impossible to get at the roots of ones religious attitudes without taking in account the psychological and historical factors that play upon the individual. So that the above biographical factors are absolutely necessary in understanding my religious development.

…The church has always been a second home for me. As far back as I can remember I was in church every Sunday. I guess this was inevitable since my father was the pastor of my church, but I never regretted going to church until I passed through a state of skepticism in my second year of college. My best friends were in Sunday School, and it was the Sunday School that helped me to build the capacity for getting along with people.

The lessons which I was taught in Sunday School were quite in the fundamentalist line. None of my teachers ever doubted the infallibility of the Scriptures. Most of them were unlettered and had never heard of Biblical criticism. Naturally I accepted the teachings as they were being given to me. I never felt any need to doubt them, at least at that time I didn't. I guess I accepted Biblical studies uncritically until I was about twelve years old. But this uncritical attitude could not last long, for it was contrary to the very nature of my being. I had always been the questioning and precocious type. At the age of 13 I shocked my Sunday School class by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus. From the age of thirteen on doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly. At the age of fifteen I entered college and more and more could I see a gap between what I had learned in Sunday School and what I was learning in college…

One or two incidents happened in my late childhood and early adolescence that had tremendous effect on my religious development. The First [omitted]…

The second incident happened when I was about six years of age. From about the age of three up until this time I had had a white playmate who was about my age. We always felt free to play our childhood games together. He did not live in our community, but he was usually around every day until about 6:00; his father owned a store just across the streets from our home. At the age of six we both entered school—separate schools of course. I remember how our friendship began to break as soon as we entered school, of course this was not my desire but his. The climax came when he told me one day that his father had demanded that he would play with me no more. I never will forget what a great shock this was to me. I immediately asked my parents about the motive behind such a statement. We were at the dinner table when the situation was discussed, and here for the first time I was made aware of the existence of a race problem. I had never been conscious of it before. As my parents discussed some of the tragedies that had resulted from this problem and some of the insults they themselves had confronted on account of it I was greatly shocked, and from that moment on I was determined to hate every white person. As I grew older and older this feeling continued to grow. My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white {man}, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him. At this point the religious element came in. The question arose in my mind, how could I love a race of people {who} hated me and who had been responsible for breaking me up with one of my best childhood friends? This was a great question in my mind for a number of years. I did not conquer this anti White feeling until I entered college and came in contact with white students through working in interracial organizations.

My days in college were very exciting ones. As stated above, my college training, especially the first two years, brought many doubts into my mind. It was at this period that the shackles of fundamentalism were removed from my body. This is why, when I came to Crozer, I could accept the liberal interpretation with relative ease.

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

…At present I still feel the affects of the noble moral and ethical ideals that I grew up under. They have been real and precious to me, and even in moments of theological doubt I could never turn away from them. Even though I have never had an abrupt 5 conversion experience, religion has been real to me and closely knitted to life. In fact the two cannot be separated; religion for me is life.

Question Answer

King recounts seeing a bread line as a child and describes it as leaving a lasting impression. Explain.

King describes his childhood as “extraordinary” in both mental and physical terms. Explain, including the self- described effect of this type of upbringing.

In what way did King question the fundamentalist religious teachings he was being taught, and why do you think King mentions this in the context of this essay?

Describe King’s deep dive into race and racism. How did it affect him as a young adult?

2 King, “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” April 13, 1960: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/pilgrimage_to_nonviolence/

Annotation In this excerpted essay, King traced the development of the major ideas underlying his leadership. His intellectual journey began when he rejected certain strict fundamentalist beliefs and embraced liberal Christianity (i.e. one that rejected the literal interpretation of the Bible, and attempted to coexist with the Enlightenment ideals of rational thinking and individualism). A number of King’s most distinctive traits as a thinker are will illustrated in this essay, including his insistence on serving “the whole man” – not only spiritually but also materially, socially, and politically; his use of varied intellectual sources and tendency to synthesize opposing ideas; his belief that human personality is sacred; and his rejection of the argument that nonviolent resistance to evil was passive and nonresistant.

Ten years ago I was just entering my senior year in theological seminary. Like most theological students I was engaged in the exciting job of studying various theological theories. Having been raised in a rather strict fundamentalist tradition, I was occasionally shocked as my intellectual journey carried me through new and sometimes complex doctrinal lands. ... At this stage of my development I was a thoroughgoing liberal. Liberalism provided me with an intellectual satisfaction that I could never find in fundamentalism. I became so enamored of the insights of liberalism that I almost fell into the trap of accepting uncritically everything that came under its name. I was absolutely convinced of the natural goodness of man and the natural power of human reason.

I

The basic change in my thinking came when I began to question some of the theories that had been associated with so-called liberal theology. Of course there is one phase of liberalism that I hope to cherish always: its devotion to the search for truth, its insistence on an open and analytical mind, its refusal to abandon the best light of reason. Liberalism’s contribution to the philological-historical criticism of biblical literature has been of immeasurable value and should be defended with religious and scientific passion.

It was mainly the liberal doctrine of man that I began to question. The more I observed the tragedies of history and man’s shameful inclination to choose the low road, the more I came to see the depths and strength of sin. My reading of the works of Reinhold Niebuhr made me aware of the complexity of human motives and the reality of sin on every level of man’s existence. Moreover, I came to recognize the complexity of man’s social involvement and the glaring reality of collective evil. I came to feel that liberalism had been all too sentimental concerning human nature and that it leaned toward a false idealism.

I also came to see that liberalism’s superficial optimism concerning human nature caused it to overlook the fact that reason is darkened by sin. …

…So although liberalism left me unsatisfied on the question of the nature of man, I found no refuge in neo-orthodoxy. I am now convinced that the truth about man is found neither in liberalism nor in neo-orthodoxy. Each represents a partial truth. A large segment of Protestant liberalism defined man only in terms of his essential nature, his capacity for good. Neo-orthodoxy tended to define man only in terms of his … capacity for evil. An adequate understanding of man is found neither in the thesis of liberalism nor in the antithesis of neo-orthodoxy, but in a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.

During the past decade I also gained a new appreciation for the philosophy of existentialism. My first contact with this philosophy came through my reading of [Søren] Kierkegaard and [Friedrich] Nietzsche. Later I turned to a study of [Karl] Jaspers, [Martin] Heidegger and [Jean Paul] Sartre. All of these thinkers stimulated my thinking; while finding things to question in each, I nevertheless learned a great deal from study of them. When I finally turned to a serious study of the works of Paul Tillich I became convinced that existentialism, in spite of the fact that it had become all too fashionable, had grasped certain basic truths about man and his condition that could not be permanently overlooked.

Its understanding of … of man is one of existentialism’s most lasting contributions, and its perception of the anxiety and conflict produced in man’s personal and social life as a result of the perilous and ambiguous structure of existence is especially meaningful for our time. The common point in all existentialism… is that man’s existential situation is a state of estrangement from his essential nature. …[All] … existentialists contend that … [h]istory is a series of unreconciled conflicts and man’s existence is filled with anxiety and threatened with meaninglessness. While the ultimate Christian answer is not found in any of these existential assertions, there is much here that the theologian can use to describe the true state of man’s existence.

Although most of my formal study during this decade has been in systematic theology and philosophy, I have become more and more interested in social ethics. Of course my concern for social problems was already substantial before the beginning of this decade. From my early teens in Atlanta I was deeply concerned about the problem of racial injustice. I grew up abhorring segregation, considering it both rationally inexplicable and morally unjustifiable. I could never accept the fact of having to go to the back of a bus or sit in the segregated section of a train. The first time that I was seated behind a curtain in a dining car I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood. I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice is economic injustice. I saw how the systems of segregation ended up in the exploitation of the Negro as well as the poor whites. Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society.

II

Not until I entered theological seminary, however, did I begin a serious intellectual quest for a method to eliminate social evil. I was immediately influenced by the social gospel. In the early ’50s I read Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis, a book which left an indelible imprint on my thinking. Of course there were points at which I differed with Rauschenbusch. I felt that he had fallen victim to the 19th-century “cult of inevitable progress,” which led him to an unwarranted optimism concerning human nature. Moreover, he came perilously close to identifying the kingdom of God with a particular social and economic system—a temptation which the church should never give in to. But in spite of these shortcomings Rauschenbusch gave to American Protestantism a sense of social responsibility that it should never lose. The gospel at its best deals with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well-being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial. 7

After reading Rauschenbusch I turned to a serious study of the social and ethical theories of the great philosophers. During this period I had almost despaired of the power of love in solving social problems. The “turn the other cheek” philosophy and the “love your enemies” philosophy are only valid, I felt, when individuals are in conflict with other individuals; when racial groups and nations are in conflict a more realistic approach is necessary. Then I came upon the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. As I read his works I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. The whole Gandhian concept of satyagraha (satya is truth which equals love, and graha is force; satyagraha thus means truth-force or love-force) was profoundly significant to me. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time that the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. At this time, however, I had a merely intellectual understanding and appreciation of the position, with no firm determination to organize it in a socially effective situation.

When I went to Montgomery, Alabama, as a pastor in 1954, I had not the slightest idea that I would later become involved in a crisis in which nonviolent resistance would be applicable. After I had lived in the community about a year, the bus boycott began. The Negro people of Montgomery, exhausted by the humiliating experiences that they had constantly faced on the buses, expressed in a massive act of noncooperation their determination to be free. They came to see that it was ultimately more honorable to walk the streets in dignity than to ride the buses in humiliation. At the beginning of the protest the people called on me to serve as their spokesman. In accepting this responsibility my mind, consciously or unconsciously, was driven back to … the Gandhian method of nonviolent resistance. This principle became the guiding light of our movement. Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.

The experience in Montgomery did more to clarify my thinking on the question of nonviolence than all of the books that I had read. As the days unfolded I became more and more convinced of the power of nonviolence. 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 issues I had not cleared up intellectually concerning nonviolence were now solved in the sphere of practical action.

A few months ago I had the privilege of traveling to India. The trip had a great impact on me personally and left me even more convinced of the power of nonviolence. It was a marvelous thing to see the amazing results of a nonviolent struggle. India won her independence, but without violence on the part of Indians. The aftermath of hatred and bitterness that usually follows a violent campaign is found nowhere in India. Today a mutual friendship based on complete equality exists between the Indian and British people within the commonwealth.

I do not want to give the impression that nonviolence will work miracles overnight. Men are not easily moved from their mental ruts or purged of their prejudiced and irrational feelings. When the underprivileged demand freedom, the privileged first react with bitterness and resistance. Even when the demands are couched in nonviolent terms, the initial response is the same. I am sure that many of our white brothers in Montgomery and across the south are still bitter toward Negro leaders, even though these leaders have sought to follow a way of love and nonviolence. So the nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.

Question Answer

King claims that religious liberalism “has been of immeasurable value and should be defended with religious and scientific passion.” What about liberalism does he cherish? What does he question? Explain

King’s “synthesis” of neo- orthodoxy (fundamentalism) and liberalism is rather dialectical. Explain.

What did King learn from the existentialists?

What does King learn from Rauschenbusch?

What does King learn from Gandhi?

What did King’s experience in

Montgomery teach him?

3 Malcolm, Selections from The Autobiography of Malcolm X April 16, 1965: http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf

Pagination indicated with each excerpt

Annotation The Autobiography of Malcolm X was co-written with Alex Haley and was first published in 1965, a few months after Malcolm’s death. The below excerpts illustrate major formative influences on his life and outlook. Malcolm’s father was murdered by white supremacists when Malcolm was only six. While his mother, Louise, struggled alone to support her large family during the Great Depression, Malcolm observed white officials belittle her and undermine her self-respect. After Louise committed to a state mental hospital, Malcolm and his siblings were dispersed to different white foster families and schools. At age fourteen, Malcolm went to live in Boston with his eldest sister, Ella. From there, he gradually entered the criminal underworld in the black ghettos of Boston, Detroit, and New York until imprisoned for burglary in 1946. Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Virtually nothing in Malcolm’s life up to then had led to him to think well of others and society. In this phase of his life, Malcolm had contempt for conventional society’s mores; he especially despised organized religion. The following autobiographical 9 excerpts show Malcolm’s family had instilled in him an internationalist racial consciousness, a deep spirituality, and a sharp awareness of white racism.

NIGHTMARE – This first selection from the Autobiography indicates Malcolm and his family’s recurrent experiences with white racist violence; it also shows Malcolm’s exposure to conflict and violence within his family. This selection shows his parents’ with to racial pride in their children. [p. 1-4, 6-7]

When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother went to the front door and opened it. Standing where they could see her pregnant condition, she told them that she was alone with her three small children, and that my father was away, preaching, in Milwaukee. The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her that we had better get out of town because "the good Christian white people"' were not going to stand for my father's "spreading trouble" among the "good" Negroes of Omaha with the "back to Africa" preaching of Marcus Garvey.

My father, the Reverend Earl Little, was a Baptist minister, a dedicated organizer for Marcus Garvey's U.N.I.A. (Universal Negro Improvement Association). With the help of such disciples as my father, Garvey, from his headquarters in New York City's Harlem, was raising the banner of black-race purity and exhorting the Negro masses to return to their ancestral African homeland-a cause which had made Garvey the most controversial black man on earth.

Still shouting threats, the Klansmen finally spurred their horses and galloped around the house, shattering every window pane with their gun butts. Then they rode off into the night, their torches flaring, as suddenly as they had come.

My father was enraged when he returned. He decided to wait until I was born -- which would be soon -- and then the family would move. I am not sure why he made this decision, for he was not a frightened Negro, as most then were, and many still are today. My father was a big, six-foot-four, very black man. He had only one eye. How he had lost the other one I have never known. He was from Reynolds, Georgia, where he had left school after the third or maybe fourth grade. He believed, as did Marcus Garvey, that freedom, independence and self-respect could never be achieved by the Negro in America, and that therefore the Negro should leave America to the white man and return to his African land of origin. Among the reasons my father had decided to risk and dedicate his life to help disseminate this philosophy among his people was that he had seen four of his six brothers die by violence, three of them killed by white men, including one by lynching. What my father could not know then was that of the remaining three, including himself, only one, my Uncle Jim, would die … of natural causes. Northern white police were later to shoot my Uncle Oscar. And my father was finally himself to die by the white man's hands.

It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.

… Our family stayed only briefly in Milwaukee, for my father wanted to find a place where he could raise our own food and perhaps build a business. The teaching of Marcus Garvey stressed becoming independent of the white man. We went next, for some reason, to Lansing, Michigan. My father bought a house and soon, as had been his pattern, he was doing free-lance Christian preaching in local Negro Baptist churches, and during the week he was roaming about spreading word of Marcus Garvey.

… This time, the get-out-of-town threats came from a local hate society called The Black Legion. They wore black robes instead of white. Soon, nearly everywhere my father went, Black Legionnaires were reviling him as an "uppity nigger" for wanting to own a store, for living outside the Lansing Negro district, for spreading unrest and dissent ion among "the good niggers."

…[Next] came the nightmare night in 1929, my earliest vivid memory. I remember being suddenly snatched awake into a frightening confusion of pistol shots and shouting and smoke and flames. My father had shouted and shot at the two white men who had set the fire and were running away. Our home was burning down around us. We were lunging and bumping and tumbling all over each other trying to escape. My mother, with the baby in her arms, just made it into the yard before the house crashed in, showering sparks. I remember we were outside in me night in our underwear, crying and yelling our heads off. The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned down to the ground.

My father … moved us into another house on the outskirts of East Lansing. In those days Negroes weren't allowed after dark in East Lansing proper [i.e. a sundown town]. There's where Michigan State University is located; …East Lansing harassed us so much that we had to move again, this time two miles out of town, into the country. This was where my father built for us with his own hands a four-room house.

This is where I really begin to remember things -- this home where I started to grow up.

…After that, my memories are of the friction between my father and mother. They seemed to be nearly always at odds. Sometimes my father would beat her. It might have had something to do with the fact that my mother had a pretty good education. Where she got it I don't know. But an educated woman, I suppose, can't resist the temptation to correct an uneducated man. Every now and then, when she put those smooth words on him, he would grab her.

My father was also belligerent toward all of the children, except me. The older ones he would beat almost savagely if they broke any of his rules -- and he had so many rules it was hard to know them all. Nearly all my whippings came from my mother. I've thought a lot about why. I actually believe that as anti-white as my father was, he was subconsciously so afflicted with the white man's brainwashing of Negroes that he inclined to favor the light ones, and I was his lightest child. Most Negro parents in those days would almost instinctively treat any lighter children better than they did the darker ones. It came directly from the slavery tradition that the "mulatto," because he was visibly nearer to white, was therefore "better."

…the image of him that made me proudest was his crusading and militant campaigning with the words of Marcus Garvey. As young as I was then, I knew from what I overheard that my father was saying something that made him a "tough" man. I remember an old lady, grinning and saying to my father, "You're scaring these white folks to death!"

…I remember seeing the big, shiny photographs of Marcus Garvey that were passed from hand to hand. My father had a big envelope of them that he always took to these meetings. The pictures showed what seemed to me millions of Negroes thronged in parade behind Garvey riding in a fine car, a big black man dressed in a dazzling uniform with gold braid on it, and he was wearing a thrilling hat with tall plumes. I remember hearing that he had black followers not only in the United States but all around the world, and I remember how the meetings always closed with my father saying, several times, and the people chanting after him, "Up, you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will!" I have never understood why, after hearing as much as I did of these kinds of things, I somehow never thought, then, of the black people in Africa. My image of Africa, at that time, was of naked savages, cannibals, monkeys and tigers and steaming jungles.

…At five, I, too, began to go to school, leaving home in the morning along with Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert. It was the Pleasant Grove School that went from kindergarten through the eighth grade. It was two miles outside the city limits, and I guess there was no problem about our attending because we were the only Negroes in the area. In those days white people in the North usually would "adopt" just a few Negroes; they didn't see them as any threat. The white kids didn't make any great thing about us, either. They called us "nigger" and "darkie" and "Rastus" so much that we thought those were our natural names. But they didn't think of it as an insult; it was just the way they thought about us.

One afternoon in 1931 … my mother and father were having one of their arguments. There had lately been a lot of tension around the house because of Black Legion threats.

Anyway, … She told me later, my mother did, that she had a vision of my father's end…

I remember waking up to the sound of my mother's screaming again. When I scrambled out, I saw the police in the Irving room; they were trying to calm her down. She had snatched on her clothes to go with them. And all of us children who were staring knew without anyone having to say it that something terrible had happened to our father.

My mother was taken by the police to the hospital, and to a room where a sheet was over my father in a bed, and she wouldn't look, she was afraid to look. Probably it was wise that she didn't. My father's skull, on one side, was crushed in, I was told later. Negroes in Lansing have always whispered that he was attacked, and then laid across some tracks for a streetcar to run over him. His body was cut almost in half.

He lived two and a half hours in that condition. Negroes then were stronger than they are now, especially Georgia Negroes. Negroes born in Georgia had to be strong simply to survive.

It was morning when we children at home got the word that he was dead. I was six. I can remember a vague commotion, the house filled up with people crying, saying bitterly that the white Black Legion had finally gotten him…

VICIOUS AS VULTURES – In this second selection, Malcolm bitterly recalled the destructive role of the white system and its public officials in his family’s demise. [p. 10, 12-13]

When the state Welfare people began coming to our house, we would come from school sometimes and find them talking with our mother, asking a thousand questions. They acted and looked at her, and at us, and around in our house, in a way that had about it the feeling-at least for me-that we were not people. In their eyesight we were just _things_, that was all.

My mother began to receive two checks --a Welfare check and, I believe, widow's pension. The checks helped. But they weren't enough, as many of us as there were…

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

We began to go swiftly downhill. The physical downhill wasn't as quick as the psychological. My mother was, above everything else, a proud woman, and it took its toll on her that she was accepting charity… 11

…Meanwhile, the state Welfare people kept after my mother. By now, she didn't make it any secret that she hated them, and didn't want them in her house. But they exerted their right to come, and I have many, many times reflected upon how, talking to us children, they began to plant the seeds of division in our minds. They would ask such things as who was smarter than the other. And they would ask me why I was "so different."

I think they felt that getting children into foster homes was a legitimate pan of their function, and the result would be less troublesome, however they went about it.

And when my mother fought them, they went after her-first, through me. I was the first target. I stole; that implied that I wasn't being taken care of by my mother.

…I'm not sure just how or when the idea was first dropped by the Welfare workers that our mother was losing her mind.

But I can distinctly remember hearing "crazy" applied to her by them when they learned that the Negro fanner who was in the next house down the road from us had offered to give us some butchered pork-a whole pig, maybe even two of them-and she had refused. We all heard them call my mother "crazy" to her face for refusing good meat. It meant nothing to them even when she explained that we had never eaten pork, that it was against her religion as a Seventh Day Adventist.

They were as vicious as vultures. They had no feelings, understanding, compassion, or respect for my mother. They told us, "She's crazy for refusing food." Right then was when our home, our unity, began to disintegrate. We were having a hard time, and I wasn't helping. But we could have made it, we could have stayed together. As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.

The state people, we found out, had interviewed the Gohannas family, and the Gohannases had said that they would take me into their home. My mother threw a fit, though, when she heard …

It was about this time that the large, dark man from Lansing began visiting. I don't remember how or where he and my mother met. It may have been through some mutual friends. I don't remember what the man's profession was. In 1935, in Lansing, Negroes didn't have anything you could call a profession. But the man, big and black, looked something like my father. I can remember his name, but there's no need to mention it. He was a single man, and my mother was a widow only thirty-six years old… She was having a hard time disciplining us, and a big man's presence alone would help. And if she had a man to provide, it would send the state people away forever.

…It went on for about a year, I guess. And then, about 1936, or 1937, the man from Lansing jilted my mother suddenly. He just stopped coming to see her. From what I later understood, he finally backed away from taking on the responsibility of those eight mouths to feed. He was afraid of so many of us. To this day, I can see the trap that Mother was in, saddled with all of us. And I can also understand why he would shun taking on such a tremendous responsibility.

But it was a terrible shock to her. It was the beginning of the end of reality for my mother. When she began to sit around and walk around talking to herself -- almost as though she was unaware that we were there -- it became increasingly terrifying.

… Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo.

… A Judge McClellan in Lansing had authority over me and all of my brothers and sisters. We were "state children," court wards; he had the full say-so over us. A white man in charge of a black man's children! Nothing but legal, modern slavery-however kindly intentioned.

MR. OSTROWSKI – In this third selection, Malcolm discusses the predominately white institutions in which he spent early adolescence, he initially got on well with his white foster family, teachers, and schoolmates. However, he gradually grew alienated from them. Malcolm cited an incident with his eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Ostrowski, as pivotal in his evolving attitudes toward the whites who surrounded and controlled him during his parentless late childhood. [p. 21-22]

And then one day, just about when those of us who had passed were about to move up to 8-A, from which we would enter high school the next year, something happened which was to become the first major turning point of my life.

Somehow, I happened to be alone in the classroom with Mr. Ostrowski, my English teacher. He was a tall, rather reddish white man and he had a thick mustache. I had gotten some of my best marks under him, and he had always made me feel that he liked me. He was, as I have mentioned, a natural-born "advisor," about what you ought to read, to do, or think about any and everything. We used to make unkind jokes about him: why was he teaching in Mason instead of somewhere else, getting for himself some of the "success in life" that he kept telling us how to get?

I know that he probably meant well in what he happened to advise me that day. I doubt that he meant any harm. It was just in his nature as an American white man. I was one of his top students, one of the school's top students -- but all he could see for me was the kind of future "in your place" that almost all white people see for black people.

He told me, "Malcolm, you ought to be thinking about a career. Have you been giving it thought?"

The truth is, I hadn't. I never have figured out why I told him, "Well, yes, sir, I've been thinking I'd like to be a lawyer." Lansing certainly had no Negro lawyers … to hold up an image I might have aspired to. All I really knew for certain was that a lawyer didn't wash dishes, as I was doing.

Mr. Ostrowski looked surprised, I remember, and leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. He kind of half- smiled and said, "Malcolm, one of life's first needs is for us to be realistic. Don't misunderstand me, now. We all here like you, you know that. But you've got to be realistic about being a nigger. A lawyer -- that's no realistic goal for a nigger. You need to think about something you can be. You're good with your hands -- making things. Everybody admires your carpentry shop work. Why don't you plan on carpentry? People like you as a person -- you'd get all kinds of work."

The more I thought afterwards about what he said, the more uneasy it made me. It just kept treading around in my mind.

What made it really begin to disturb me was Mr. Ostrowski's advice to others in my class -- all of them white. Most of them had told him they were planning to become farmers. But those who wanted to strike out on their own, to try something new, he had encouraged. Some, mostly girls, wanted to be teachers. A few wanted other professions, such as one boy who wanted to become a county agent; another, a veterinarian; and one girl wanted to be a nurse. They all reported that Mr. Ostrowski had encouraged what they had wanted. Yet nearly none of them had earned marks equal to mine.

It was a surprising thing that I had never thought of it that way before, but I realized that whatever I wasn't, I was smarter than nearly all of those white kids. But apparently I was still not intelligent enough, in their eyes, to become whatever I wanted to be.

It was then that I began to change-inside.

I drew away from white people.

CONKED – Getting a “conk,” or hair treatment that straightened one’s hair to look “white,” was surely not the gravest misdeed Malcolm committed in his inner-city “hoodlum” days. However, it was, to his mind later, among the most degrading and stupid things he did during this sordid phase of his life. Malcolm’s friend Shorty gave him his first conk, which entailed a painful application of chemicals to one’s scalp. [p. 55-57]

The congolene just felt warm when Shorty started combing it in. But then my head caught fire.

I gritted my teeth and tried to pull the sides of the kitchen table together. The comb felt as if it was raking my skin off.

My eyes watered, my nose was running. I couldn't stand it any longer; I bolted to the washbasin. I was cursing Shorty with every name I could think of when he got the spray going and started soap-lathering my head.

He lathered and spray-rinsed, lathered and spray-rinsed, maybe ten or twelve times, each time gradually closing the hot-water faucet, until the rinse was cold, and that helped some.

"You feel any stinging spots?"

"No," I managed to say. My knees were trembling.

"Sit back down, then. I think we got it all out okay."

…"The first time's always worst. You get used to it better before long. You took it real good, homeboy. You got a good conk."

When Shorty let me stand up and see in the minor, my hair hung down in limp, damp strings. My scalp still flamed, but not as badly; I could bear it. He draped the towel around my shoulders, over my rubber apron, and began again Vaselining my hair.

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

I could feel him combing, straight back, first the big comb, then the fine-tooth one. Then, he was using a razor, very delicately, on the back of my neck. Then, finally, shaping the sideburns. 13

My first view in the mirror blotted out the hurting. I'd seen some pretty conks, but when it's the first time, on your own head, the transformation, after the lifetime of kinks, is staggering.

The mirror reflected Shorty behind me. We both were grinning and sweating. And on top of my head was this thick, smooth sheen of shining red hair-real red-as straight as any white man's.

How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking "white," reflected in the mirror in Shorty's room. I vowed that I'd never again be without a conk, and I never was for many years.

This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man's hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are "inferior"-and white people "superior" -- that they will even violate and mutilate their … bodies to try to look "pretty" by white standards.

CAUGHT – Malcolm’s careen as a criminal ended when he was arrested while trying to sell a stolen wristwatch in a pawnshop. Malcolm had formed, with two more black men and two white women, an effective burglary ring. The young white women, because they aroused no suspicion in white neighborhoods, cased homes in wealthy neighborhoods for subsequent burglary. In this selection, Malcolm related white authorities’ fixation during the trial on the presence of white women in his interracial burglary ring. [p. 152- 153]

The cops found the apartment loaded with evidence-fur coats, some jewelry, other small stuff-plus the tools of our trade. A jimmy, a lockpick, glass cutters, screwdrivers, pencil-beam flashlights, false keys. . . and my small arsenal of guns. The girls got low bail. They were still white -- burglars or not. Their worst crime was their involvement with Negroes…

The social workers worked on us. White women in league with Negroes was their main obsession. The girls weren't so-called "tramps," or "trash," they were well-to-do upper-middle class whites. That bothered the social workers and the forces of the law more than anything else.

How, where, when, had I met them? Did we sleep together? Nobody wanted to know anything at all about the robberies. All they could see was that we had taken the white man's women.

I just looked at the social workers: "Now, what do you think?"

Even the court clerks and the bailiffs: "Nice white girls . . . goddam niggers --" It was the same even from our court-appointed lawyers as we sat down, under guard, at a table, as our hearing assembled. Before the judge entered, I said to one lawyer, "We seem to be getting sentenced because of those girls." He got red from the neck up and shuffled his papers: "You had no business with white girls!"

Later, when I had learned the full truth about the white man, I reflected many times that the average burglary sentence for a first offender, as we all were, was about two years. But we weren't going to get the average -- not for our crime. [FYI – Malcolm was sentenced to ten years, and served seven before being granted parole].

THE COLLECTIVE WHITE MAN’S RECORD – I.E. “WHITENESS’ – The three below selections consist of excerpts that express Malcolm’s attitude toward white America in his early years as a member of the NOI. [p. 271-273]

An amazing percentage of the white letter-writers agreed entirely with Mr. Muhammad's analysis of the problem-but not with his solution. One odd ambivalence was how some letters, otherwise all but championing Mr. Muhammad, would recoil at the expression "white devils." I tried to explain this in subsequent speeches:

Unless we call one white man, by name, a 'devil,' we are not speaking of any Individual white man. We are speaking of the collective white man's historical record. We are speaking of the collective white man's cruelties, and evils, and greeds [sic], that have seen him act like a devil toward the non-white man. Any intelligent, honest, objective person cannot fail to realize that this white man's slave trade, and his subsequent devilish actions are directly responsible for not only the presence of this black man in America, but also for the condition in which we find this black man here. You cannot find one black man, I do not care who he is, who has not been personally damaged in some way by the devilish acts of the collective white man!"

…The white man-give him his due-has an extraordinary intelligence, an extraordinary cleverness. His world is full of proof of it. You can't name a thing the white man can't make. You can hardly name a scientific problem he can't solve. Here he is now solving the problems of sending men exploring into outer space-and returning them safely to earth.

But in the arena of dealing with human beings, the white man's working intelligence is hobbled. His intelligence will fail him altogether if the humans happen to be non-white. The white man's emotions superseded his intelligence. He will commit against non-whites the most incredible spontaneous emotional acts, so psyche-deep is his "white superiority" complex.

Where was the A-bomb dropped . . ."to save American lives"? Can the white man be so naive as to think the clear import of this ever will be lost upon the non-white two-thirds of the earth's population?

Before that bomb was dropped-right over here in the United States, what about the one hundred thousand loyal naturalized and native-born Japanese-American citizens who were herded into camps, behind barbed wire? But how many German-born naturalized Americans were herded behind barbed wire? They were white!

PULL OFF THAT NORTHERN WHITE LIBERAL’S HALO! [p. 276-277]

The Deep South white press generally blacked me out. But they front-paged what I felt about Northern white and black Freedom Riders going _South_ to "demonstrate." I called it "ridiculous"; their own Northern ghettoes, right at home, had enough rats and roaches to kill to keep all of the Freedom Riders busy. I said that ultra-liberal New York had more integration problems than Mississippi. If the Northern Freedom Riders wanted more to do, they could work on the roots of such ghetto evils as the little children out in the streets at midnight, with apartment keys on strings around their necks to let themselves in, and their mothers and fathers drunk, drug addicts, thieves, prostitutes. Or the Northern Freedom Riders could light some fires under Northern city halls, unions, and major industries to give more jobs to Negroes to remove so many of them from the relief and welfare rolls, which created laziness, and which deteriorated the ghettoes into steadily worse places for humans to live. It was all-it is all-the absolute truth; but what did I want to say it for? Snakes couldn't have turned on me faster than the liberal.

Yes, I will pull off that liberal's halo that he spends such efforts cultivating! The North's liberals have been for so long pointing accusing fingers at the South and getting away with it that they have fits when they are exposed as the world's worst hypocrites.

I believe my own life _mirrors_ this hypocrisy. I know nothing about the South. I am a creation of the Northern white man and of his hypocritical attitude toward the Negro.

The white Southerner was always given his due by Mr. Muhammad. The white Southerner, you can say one thing-he is honest. He bares his teeth to the black man; he tells the black man, to his face, that Southern whites never will accept phony "integration." The Southern white goes further, to tell the black man that he means to fight him every inch of the way-against even the so-called "tokenism." The advantage of this is the Southern black man never has been under any illusions about the opposition he is dealing with.

You can say for many Southern white people that, individually, they have been paternalistically helpful to many individual Negroes.

…But the Northern white man, he grins with his teeth, and his mouth has always been full of tricks and lies of "equality" and "integration." When one day all over America, a black hand touched the white man's shoulder, and the white man turned, and there stood the Negro saying "Me, too . . ." why, that Northern liberal shrank from that black man with as much guilt and dread as any Southern white man.

Actually, America's most dangerous and threatening black man is the one who has been kept sealed up by the Northerner in the black ghettoes -- the Northern white power structure's system to keep talking democracy while keeping the black man out of sight somewhere, around the comer.

The word "integration" was invented by a Northern liberal. The word has no real meaning. I ask you: in the racial sense in which it's used so much today, whatever "integration" is supposed to mean, can it precisely be defined? The truth is that "integration" is an image, it's a foxy Northern liberal's smokescreen that confuses the true wants of the American black man.

“WHAT CAN I DO?” … I TOLD HER, “NOTHING.” [p. 292]

I never will forget one little blonde co-ed after I had spoken at her New England college. She must have caught the next plane behind that one I took to New York. She found the Muslim restaurant in Harlem. I just happened to be there when she came in. Her clothes, her carriage, her accent, all showed Deep South white breeding and money. At that college, I told how the antebellum white slavemaster even devilishly manipulated his own woman. …Anyway, I'd never seen anyone I ever spoke before more affected than this little white college girl. She demanded, right up in my face, "Don't you believe there are any good white people?" I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I told her, "People's deeds I believe in, Miss -- not their words." Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

"What can I do?" she exclaimed. I told her, "Nothing." She burst out crying, and ran out and up Lenox Avenue and caught a taxi. 15

Question Answer

Why did Malcolm’s family move from their original home in Omaha, Nebraska?

What lessons/tendencies did Malcolm learn from his parents/upbringing?

What is Malcolm’s theory explaining why his father beat all of his sons, except Malcolm?

Explain my title of the second excerpts – “vicious as vultures.”

What lesson did Malcolm learn from his encounter Mr. Ostrowski?

What lesson did Malcolm learn, the hard way, form getting “conked?”

Why were the white female member of Malcolm’s “crew” so vital?

What did Malcolm’s experience getting “caught” teach him?

Elaborate on the young Malcolm’s usage of the term “white devil.”

How, according to Malcolm, are white people also, in a sense, victim of their “whiteness?”

Please explain my title of the selection “Pull off that Northern white liberal’s halo.”

4 King’s Reply, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963: http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf

Annotation Birmingham was Alabama's largest city, but its 40 % black population suffered stark inequities in education, employment, and income. In 1961, when Freedom Riders were mobbed in the city bus terminal with white mobs armed with chains, brass knuckles, iron bars, and pistols, Birmingham drew unwelcome national attention (the nearby city of Anniston, Alabama was the site of a horrific mob attack on another “Freedom” bus – resulting in a fire bomb exploding the bus). Moreover, recent years saw so many bombings in its black neighborhoods that went unsolved that the city earned the nickname "Bombingham." In 1962, Birmingham even closed public parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, and golf courses to avoid federal court orders to desegregate. Reverend Fred Shuttleworth, head of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and secretary of the SCLC invited King and the SCLC to help desegregate the city. On April 3, 1963, King flew into Birmingham to hold a planning meeting with members of the African-American community. “This is the most segregated city in America,” he said. “We have to stick together if we ever want to change its ways.” When eight white clergymen (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish) learned of King's plans to stage mass protests in Birmingham during the Easter season in 1963, they published a statement voicing disagreement with King's attempt to reform the segregated city. It appeared in the Birmingham News on Good Friday, the very day King was jailed for violating the injunction against marching. The white clergymen complained that local black citizens were being "directed and led in part by outsiders" to engage in demonstrations that were "unwise and untimely." The prudence of the Movement's actions in Birmingham was also called into question by local merchants who believed the new city government and mayor—replacing the staunch segregationist Eugene "Bull" Connor (the commissioner of public safety who later employed fire hoses and police dogs against protesters, many of whom were high school and college students)—would offer a new opportunity to address black concerns. The clergymen called street protests and economic boycotts "extreme measures" and, thus, saw them as imprudent means of redressing grievances. Finally, if peaceful protests sparked hatred and riots, they would hold the protesters responsible for the violence that ensued. In spite of a court injunction attempting to stop the protest march, King went ahead with his protest march on Good Friday 1963, and was promptly arrested, along with his close friend and fellow Baptist preacher Ralph Abernathy and fifty-two other protestors. King served his jail sentence in solitary confinement, but soon began reading press reports of the Birmingham campaign in Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. newspapers smuggled into his cell by his lawyer. What irked him was the criticism from the Birmingham clergymen. So King began to write, using the margins of the Birmingham News. King's reply to the clergymen's public letter of complaint grew to almost 7,000 17 words, and presented a detailed response to the criticisms of his fellow men of the cloth. Employing theological and philosophical arguments, as well as reflections on American and world history, King defended the legitimacy of his intervention to desegregate Birmingham.

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” . . . But since I feel that you are men of genuine goodwill … I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South--one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary… So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because I have basic organizational ties here.

…Moreover… I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country. . . .

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive. 2) Negotiation. 3) Self-purification and 4) Direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying [denial] of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than any city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation...... So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community. We were … [aware] of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification. We started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?” We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that with the exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year…we felt that this was the best time to bring pressure on the merchants for the needed changes. . . .

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. … I have … preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. . . . So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We, therefore, concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, “Why didn’t you give the new administration [in Birmingham] time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that …[w]e know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. . . .

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 [Brown vs. Board of Education] outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange … to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? … An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law… Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. . . . Hence segregation is … is morally wrong and awful. . . . Thus … I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong. …… In no sense do I advocate … defying the law as the rabid segregationist would do. This would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly… and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that … is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law. . . .

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” … It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. . . .

. . . Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil [i.e. infection on skin] that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

...You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme…I started 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 of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation, and, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security, and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness, and hatred comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement [i.e. Malcolm X]. This movement is nourished by the … frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have …concluded that the white man is an incurable “devil.” I have tried to stand between these two forces saying that …There is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I’m grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood… …I must close now. But before closing I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I don’t believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don’t believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you will observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food … I’m sorry that I can’t join you in your praise for the police department. . . . I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. . . . One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our … heritage, and thusly, carrying our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. . . .

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Question Answer

Does King consider himself an “outsider” by staging a civil rights protest in Birmingham?

List three reasons he gives in response to this criticism.

List the four-step process King outlines for their nonviolent campaign.

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

19

Briefly explain steps 3 and 4 from the above question.

The clergymen argued that the new governmental administration of Alabama should be given time to act. What was King’s response?

If King admits that breaking laws in order to change them is “a legitimate concern,” how does he still justify civil disobedience?

Also, explain how King thought a law can be disobeyed without leading to anarchy.

Explain why King thinks the tension stirred up by his protest movement promotes social and political reform.

In other words, is he the creator of the tension?

How does King respond to the charge that he is an extremist? Whom does he identify as the real extremists?

What is King’s response to the clergymen’s approval of how the police kept order during the demonstrations?

At age 28, the Rev. Martin Luther King was a recently minted PhD, a young father, and the face of the rising Civil Rights Movement. When he wrote this article explaining the credo of nonviolent resistance, he and the black community of Montgomery, Alabama had just ended their successful boycott of segregated city buses. 5 - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., From “Nonviolence and Racial Justice” in the Christian Century, February 6, 1957 http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/Vol04Scans/118_6-Feb- 1957_Nonviolence%20and%20Racial%20Justice.pdf

The alternative to violence is nonviolent resistance. This method was made famous in our generation by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the British Empire. Five points can be made concerning nonviolence as a method in bringing about better racial conditions. First, this is not a method for cowards; it does resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as is the person who uses violence. His method is passive or nonaggressive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent. But his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade the opponent that he is mistaken. This method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually... A second point is that nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness. A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is evil we are seeking to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. Those of us who struggle against racial injustice must come to see that the basic tension is not between races... A fourth point that must be brought out concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives... Finally, the method of nonviolence is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. It is this deep faith in the future that causes the nonviolent resister to accept suffering without retaliation. He knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. This belief that God is on the side of truth and justice comes down to us from the long tradition of our Christian faith. There is something at the very center of our faith which reminds us that Good Friday may reign for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the triumphant beat of the Easter drums... Source: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Nonviolence and Racial Justice." The Christian Century, February 6, 1957, pp. 165-167. Question Answer What is MLK’s 1st point supporting non-violence?

What is MLK’s 2nd point supporting non-violence?

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

What is MLK’s 3rd point supporting non-violence? 21

What is MLK’s 4th point supporting non-violence?

What is MLK’s 5th point supporting non-violence?

Malcolm X:

Annotation As Americans by the early 1960s were newly focusing on the Civil Rights movement and especially on King’s moral demands and peaceful means of achieving them, they began to hear a far more alarming (as least in the eyes of white Americans) voice of black discontent, that of black nationalism as articulated by Malcolm X. The leader that made white Americans so uneasy was born Malcolm Little to Earl and Louise Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was economically self-sufficient and, among other things, an itinerant Baptist preacher. He was also an organizer for Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which stressed black pride and independence, and an internationalist Pan-African identity among blacks everywhere. For Earl’s Garveyite preaching and recruiting activities, the Little family was repeatedly harassed by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. Their house in Lansing, Michigan, was burned down when Malcolm was four years old, and his father was murdered in what was made to look like a streetcar accident when Malcolm was six. Malcolm lived with his widowed mother and numerous siblings, who barely managed to scrape by during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Littles eventually had to go on public relief. Louise, a proud woman, gradually deteriorated mentally, her descent speeded, Malcolm always believed, by intrusive white welfare workers’ belittling behavior. After a nervous breakdown, Louise was committed to Michigan’s state mental hospital in 1939. Malcolm and the other children, now wards of the state, were separated. Malcolm lived in white foster homes and attended predominantly white public schools until finishing eighth grade, which was the end of his formal education. At about fifteen, he moved in with his sister Ella in Boston, where he gradually descended into a life of urban crime and vice. During his criminal years, living primarily in Boston, Detroit, and Harlem, Malcolm was a predatory hustler who pimped, dealt drugs and alcohol, ran gambling, and generally did anything he could to gain money or advantage. He survived by his wits in this harsh social environment until imprisoned for burglary between 1946 and 1952. While serving time in prison, Malcolm discovered the Nation of Islam (NOI). The NOI originated in Detroit in the 1930s under W.D. Fard, then was reconstituted and newly based in Chicago during the 1940s under Elijah Muhammad. The NOI most potently appealed to working class, urban African Americans, especially migrants from the South who had been sorely disappointed by the Northern “promised land” and found themselves trapped in racial ghettos with little hope of social-economic advancement. Two beliefs at the heart of the NOI brand of black nationalism were pride in black racial identity and culture and identification of whites as the primary cause of blacks’ woes. On the more practical level, the NOI demanded that followers adhere to a strict moral standard, avoiding all drugs, pork, and sexual immoralities, and stressed the need to build independent black social institutions and businesses. Its ultimate goal was separation from whites in order to achieve independent black nationhood. This was the fundamental NOI gospel Malcolm so zealously and effectively spread, first as a prison inmate, then, following his 1952 parole, in general society. Becoming an NOI minister in 1953, Malcolm was utterly devoted to this nationalist religious group and its leader, Elijah Muhammad. Even before converting to Islam, Malcolm had begun improving himself educationally by taking correspondence courses in writing and Latin, for example, and by reading widely in the prison library. After joining the NOI, he accelerated his heavy reading and continued improving his language and reasoning skills. He followed the NOI’s custom and replaced his slave name, Little, with an X to symbolize his ancestors lost African name. Malcolm’s personal dynamism and ready familiarity with ghetto ways resonated among members of the black urban working and poorer classes. Besides winning many personal converts, Malcom started many new NOI temples in major cities. It was as the NOI’s national spokesman in the early sixties that Malcolm first came to national notoriety. He was on countless TV and radio shows and game many interviews and speeches defending his group’s views. He was a master debater whose sharp tongue, magnetic personality, and astounding mental agility soon made most people in the Civil Rights movement (from the nonviolent side) reluctant to appear with him. He was one of the nation’s most sought-after speakers. The young Malcolm’s attitude toward whites was unremittingly alienated, angry, and hostile, sharply contrasting with that of King and the (mainly) nonviolent southern movement. America, indeed the whole white race, according to Malcolm, was irredeemably evil. To the younger Malcolm, integration was delusional, and the NOI’s answer was separation from white oppressors. For African Americans to love those who had for centuries committed unspeakable crimes against them would be abnormal behavior – indeed, according to Malcolm, would be outright insane. Does the lamb love the wolf devouring it? he asked rhetorically; Malcolm’s answer was obvious, his logic hard to question. Malcolm had a strongly positive psychological influence on many non-NOI African Americans; his obvious pride in himself and his people and in his worthiness of black culture proved powerfully attractive to people whose self-esteem had been damaged by the pervasive contempt for blackness promulgated by the surrounding white racist society. This statement is a lengthy excerpt from one of his most important speeches, “Message to the Grassroots.” In it, he juxtaposed two of his best-known rhetorical riffs, “house negroes versus field Negroes” and the “farce on Washington.”

6 - “Message to the Grassroots,” November 10, 1963 http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1145

YouTube: https://youtu.be/WrCXhPagR9Q

Directions: We will listen to audio excerpts, and you will answer the questions that follow.

[0-2:55]...And during the few moments that we have left, we want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me -- us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand. We all agree tonight, all of the speakers have agreed, that America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very serious problem, but our people have a very serious problem. America's problem is us. We're her problem. The only reason she has a problem is she doesn't want us here. And every time you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red, or yellow -- a so-called Negro -- you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you're not wanted. Once you face this as a fact, then you can start plotting a course that will make you appear intelligent, instead of unintelligent.

What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. When we come together, we don't come together as Baptists or Methodists. You don't catch hell 'cause you're a Baptist, and you don't catch hell 'cause you're a Methodist. You don't catch hell 'cause you're a Methodist or Baptist. You don't catch hell because you're a Democrat or a Republican. You don't catch hell because you're a Mason or an Elk. And you sure don't catch hell 'cause you're an American; 'cause if you was an American, you wouldn't catch no hell. You catch hell 'cause you're a black man. You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason.

So we are all black people, so-called Negroes, second-class citizens, ex-slaves. You are nothing but a [sic] ex-slave. You don't like to be told that. But what else are you? You are ex-slaves. You didn't come here on the "Mayflower." You came here on a slave ship -- in chains, like a horse, or a cow, or a chicken. And you were brought here by the people who came here on the "Mayflower." You were brought here by the so-called Pilgrims, or Founding Fathers. They were the ones who brought you here.

We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy -- the white man. He's an enemy to all of us. I know some of you all think that some of them aren't enemies. Time will tell…

[…][9:02- 13:00] Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution -- what was it based on? The land-less against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost; was no compromise; was no negotiation. I'm telling you, you don't know what a revolution is. 'Cause when you find out what it is, you'll get back in the alley; you'll get out of the way. The Russian Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Revolution -- what was it based on? Land. The land-less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. And you're afraid to bleed. I said, you're afraid to bleed. 23 [As] long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people. But when it comes time to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls be murdered, you haven't got no blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it's true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea? How can you justify being nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you're going to violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else that you don't even know?

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it's wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it's wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.

[…][15:49-20:24] 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.

The white man knows what a revolution is. He knows that the black revolution is world-wide in scope and in nature. The black revolution is sweeping Asia, sweeping Africa, is rearing its head in Latin America. The Cuban Revolution -- that's a revolution. They overturned the system. Revolution is in Asia. Revolution is in Africa. And the white man is screaming because he sees revolution in Latin America. How do you think he'll react to you when you learn what a real revolution is? You don't know what a revolution is. If you did, you wouldn't use that word.

A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, "I'm going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me." No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing "We Shall Overcome"? Just tell me. You don't do that in a revolution. You don't do any singing; you're too busy swinging. It's based on land. A revolutionary wants land so he can set up his own nation, an independent nation. These Negroes aren't asking for no nation. They're trying to crawl back on the plantation.

When you want a nation, that's called nationalism. When the white man became involved in a revolution in this country against England, what was it for? He wanted this land so he could set up another white nation. That's white nationalism. The American Revolution was white nationalism. The French Revolution was white nationalism. The Russian Revolution too -- yes, it was -- white nationalism. You don't think so? Why [do] you think Khrushchev and Mao can't get their heads together? White nationalism. All the revolutions that's going on in Asia and Africa today are based on what? Black Nationalism…

[…][21:19-23:17] To understand this, you have to go back to what [the] young brother here referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro -- back during slavery. There was two kinds of slaves. There was the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes - they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good 'cause they ate his food -- what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved their master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master's house quicker than the master would. The house Negro, if the master said, "We got a good house here," the house Negro would say, "Yeah, we got a good house here." Whenever the master said "we," he said "we." That's how you can tell a house Negro.

If the master's house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house Negro would say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" We sick! He identified himself with his master more than his master identified with himself. And if you came to the house Negro and said, "Let's run away, let's escape, let's separate," the house Negro would look at you and say, "Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?" That was that house Negro. In those days he was called a "house nigger." And that's what we call him today, because we've still got some house niggers running around here… […][27:26-29:00] Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent. That's Tom making you nonviolent. It's like when you go to the dentist, and the man's going to take your tooth. You're going to fight him when he starts pulling. So he squirts some stuff in your jaw called novocaine, to make you think they're not doing anything to you. So you sit there and 'cause you've got all of that novocaine in your jaw, you suffer peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw, and you don't know what's happening. 'Cause someone has taught you to suffer -- peacefully.

The white man do the same thing to you in the street, when he want [sic] to put knots on your head and take advantage of you and don't have to be afraid of your fighting back. To keep you from fighting back, he gets these old religious Uncle Toms to teach you and me, just like novocaine, suffer peacefully…

[15:00 total]

Question Answer [Ex. 1]

Describe America’s problem, as outlined by Malcolm X.

[Ex. 1]

In what ways does Malcolm X attempt to unify the black population? In other words, what does he remind his audience?

[Ex. 2]

How does Malcolm use history to support his call for violent revolution?

[Ex. 2]

What are Malcolm’s thoughts on the African Americans and the military? EXPLAIN!!!

[Ex. 3]

How does Malcolm X feel about King’s methods?

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

[Ex. 3] 25 How does Malcolm X justify violence as a means for black Americans to improve themselves?

[Ex. 4]

Briefly describe a “house negro.”

[Ex. 5]

According to Malcolm X, what are “Uncle Toms” and how do they slow progress for blacks in America?

Martin Luther King:

7 – King, “The Power of Nonviolence” June 4, 1957 http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1131

Directions: We will read the excerpts, and you will answer the questions that follow.

Another basic thing we had to get over is that nonviolent resistance is … [that] at the center of our movement stood the philosophy of love… the only way to ultimately change humanity … Now people … ask me … what do you mean by love and how is it that you can tell us to love those persons who seek to defeat us and those persons who stand against us; how can you love such persons? And I had to make it clear all along that love in its highest sense is not a sentimental sort of thing, not even an affectionate sort of thing.

AGAPE LOVE

The Greek language uses three words for love. It talks about eros. Eros is a …sort of romantic love …when we speak of loving those who oppose us we’re not talking about eros. The Greek language talks about philia and this is a sort of …love between personal friends… when we talk of loving those who oppose you and those who seek to defeat you we are not talking about eros or philia. The Greek language comes out with another word and it is agape. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men…It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. And when you come to love on this level you begin to love men not because they are likeable, not because they do things that attract us, but because God loves them and here we love the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. It is the type of love that stands at the center of the movement that we are trying to carry on in the Southland—agape. SOME POWER IN THE UNIVERSE THAT WORKS FOR JUSTICE

I am quite aware of the fact that there are persons who believe firmly in nonviolence who do not believe in a personal God, but I think every person who believes in nonviolent resistance believes somehow that the universe in some form is on the side of justice…And this was one of the things that kept the people together, the belief that the universe is on the side of justice. ... Agape says you must go on with wise restraint and calm reasonableness but you must keep moving. We have a great opportunity in America to build here a great nation, a nation where all men live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. We must keep moving toward that goal. I know that some people are saying we must slow up. They are writing letters to the North and they are appealing to white people of good will and to the Negroes saying slow up, you’re pushing too fast. They are saying we must adopt a policy of moderation. Now if moderation means moving on with wise restraint and calm reasonableness, then moderation is a great virtue that all men of good will must seek to achieve in this tense period of transition. But if moderation means slowing up in the move for justice and capitulating to the whims and caprices of the guardians of the deadening status quo, then moderation is a tragic vice which all men … must condemn. We must continue to move on. Our self—respect is at stake; the prestige of our nation is at stake. Civil rights is an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our civilization in the ideological struggle with communism. We must keep moving with wise restraint and love and with proper discipline and dignity.

Question Answer

What does King mean by agape love and how does it shape his strategy for social change?

What does King say to aim his belief in nonviolent resistance to those who do not believe in a god?

How does King respond to those who counsel the Movement to pursue “a policy of moderation” ?

8 – Malcolm, Excerpts from “The Black Revolution” June 1963 https://www.malcolm-x.org/speeches/spc_06__63.htm

YouTube: https://youtu.be/u4Gh5jabctw

Annotation Below are excerpts form a speech delivered by Malcolm X at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, 1963. Malcolm forcefully advocated black separation from whites and black autonomous development. Since he was still preaching the fundamental Nation of Islam gospel, much of his rationale for separation was predicated on the Nation’s belief in white society’s irremediability and their belief in its imminent self-destruction. In this speech, to a predominately black Christian audience, Malcolm vigorously defended the positions of Mr. Muhammad and the NOI. The speech contains examples of Malcolm’s skill at using the Bible to support NOI doctrines. That his talk brought frequent outbursts of applause and laughter from a predominantly Christian audience highlights his amazing ability, even while still delivering the undiluted NOI message, to connect with blacks of different views and backgrounds.

As a follower and minister of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who is the Messenger of Allah to the American so-called Negro, I am very happy to accept Dr. Powell's invitation to be here this evening at the Abyssinian Baptist Church and to express or at least to try to represent The Honorable Elijah Muhammad's views on this most timely topic, the black revolution.

First, however, there are some questions we have to put to you. Since the black masses here in America are now in open revolt against the American system of segregation, will these same black masses turn toward integration or will they turn toward complete separation? Will these awakened black masses demand integration into the white society that enslaved them or will they demand complete separation from that cruel white society that has enslaved them? Will the exploited and oppressed black masses seek integration with their white exploiters and white oppressors or will these awakened black masses truly revolt and separate themselves completely from this wicked race that has enslaved us?

These are just some quick questions that I think will provoke some thoughts in your minds and my mind. How can the so-called Negroes who call themselves enlightened leaders expect the poor black sheep to integrate into a society of bloodthirsty white wolves, white wolves who have already been sucking on our blood for over four hundred years here in America? Or will these black sheep also revolt against the "false shepherd," the handpicked Uncle tom Negro leader, and seek complete separation so that we can Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. escape from the den of the wolves rather than be integrated with wolves in this wolves' den? And since we are in church and most of us here profess to believe in God, there is another question: When the "good shepherd" comes will he integrate his long-lost 27 sheep with white wolves? According to the Bible when God comes he won't even let his sheep integrate with goats. And if his sheep can't be safely integrated with goats they certainly aren't safe integrated with wolves.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that no people on earth fit the Bible's symbolic picture about the Lost Sheep more so than America's twenty million so-called Negroes and there has never in history been a more vicious and blood-thirsty wolf than the American white man. He teaches us that for four hundred years America has been nothing but a wolves den for twenty million so- called Negroes, twenty million second-class citizens, and this black revolution that is developing against the white wolf today is developing because The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, a godsent shepherd, has opened the eyes of our people. And the black masses can now see that we have all been here in this white doghouse long, too long. The black masses don't want segregation nor do we want integration. What we want is complete separation. In short, we don't want to be integrated with the white man, we want to be separated from the white man. And now our religious leader and teacher, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, teaches us that this is the only intelligent and lasting solution to the present race problem…

The black revolution against the injustices of the white world is all part of God's divine plan. God must destroy the world of slavery and evil in order to establish a world based upon freedom, justice, and equality. The followers of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad religiously believe that we are living at the end of this wicked world, the world of colonialism, the world of slavery, the end of the Western world, the white world or the Christian world, or the end of the wicked white man's Western world of Christianity.

…God wants us to separate ourselves from this wicked white race here in America because this American House of Bondage is number one on God's list for divine destruction today. I repeat: This American House of Bondage is number one on God's list for divine destruction today. He warns us to remember Noah never taught integration, Noah taught separation; Moses never taught integration, Moses taught separation. The innocent must always be given a chance to separate themselves from the guilty before the guilty are executed … If America can't atone for the crimes she has committed against the twenty million so-called Negroes, if she can't undo the evils that she has brutally and mercilessly heaped upon our people these past four hundred years, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that America has signed her own doom. And you, our people, would be foolish to accept her deceitful offers of integration at this late date into her doomed society.

Can America escape? Can America atone? And if so how can she atone for these crimes? In my conclusion I must point out that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says a desegregated theater, a desegregated lunch counter won't solve our problem. Better jobs won't even solve our problems. An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor. He also says that a better job, a better job in the white man's factory, or a better job in the white man's business, or a better job in the white man's industry or economy is, at best, only a temporary solution. He says that the only lasting and permanent solution is complete separation on some land that we can call our own. Therefore, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that this problem can be solved and solved forever just by sending our people back to our own homeland or back to our own people, but that this government should provide the transportation plus everything else we need to get started again in our own country. This government should give us everything we need in the form of machinery, material, and finance-enough to last for twenty to twenty-five years until we can become an independent people and an independent nation in our own land. He says that if the American government is afraid to send us back to our own country and to our own people, then America should set aside some separated territory right here in the Western hemisphere where the two races can live apart from each other, since we certainly don't get along peacefully while we are together.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the size of the territory can be judged according to our population. If a seventh of the population of this country is black, then give us a seventh of the territory, a seventh part of the county. And that is not asking too much because we already worked for the man for four hundred years.

He says it must not be in the desert, but where there is plenty of rain and much mineral wealth. We want fertile, productive land on which we can farm and provide our own people with food, clothing, and shelter. He says that this government should supply us on that territory with the machinery and other tools needed to dig into the earth. Give us everything we need for twenty to twenty- five years until we can produce and supply our own needs.

And in my conclusion, I repeat: We want no part of integration with this wicked race of devils. But he also says we should not be expected to leave America empty-handed. After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming. A bill that is owed to us and must be collected. If the government of America truly repents of its sins against our people and atones by giving us our true share of the land and the wealth, then America can save herself. But if America waits for God to step in and force her to make a just settlement, God will take this entire continent away from the white man. And the Bible says that God can then give the kingdom to whomsoever he pleases. I thank you.

Question Answer

Why does Malcolm reject the notion of integration?

What does Malcolm mean by “complete separation?” Be specific.

MALCOLM X: A Different Malcolm X: From Nation of Islam Spokesman to Independent Political Activist

Annotation All of he remaining Malcolm X documents are from 1964 to 1965, years that marked both the Civil Rights movement’s peak and Malcolm’s disengagement from the Nation of Islam and emergence as an independent black leader and follower of Sunni Islam.

Breaking with the NOI belief in its belief of the irremediability of whites, helped Malcolm better position himself to enter the surging Civil Rights movement. He announced his willingness to cooperate with all black leader and organizations committed to acting to gain black rights and freedom. He urged a united black front and stated his desire to join in protests against segregation and for African American voting rights including ones led by King. Accordingly, he ceased his former vitriolic denunciations of civil rights leaders and stated his continuing differences with aspects of their approach for more civilly.

In his post-NIO years, Malcolm not only attempted to join mainstream black protest but to take it to another level. Malcolm urged traditional civil rights forces to lift its domestic struggle to a higher plane b adding to it the goal of securing African Americans’ universal human rights.

Central themes of Malcolm’s final, still-evolving message to blacks, to America, and to humanity were: African Americans’ need for unity (domestically and internationally); blacks’ need to demand their natural human as well as constitutional rights; and the possibility and desirability of justice and comity among all the word’s people. Finally, Malcolm was struggling to shed his former image as a fanatical hate monger. He was doggedly “trying to turn the corner” in his last period to a new, more nuanced leadership position.

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

9 – Malcolm, Press Conference on Return from Africa, 1964 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 367-370. 29

Annotation Below is Malcolm’s account of his press conference on returning from his pilgrimage to Mecca. Malcolm’s “Letters from Mecca,” relating his rejection of NOI dogma and newfound acceptance of the ideal of interracial brotherhood had already caused a stir among his followers and the New York media even before his return from his hajj and African travels. In this recollection of that press conference, Malcolm was proud that he not only managed in it to state his newfound belief in an interracial community – which was all the white press corps wished him to talk about – but also got in his equally important new stress on building unity among all the world’s darker races and on internationalizing the struggle by, for example, charging the United States with human rights violations in the United Nations.

In the biggest press conference that I had ever experienced anywhere, the camera bulbs flashed, and the reporters fired questions.

"Mr. Malcolm X, what about those 'Blood Brothers,' reportedly affiliated with your organization, reportedly trained for violence, who have killed innocent white people?" . . ."Mr. Malcolm X, what about your comment that Negroes should form rifle clubs? . . ."

I answered the questions. I knew I was back in America again, hearing the subjective, scapegoat-seeking questions of the white man. New York white youth were killing victims; that was a "sociological" problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to hang somebody. When black men had been lynched or otherwise murdered in cold blood, it was always said, "Things will get better. "When whites had rifles in their homes, the Constitution gave them the right to protect their home and themselves. But when black people even spoke of having rifles in their homes, that was "ominous."

…I was asked about my "Letter From Mecca"-I was all set with a speech regarding that:

…"Yes-I wrote a letter from Mecca. You're asking me 'Didn't you say that now you accept white men as brothers?' Well, my answer is that in the Muslim World, I saw, I felt, and I wrote home how my thinking was broadened! Just as I wrote, I shared true, brotherly love with many white-complexioned Muslims who never gave a single thought to the race, or to the complexion, of another Muslim.

"My pilgrimage broadened my scope. It blessed me with a new insight. In two weeks in the Holy Land, I saw what I never had seen in thirty-nine years here in America. I saw all races, all colors, blue-eyed blonds to black- skinned Africans-in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists -- no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words.

"In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again -- as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.

"Yes, I have been convinced that some American whites do want to help cure the rampant racism which is on the path to destroying this country!

"It was in the Holy World that my attitude was changed, by what I experienced there, and by what I witnessed there, in terms of brotherhood -- not just brotherhood toward me, but brotherhood between all men, of all nationalities and complexions, who were there. And now that I am back in America, my attitude here concerning white people has to be governed by what my black brothers and I experience here, and what we witness here -- in terms of brotherhood. The problem here in America is that we meet such a small minority of individual so-called 'good,' or 'brotherly' white people. Here in the United States, notwithstanding those few 'good' white people, it is the collective 150 million white people whom the collective 22 million black people have to deal with!

"Why, here in America, the seeds of racism are so deeply rooted in the white people collectively, their belief that they are 'superior' in some way is so deeply rooted, that these things are in the national white subconsciousness. Many whites are even actually unaware of their own racism, until they face some test, and then their racism emerges in one form or another.

"Listen! The white man's racism toward the black man here in America is what has got him in such trouble all over this world, with other non-white peoples. The white man can't separate himself from the stigma that he automatically feels about anyone, no matter who, who is not his color. And the non-white peoples of the world are sick of the condescending white man! That's why you've got all of this trouble in places like Viet Nam. Or right here in the Western Hemisphere -- probably 100 million people of African descent are divided against each other, taught by the white man to hate and to mistrust each other. In the West Indies, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, all of South America, Central America! All of those lands are full of people with African blood! On the African continent, even, the white man has maneuvered to divide the black African from the brown Arab, to divide the so-called 'Christian African' from the Muslim African. Can you imagine what can happen, what would certainly happen, if all of these African-heritage peoples ever realize their blood bonds, if they ever realize they all have a common goal -- if they ever unite?"

The press was glad to get rid of me that day … The next day I was in my car driving along the freeway when at a red light another car pulled alongside. A white woman was driving and on the passenger's side, next to me, was a white man. "Malcolm X!" he called out -- and when I looked, he stuck his hand out of his car, across at me, grinning. "Do you mind shaking hands with a white man?" Imagine that! Just as the traffic light turned green, I told him, "I don't mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?"

Question Answer

How would you characterize the initial questions that were asked by reporters?

What is the contradiction, pointed out by Malcolm, in that line of questioning?

What did Malcolm describe as the effect of his hajj?

Malcolm again describes white people as being controlled by their whiteness. Explain.

Annotation Part of Malcolm’s allure for African Americans, too, was his daredevil swagger and bristling, defiant manner before whites. Many NOI blacks admired his courage and got a vicarious thrill watching him fearlessly denounce whites for their depravity. Many were gratified when hearing him forcefully, brilliantly articulate the bitter resentments and rage that most African Americans felt on Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. some level toward whites but were too afraid to or too complacent to express – and from seeing the visible discomfort and alarm register on the faces of his shocked white listeners. 31 Malcolm drew on his vast reading for social-historical facts about slavery and lynching to build a virtually undeniable case about the evils of whites and their conduct toward blacks. Even many mainstream civil rights activists, who adamantly disagreed with him about the problem’s solution, basically agreed with his diagnosis of the chief problem facing African Americans: whites evil racism. Although he made many of its points elsewhere, “the Ballot or the Bullet” was Malcolm’s fullest statement of his political strategy of using African American voting power to bring positive near-term changes for them. He made a major concession to the mainstream civil rights agenda in confirming the value of obtaining and leveraging blacks’ civil-political rights. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project focused on voter registration among Deep South blacks. Malcolm in 1965 voiced his approval of SNCC and King’s voting rights goals and offered to help protect King and nonviolent demonstrators in their efforts in Selma, Alabama. In this speech, Malcolm stressed his new willingness to join with all black groups in the quest for civil rights. But for all such change, he was still in many respects his usual militant self. If the government failed to enforce blacks’ voting rights and to protect them from racist violence, he warned, African Americans would justifiably turn to the bullet instead. Even while advocating the NOI, however, Malcolm began to chafe under Elijah Muhammad’s strict prohibitions against his followers engaging in any protests against white authorities. By 1963, Malcolm wished seriously to engage in the Civil Rights movement. Jealousy over Malcolm’s celebrity and concern about his potential independent power began to grow within Muhammad’s Chicago-based inner circle. Malcolm’s relationship with the NOI was further strained when Malcolm heard reports that Muhammad himself had been breaking the NOI’s strict moral code by having children by several young women. Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Muhammad used the opportunity to silence Malcolm, saying that the minister’s remark that the incident was evidence “chickens coming home to roost” violated Muhammad’s instructions not to speak ill of the slain president. While under official NOI discipline Malcolm traveled abroad to Africa and the Middle East, which broadened his perspective on his faith and on the international struggle of darker peoples. In 1964, Malcolm made a hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. There he was moved by the sight of Muslims of all colors from many nations meeting in common devotion to Allah. During this period of profound religious and ideological reorientation, Malcolm converted to orthodox Sunni Islam. Just weeks before shaking hands with King at the U.S Capitol, Malcolm publicly broke with Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. Founding Muslim Mosque, Inc., Malcolm announced his intent to form a black nationalist movement aimed at heightening political consciousness and activity among African Americans. Malcolm’s new program included supporting the activities of the southern Civil Rights movement – aligning himself especially with local grassroots activists and the movements more militant groups such as SNCC.

10 – Malcolm, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” April 12, 1964: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1147

YouTube: https://youtu.be/hxuygtJCaLA

Directions: We will listen to audio excerpts, and you will answer the questions that follow.

[…] [15:00-21:00] …Whether you are -- Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Nationalist, we all have the same problem. They don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you 'cause you’re black. They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim; they attack me 'cause I’m black. They attack all of us for the same reason; all of us catch hell from the same enemy. We’ re all in the same bag, in the same boat. We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation -- all of them from the same enemy. The government has failed us; you can’t deny that. Anytime you live in the twentieth century, 1964, and you walkin' around here singing “We Shall Overcome,” the government has failed us. This is part of what’s wrong with you -- you do too much singing. Today it’s time to stop singing and start swinging. You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom. Cassius Clay can sing, but singing didn’t help him to become the heavyweight champion of the world; swinging helped him become the heavyweight champion. This government has failed us; the government itself has failed us, and the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have failed us. And once we see that all these other sources to which we’ve turned have failed, we stop turning to them and turn to ourselves. We need a self help program, a do-it -- a-do-it-yourself philosophy, a do-it-right-now philosophy, a it’s-already-too-late philosophy. This is what you and I need to get with, and the only time -- the only way we're going to solve our problem is with a self-help program. Before we can get a self-help program started we have to have a self-help philosophy. Black Nationalism is a self-help philosophy. What's so good about it? You can stay right in the church where you are and still take Black Nationalism as your philosophy. You can stay in any kind of civic organization that you belong to and still take black nationalism as your philosophy. You can be an atheist and still take black nationalism as your philosophy. This is a philosophy that eliminates the necessity for division and argument. 'Cause if you're black you should be thinking black, and if you are black and you not thinking black at this late date, well I’m sorry for you. Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your -- your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, you’ll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought you’ll be in some kind of sit-down action. They’ll have you sitting in everywhere. It’s not so good to refer to what you’re going to do as a "sit-in." That right there castrates you. Right there it brings you down. What -- What goes with it? What -- Think of the image of a someone sitting. An old woman can sit. An old man can sit. A chump can sit. A coward can sit. Anything can sit. Well you and I been sitting long enough, and it’s time today for us to start doing some standing, and some fighting to back that up. When we look like -- at other parts of this earth upon which we live, we find that black, brown, red, and yellow people in Africa and Asia are getting their independence. They’re not getting it by singing “We Shall Overcome.” No, they’re getting it through nationalism. It is nationalism that brought about the independence of the people in Asia. Every nation in Asia gained its independence through the philosophy of nationalism. Every nation on the African continent that has gotten its independence brought it about through the philosophy of nationalism. And it will take Black Nationalism -- that to bring about the freedom of 22 million Afro-Americans here in this country where we have suffered colonialism for the past 400 years. America is just as much a colonial power as England ever was. America is just as much a colonial power as France ever was. In fact, America is more so a colonial power than they because she’s a hypocritical colonial power behind it. What is 20th -- What do you call second class citizenship? Why, that’s colonization. Second class citizenship is nothing but 20th century slavery. How you gonna tell me you’re a second class citizen? They don’t have second class citizenship in any other government on this earth. They just have slaves and people who are free. Well this country is a hypocrite. They try and make you think they set you free by calling you a second class citizen. No, you’re nothing but a 20th century slave.

[…][23:50-32:00] I’m no politician. I’m not even a student of politics. I’m not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it. I’m one of the 22 million black victims of the Democrats, one of the 22 million black victims of the Republicans, and one of the 22 million black victims of Americanism. And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat, or a Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who have -- who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism, we see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream; we’ve experienced only the American nightmare. We haven’t benefited from America’ s democracy; we’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy. And the generation that’s coming up now can see it and are not afraid to say it. If you -- If you go to jail, so what? If you black, you were born in jail. If you black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long as you south of the -- Long as you south of the Canadian border, you’re south. Don’t call Governor Wallace a Dixie governor; Romney is a Dixie governor. Twenty-two million black victims of Americanism are waking up and they’re gaining a new political consciousness, becoming politically mature. And as they become -- develop this political maturity, they’re able to see the recent trends in these political elections. They see that the whites are so evenly divided that every time they vote the race is so close they have to go back and count the votes all over again. And that...which means that any block, any minority that has a block of votes that stick together is in a strategic position. Either way you go, that’s who gets it. You’re -- You're in a position to determine who will go to the White House and who will stay in the dog house. You’re the one who has that power. You can keep Johnson in Washington D.C., or you can send him back to his Texas cotton patch. You’re the one who sent Kennedy to Washington. You’re the one who put the present Democratic Administration in Washington D.C. The whites were evenly divided. It was the fact that you threw 80 percent of your votes behind the Democrats that put the Democrats in the White House. When you see this, you can see that the Negro vote is the key factor. And despite the fact that you are in a position to - - to be the determining factor, what do you get out of it? The Democrats have been in Washington D.C. only because of the Negro vote. They’ve been down there four years, and they're -- all other legislation they wanted to bring up they brought it up and gotten it out of the way, and now they bring up you. And now, they bring up you. You put them first, and they put you last, 'cause you’re a chump, a political chump. In Washington D.C., in the House of Representatives, there are 257 who are Democrats; only 177 are Republican. In the Senate there are 67 Democrats; only 33 are Republicans. The Party that you backed controls two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and still they can’t keep their promise to you, 'cause you’re a chump. Anytime you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government, and that Party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that Party, you’re not only a chump, but you’re a traitor to your race. And what kind of alibi do they come up with? They try and pass the buck to the Dixiecrats. Now back during the days when you were blind, deaf, and dumb, ignorant, politically immature, naturally you went along with that. But today as your eyes come open, and you develop political maturity, you’re able to see and think for yourself, and you can see that a Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise. You look at the structure of the government that controls this country; it’s controlled by 16 senatorial committees and 20 congressional committees. Of the 16 senatorial committees that run the government, 10 of them are in the hands of Southern segregationists. Of the 20 congressional committees that run the government, 12 of them in the -- are in the hands of Southern segregationists. And they're going to tell you and me that the South lost the war. You, today, have -- are in the hands of a government of segregationists, racists, white supremacists who belong to the Democratic party, but disguise themselves as Dixiecrats. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat. Whoever runs the Democrats is also the father of the Dixiecrats, and the father of all of them is sitting in the White House. I say and I say it again: You got a President who’s nothing but a Southern segregationist from the state of Texas. They’ll lynch you in Texas as quick as they’ll lynch you in Mississippi. Only in -- in Texas they lynch you with a Texas accent; in Mississippi they lynch you with a Mississippi accent. Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

And the first thing the cracker does when he comes in power, he takes all the Negro leaders and invites them for coffee to show that he’s alright. 33

[14:00 in total]

April 3 version - Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us. Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other.

If we don't do something real soon, I think you'll have to agree that we're going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It's one or the other in 1964. It isn't that time is running out - time has run out!

Question Answer

After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X wanted to solve the problems of black Americans by minimizing the differences between black Americans. What did he say was their “common problem”?

Does Malcolm X think either the Democratic or Republican Party wants to help blacks in America? Give specific reasons for your answer. What does Malcolm X mean by “the ballot or the bullet”?

Has he completely given up on the American political process, or does he think blacks can use the vote in a new way?

Why does Malcolm X not believe in the methods of Martin Luther King as a means of social reform?

What does Malcolm say about the philosophy of black nationalism?

What are the political, economic, and social aspects of black nationalism?

Since Malcolm’s pilgrimage to Mecca, he softened his stance against the white man. What evidence of that can you find in the April 3 speech?

BACK TO MLK: King Confronts the Black Power Movement

Annotation By the time King wrote this spirited defense of nonviolence, the method’s popularity was falling fast among African Americans (especially those younger and Northern). In light of deadly racist violence against nonviolent workers in the South and tremendous urban riots of the mid-sixties, nonviolence seemed outdated and came under unprecedented questioning, even in civil rights circles. In fact, the movement had never unanimously embraced King’s commitment to nonviolence as an inviolable principle. Many activists were willing to use peaceful protest only as a tactical tool that could be dropped if it became ineffective. Stokely Carmichael (SNCC) and his comrades made national headlines in 1966 by adopting the charged slogan “Black Power” to describe the goals of the black movement. Fundamentally, this phrase conveyed African Americans determination to run their freedom struggle independently of whites as well as black people’s right and need to defend themselves against violence. Responding to mounting criticisms of his and his SCLC’s tactics King increasingly had to defend the wisdom and efficacy of nonviolence within the Civil Rights movement. In this magazine article, King points to the dramatic gains of recent years, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which resulted from nonviolent movements. He then proceeded to give his trademark critique of violence as an instrument of constructive social change. While energetically defending nonviolence, the essay also shows King’s growing accommodation to the rising appeal of black nationalist ideas. He did not question every individual’s right to defend oneself against assault; rather, he asked people voluntarily to set aside that right to participate in a public demonstration for the purpose of publicizing and eradicating the social evil. King also endorsed Black Power’ stress on African Americans organizing themselves to develop and wield independent power. He further acknowledged that using power, and not relying solely on moral appeal, would be necessary to compel a satisfactory white response to black demands for social justice. Important shifts in King’s program are also apparent, particularly increased on urban slum conditions (northern concerns) and economic issues, rather than just on civil rights. After Malcolm X's violent death in February 1965, and amidst urban riots the following year, increasing numbers of black youth rejected Martin Luther King, Jr.'s nonviolent methods and sought a more militant approach to combating white supremacy in America – with the resulting riots in several northern and southern cities. The cry of "Black Power," instead of "We Shall Overcome" and "Freedom Now," became the slogan of a new faction of the Civil Rights Movement. In response to Black Power advocates, King wrote an article for Ebony magazine that directly addressed the claims of this new movement and explained why he believed nonviolent protest still remained the most prudent means of advancing the cause of black Americans. At this time, one year after Malcolm X’s assassination, King echoed Malcolm about the need to move beyond demanding only blacks’ constitutional rights to more broadly seeking people’s full human, including economic, rights.

11 - “Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom,” October 1966: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1426

The year 1966 brought with it the first public challenge to the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence from within … the civil rights movement. Resolutions of self-defense and Black Power sounded … from our friends and brothers. At the same time riots erupted in several major cities… Indeed, there was much talk of violence. It was the same talk we have heard … for the past ten years. It was the talk of fearful men, saying that they would not join the nonviolent movement because they would not remain nonviolent if attacked. Now the climate had shifted so that it was even more popular to talk of violence… a mere check of the statistics of casualties in the recent riots shows that a vast majority of persons killed in riots are Negroes… I have talked with many persons in the ghettos of the North who argue eloquently for the use of violence. But I observed none of them in the mobs that rioted in Chicago. I have heard the street-corner preachers in Harlem and in Chicago’s Washington Park, but in spite of the bitterness preached and the hatred espoused, none of them has ever been able to start a riot. So far, only the police through their fears and prejudice have goaded our people to riot. And once the riot starts, only the police or the National Guard have been able to put an end to them. This demonstrates that there violent eruptions are unplanned, uncontrollable, temper tantrums brought on by the long-neglected poverty, humility, oppression and exploitation. Violence as a strategy for social change in America is nonexistent. All the sound and fury seems but the posturing of cowards whose bold talk produces no action and signifies nothing. I am convinced that for practical as well as moral reasons, nonviolence offers the only road to freedom for my people. In violent warfare, one must be prepared to face ruthlessly the fact that there will be casualties by the thousands. …Anyone leading a violent conflict must be willing to make a … [sacrifice many] casualties to a minority population [i.e. the white] confronting a well- armed, wealthy majority … that is capable of exterminating the entire black population and which would not hesitate … if the survival of the white Western materialism were at stake. Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

…This is not time for romantic illusions about freedom and empty philosophical debate. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program which will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as 35 possible. So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Our record of achievement through nonviolent action is already remarkable. The dramatic social changes which have been made across the South are unmatched in the annals of history. Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham and Selena have paved the way for untold progress. Even more remarkable is the fact that this progress occurred with a minimum of human sacrifice and loss of life. . . . The Question of Self-Defense There are many people who very honestly raise the question of self-defense. This must be placed in perspective. It goes without saying that people will protect their homes. This is a right guaranteed by the Constitution …But the mere protection of one’s home and person against assault by lawless night riders does not provide any positive approach to the fears and conditions which produce violence…. In a nonviolent demonstration, self-defense must be approached from quite another perspective. One must remember that the cause of the demonstration is some exploitation or form of oppression that has made it necessary for men … [to] demonstrate against evil… It is always amusing to me when a Negro man says that he can’t demonstrate with us because if someone hit him he would fight back. Here is a man whose children are being plagued by rats and roaches, whose wife is robbed daily at overpriced ghetto food stores, who himself is working for about two-thirds the pay of a white person doing a similar job and with similar skills, and in spite of all this daily suffering it takes someone spitting on him and calling him a nigger to make him want to fight. Conditions are such for Negroes in America that all Negroes ought to be fighting aggressively. It is as ridiculous for a Negro to raise the question of self-defense in relation to nonviolence as it is for a soldier on the battlefield to say his is not going to take any risks. He is there because he believes that the freedom of his country is worth the risk of his life. The same is true of the nonviolent demonstrator. He sees the misery of his people so clearly that he volunteers to suffer in their behalf and put an end to their plight. Furthermore, it is extremely dangerous to organize a movement around self-defense. The line between defensive violence and aggressive or retaliatory violence is a fine line indeed. When violence is tolerated even as a means of self-defense there is a grave danger that in the fervor of emotion the main fight will be lost over the question of self-defense. . . … Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear… Strategy for Change The American racial revolution has been a revolution to "get in" rather than to overthrow. We want to share in the American economy, the housing market, the educational system and the social opportunities. The goal itself indicates that a social change in America must be nonviolent. If one is in search of a better job, it does not help to burn down the factory. If one needs more adequate education, shooting the principal will not help, or if housing is the goal, only building and construction will produce that end. To destroy anything, person or property, can’t bring us closer to the goal that we seek. The nonviolent strategy has been to dramatize the evils of our society in such a way that pressure is brought to bear against those evils by the forces of good will in the community and change is produced. The student sit-ins of 1960 are a classic illustration of this method. Students were denied the right to eat at a lunch counter, so they deliberately sat down to protest their denial. They were arrested, but this made their parents mad and so they began to close their charge accounts. The students continued to sit in, and this further embarrassed the city, scared away many white shoppers and soon produced an economic threat to the business life of the city. Amid this type of pressure, it is not hard to get people to agree to change. So far, we have had the Constitution backing most of the demands for change, and this has made our work easier, since we could be sure that the federal courts would usually back up our demonstrations legally. [If we used violence] …we … [would be] approaching areas where the voice of the Constitution is not clear… …There is no easy way to create a world where men and women can live together, where each has his own job and house where all children receive as much education as their minds can absorb. But if such a world is created in our lifetime, it will be done in the United States by Negroes and white people of good will. It will be accomplished by persons who have the courage to put an end to suffering by willingly suffering themselves rather than inflict suffering upon others. It will be done by rejecting the racism, materialism and violence that has characterized Western civilization and especially by working toward a world of brotherhood, cooperation and peace. Question Answer

Why does King raise the issue of violent resistance in 1966?

What does King mean when he says that the threat of violence as a strategy for civil rights or economic improvement is “nonexistent”?

What practical reason does King mention to show that advocating violence on behalf of rights for blacks in America is not smart?

Why does King believe that it is ‘ amusing when a negro man” talks of self defense?

Why does King believe that a focus on self-defense to promote progress for blacks is unproductive?

According to King, what end goal of his civil rights movement forces him to resist violence?

What constitutional considerations does King argue on behalf of nonviolence?

12 - Malcolm – The Afro-Americans Right to Self-Defense June 28, 1964 http://www.blackpast.org/1964-malcolm-x-s-speech-founding-rally-organization-afro-american-unity

YouTube: https://youtu.be/7NzrKiBDnH8 (excluding 2nd paragraph)

Annotation Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Below are excerpts form a speech delivered by Malcolm X at the founding rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity given in the Audubon Ballroom in New Nork City. It was about three months after Malcolm broke with the NOI and the OAAU essentially 37 replaced the short-lived Muslim Mosque, Inc. The OAAU was a secular institution that sought to unify twenty-two million African Americans with the people of the African Continent. The OAAU was modeled after the Organization of African Unity (OAU), a coalition of fifty-three African nations working to provide a unified political voice for the continent. In the coalition spirit of the OAU, Malcolm sought to reconnect African Americans with their African heritage, establish economic independence, and promote African American self-determination. The OAAU was designed to encompass all peoples of African origin in the Western hemisphere, as well those on the African continent. Malcolm insisted that progress for African Americans was intimately tied to progress in Africa, and outlined a platform of five fronts for this progress called "The Basic Unity Program." This program called for Restoration, Reorientation, Education, Economic Security, and Self-Defense as a means of promoting Pan-African unity and interests.

In the below excerpt (and in the founding charter of the OAAU), Malcolm declared African-Americans natural human and US constitutional right to self-defense. Although Malcolm cautioned against using violence indiscriminately or unnecessarily, he steadfastly declared that when blacks were the recipients of violence they should respond in kind.

…II–Self Defense.

Since self-preservation is the first law of nature, we assert the Afro American's right to self-defense.

The Constitution of the United States of America clearly affirms the right of every American citizen to bear arms. And as Americans, we will not give up a single right guaranteed under the Constitution. The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves or we will continue to be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob.

We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our people are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary. I repeat, because to me this is the most important thing you need to know. I already know it. We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our people are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.

Question Answer

What is Malcolm’s constitutional argument in favor of self-defense?

Before we move on, let’s watch a recent video podcast for some historical context that may enrich our understanding of the above speech: https://youtu.be/PsnWmQYUzh8 . [The linked video we viewed in class is excerpted; the full video is located at https://youtu.be/PV17J_JOkMk.]

Back to MLK:

This defense of nonviolent resistance appeared in Liberation as a response to an essay by North Carolina NAACP leader Robert F. Williams that challenged the strategy of “turn-the-other-cheekism” in the face of racist terror. In his September article (that MLK was responding to), Williams had argued that “nonviolence is a very potent weapon when the opponent is civilized, but nonviolence is no match or repellent for a sadist.” (I.e. referring to the white supremacist)

Directions: We will read the excerpts, and you will answer the questions that follow.

13 - King, from “The Social Organization of Nonviolence,” October 1959. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/the_social_organization_of_nonviolence.1.ht ml …one must be clear that there are three different views on the subject of violence. One is the approach of pure nonviolence, which cannot readily or easily attract large masses, for it requires extraordinary discipline and courage. The second is violence exercised in self-defense, which all societies, from the most primitive to the most cultured and civilized, accept as moral and legal. The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi, who sanctioned it for those unable to master pure nonviolence. The third is the advocacy of violence as a tool of advancement, organized as in warfare, deliberately and consciously. To this tendency many Negroes are being tempted today. There are incalculable perils in this approach. … The greatest danger is that it will fail to attract Negroes to a real collective struggle, and will confuse the large uncommitted middle group, which as yet has not supported either side. Further, it will mislead Negroes into the belief that this is the only path and place them as a minority in a position where they confront a far larger adversary than it is possible to defeat in this form of combat. When the Negro uses force in self-defense he does not forfeit support--he may even win it, by the courage and self- respect it reflects. When he seeks to initiate violence he provokes questions about the necessity for it, and inevitably is blamed for its consequences. It is unfortunately true that however the Negro acts, his struggle will not be free of violence initiated by his enemies, and he will need ample courage and willingness to sacrifice to defeat this manifestation of violence. But if he seeks it and organizes it, he cannot win. Question Answer

What does MLK advocate that seems to contradict his historical legacy? Explain.

What 3-4 reasons does MLK offer in opposition to “the advocacy of violence as a tool of advancement?”

How do you think Malcolm X and Black Power advocates would respond?

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

What does this imply about how 39 MLK feels about “black nationalism,” or the type of self-defense that the Black Nationalists advocate? In other words, what does he think it’s too close to advocating -- or at least, gives the appearance to be close to advocating?

14 – Malcolm X “Oxford Union Debate,” (December 3, 1964) http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.ca/2013/07/oxford-union-debate-december-3-1964.html

YouTube: https://youtu.be/jYJZZu1r6cA

Malcolm’s conversion to a more traditional Islam, his rejection of the NOI tenets of while devilry, and his desire to be more politically active all figured into his decision to go to the Capital and seek out King. Their encounter, he hoped, would convey and symbolize his new support for mainstream black protest and willingness to cooperate with all forces sincerely working for black people’s liberation. Though still voicing important differences with King and other civil rights leaders, in his last year or so Malcolm ceased his former ferocious verbal assaults on the leaders of the nation civil rights organization. He announced his willingness to join with all African American groups seeking to better blacks’ conditions. During King-led civil disobedience campaigns in 1964 and 1965, Malcolm offered to provide armed defense for the black activists against the violent racist repression they faced. On June 30, 1964, Malcolm sent King a telegram in St. Augustine, Florida, which read: “If the Federal Government will not send troops to your aid, just say the word and we will immediately dispatch some of our brothers there to organize self defense units among our people, and the Ku Klux Klan will then receive a taste of its own medicine.” Malcolm made similar remarks during the subsequent campaign in Selma, Alabama, stating that “if I were there with King and I saw someone knocking on him, I’d come to the rescue.” After the 1964 Civil Rights Act substantially ended legal segregation, King and the movement’s next main objective became securing voting rights. Malcolm publicly endorsed this goal, too, the centerpiece of King and the SCLC’s 1965 campaign in Selma. Unable to resist being near the action, Malcolm surprised King and the SCLC by visiting Selma during the campaign, having received an invitation from the younger and more radical members of the SNCC. King and most of his SCLC colleagues were displeased by Malcolm’s unexpected Selma appearance. Nevertheless, after his talk, Malcolm had a few words with King’s wife and fellow activist, Coretta Scott King. He told her: “I want Dr. King to know that I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking that I could make it easier. If the white people realize that the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to help Dr. King” Mrs. King said he stressed that he wanted “to work with Dr. King, and not against him.” She also recalls that King deeply appreciated Malcolm’s relayed message. Malcolm at Oxford University, the below speech, represented the most comprehensive, best articulated, and clearest sense of his personal and political vision on the future of race relations – not only as a domestic concern, but also a global one. Oxford and its audience were interactive, at times combative, and challenging in terms of a venue that demanded not only a passion and skill, but grace, precision, and substantive argument. He Oxford address certainly contained a number of elements from Malcolm’s old racial narratives, but it largely was rooted in the future, on in which Malcolm was increasingly open to a revolutionary politics absent of rigid separationist ideas he had advocated in the past. The Oxford speech suggests a pivotal moment in human history, as the majority of the world’s population begins to unyoke itself from colonial rule (Africa, Asia). The demands of the future, rather than a mere articulation of the past, brought out the very best of Malcolm X – and it happened in Oxford. In this most basic sense, the speech represents what can only be called the lost jewel of the American civil rights movement. It is precisely because in that moment – one Dr. King would step into in 1967 and 1968 (when he came out publicly against the Vietnam War) – the nature of America’s racial challenges could no longer stand on their own. They had to be wed to the greater struggle for human dignity on a global scale. The Oxford speech is a thirty minute exposition that is perhaps the best encapsulation of Malcolm X’s ultimate views on race, American politics, and what can only be called universal human rights. While clearly Malcolm’s politics were evolving and we cannot know for certain whether, let alone where, his ideology might have taken root, it is difficult to deny that he and Dr. King did not differ to the degree our memory seems to argue. And by virtue of his posture at Oxford, his humor and evident pleasure in delivering the speech – even down to receiving Berkley’s barbs – he appears content. In this respect, Oxford offers a unique window into Malcom’s personal and overwhelmingly private disposition. In this moment, one that briefly punctured his own self-aware confrontation with death (i.e. he felt that death was near! And he was assassinated soon after), Malcolm X appears happy. Finally, this speech strongly suggests that Malcolm X was seeking to organize a black human rights movement not only in America, the Middle East, or Africa, but in cities such as Paris, London, and Amsterdam as well. It shows Malcolm X moving beyond Black Nationalism, while at the same time remaining militant, but also rejecting the notion or whiteness, and accordingly, blackness. As you will see, Malcolm was attempting to convince the world that moving past the construct of race – a notion more radical, and arguably more intellectual than integration (which to Malcolm, was only a method on the road to moving past race) – was the only true and worthwhile goal. To help us remember this speech – and Malcolm’s (and, as you will see, Dr. King’s – attempt to tackle the nature of modern inequality, it may help to listen to something Malcolm told Simon Malley of Jeune Afrique shortly before his death – “I’m a Muslim, but I know that it’s not in the mosques that will win: it’s in the streets and the cities, side by side with those who, whites included, want to rid the country of the racism that is eating it away. I too, was a racist, but I learned and understood.” (For citation purposes that last quote was from an article called “Who Killed Malcolm X?” and dated March 7, 1965)

Mr. Chairman, tonight is the first night that I’ve have ever had opportunity to be as near to conservatives as I am. And the speaker who preceded me, first I want to thank you for the invitation to come here to the Oxford Union, the speaker who preceded me is one of the best excuses that I know to prove our point concerning the necessity, sometimes, of extremism, in defense of liberty, why it is no vice, and why moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. I don’t say that about him personally, but that type. He’s right, X is not my real name, but if you study history you’ll find why no black man in the western hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa, and took us into the western hemisphere and sold us there. And our names were stripped from us and so today we don’t know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name.

And as far as this apartheid charge that he attributed to me is concerned, evidently he has been misinformed. I don’t believe in any form of apartheid, I don’t believe in any form of segregation, I don’t believe in any form of racialism. But at the same time, I don’t endorse a person as being right just because his skin is white, and often times when you find people like this, I mean that type, when a man whom they have been taught is below them has the nerve or firmness to question some of their philosophy or some of their conclusions, usually they put that label on us, a label that is only designed to project an image which the public will find distasteful. I am a Muslim, if there is something wrong with that then I stand condemned. My religion is Islam I believe in Allah, I believe in Mohammed as the apostle of Allah, I believe in brotherhood, of all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who’s not ready to practice brotherhood with our people.

I just take time to make these few things clear because I find that one of the, and I imagine my good friend...or rather that type from the west...one of the tricks of the west is to use or create images, they create images of a person who doesn’t go along with their views and then they make certain that this image is distasteful, and then anything that that person has to say from thereon, from thereon in, is rejected. And this is a policy that has been practiced pretty well, pretty much by the west, it perhaps would have been practiced by others had they been in power, but during recent centuries the west has been in power and they have created the images, and they’ve used these images quite skillfully and quite successfully, that’s why today we need a little extremism in order to straighten a very nasty situation out, or very extremely nasty situation out.

I think the only way one can really determine whether extremism in the defense of liberty is justified, is not to approach it as an American or a European or an African or an Asian, but as a human being. If we look upon it as different types immediately we begin to think in terms of extremism being good for one and bad for another, or bad for one and good for another. But if we look upon it, if we look upon ourselves as human beings, I doubt that anyone will deny that extremism, in defense of liberty, the liberty of any human being, is a value. Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.

But most people usually think, in terms of extremism, as something that is relative, related to someone they know or something that they’ve heard of, I don’t think they look upon extremism by itself, or all alone. They apply it to something. A good example—and one of the reasons that this can’t be too well understood today—many people who have been in positions of power in the past don’t realize that the power, the centers of power, are changing. When you’re in a position of power for a long time you get used to using your yardstick, and you take it for granted that because you’ve forced your yardstick on others, that everyone is still using the same yardstick. So that your definition of extremism usually applies to everyone, but nowadays times are changing, and the center of power is changing. People in the past who weren’t in a position to have a yardstick or use a yardstick of their own are using their own yardstick now. You use one and they use another. In the past when the oppressor had one stick and the oppressed used that same stick, today the oppressed are sort of shaking the shackles and getting yardsticks of their own, so when they say extremism they don’t mean what you do, and when you say extremism you don’t mean what they do. There are entirely two different meanings. And when this is understood I think you can better understand why those who are using methods of extremism are being driven to them.

A good example is the Congo. When the people who are in power want to, again, create an image to justify something that’s bad, they use the press. And they’ll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian. They’ll take a person whose a victim of the crime, and make it appear he’s the criminal, and they’ll take the criminal and make it Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. appear that he’s the victim of the crime. And the Congo situation is one of the best examples that I can cite right now to point this out. The Congo situation is a nasty example of how a country because it is in power, can take its press and make the world accept 41 something that’s absolutely criminal. They take pilots that they say are American trained, and this automatically lends respectability to them, and then they will call them anti-Castro Cubans, and that’s supposed to add to their respectability, and eliminate that fact that they’re dropping bombs on villages where they have no defense whatsoever against such planes, blowing to bits black women, Congolese women, Congolese children, Congolese babies, this is extremism, but it is never referred to as extremism because it is endorsed by the west, it is financed by America, it’s made respectable by America, and that kind of extremism is never labeled as extremism. Because it’s not extremism in defense of liberty, and if it is extremism in defense of liberty as this type just pointed out, it is extremism in defense of liberty for the wrong type of people.

I am not advocating that kind of extremism, that’s cold blooded murder. But the press is used to make that cold blooded murder appear as an act of humanitarianism. They take it one step farther and get a man named Tshombe, who is a murderer, they refer to him as the premier, or prime minister of the Congo, to lend respectability to him, he’s actually the murderer of the rightful Prime Minister of the Congo, they never mention this.

I’m not for extremism in defense of that kind of liberty, or that kind of activity. They take this man, who’s a murderer, and the world recognizes his as a murderer, but they make him the prime minister, he becomes a paid murderer, a paid killer, who is propped up by American dollars. And to show the degree to which he is a paid killer the first thing he does is go to South Africa and hire more killers and bring them into the Congo. They give them the glorious name of mercenary, which means a hired killer, not someone that is killing for some kind of patriotism or some kind of ideal, but a man who is a paid killer, a hired killer. And one of the leaders of them is right from this country here, and he’s glorified as a soldier of fortune when he’s shooting down little black women, and black babies, and black children. I’m not for that kind of extremism, I’m for the kind of extremism that those who are being destroyed by those bombs and destroyed by those hired killers, are able to put forth to thwart it. They will risk their lives at any cost, they will sacrifice their lives at any cost, against that kind of criminal activity. I am for the kind of extremism that the freedom fighters in the Stanleyville regime are able to display against these hired killers, who are actually using some of my tax dollars which I have to pay up in the United States, to finance that operation over there. We’re not for that kind of extremism.

…

Questioner 1: What exactly sort of extremism would you consider the killing of missionaries?

Malcolm X: …I don’t encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anyone’s death, but I do think that when the white public uses its press to magnify the fact that there are lives of white hostages at stake, they don’t say “hostages,” every paper says “white hostages.” They give me the impression that they attach more importance to a white hostage and a white death, than they do the death of a human being, despite the color of his skin. I feel forced to make that point clear, that I’m not for any indiscriminate killing, nor does the death of so many people go by me without creating some kind of emotion. But I think that white people are making the mistake, and if they read their own newspapers they will have to agree that they, in clear cut language, make a distinction between the type of dying according to the color of the skin. And when you begin thinking in terms of death being death, no matter what type of human being it is, then we all will probably be able to sit down as human beings and get rid of this extremism and moderation. But as long as the situation exists as it is, we’re going to need some extremism, and I think some of you will need some moderation too.

…One of the reasons that I think it is necessary for me to clarify my own point, personally, I was in a conversation with a student here, on the campus, yesterday, and she, after we were, I think we had coffee or dinner or something, there were several of us, I have to add that in for those minds of yours that run astray. And she asked me, she told me that “We’ll I’m surprised that you’re not what I expected,” and I said what do you mean. And she said “well I was looking for your horns”, and so I told her I have them, but I keep them hidden, unless someone draws them out. As my friend, or that type, it takes certain types to draw them out. And this is actually true, usually when a person is looked upon as an extremist, anything that person does in your eyesight is extreme. On the other hand, if a person is looked upon as conservative, just about anything they do is conservative. And this again comes through the manipulating of images. When they want you to think of a certain area or certain group as involved in actions of extremism, the first thing they do is project that person in the image of an extremist. And then anything he does from then on is extreme, you know it doesn’t make any difference whether it is right or wrong, as far as your concerned if the image is wrong, whatever they do is wrong. And this has been done by the western press, and also by the American press, and it has been picked up by the English press and the European press. Whenever any black man in America shows signs of an uncompromising attitude, against the injustices that he experiences daily, and shows no tendency whatsoever to compromise with it, then the American press characterizes him as a radical, as an extremist someone who’s irresponsible, or as a rabble-rouser or someone who doesn’t rationalize in dealing with the problem.

Question: I wonder if you could consider, just briefly, ah, that you have projected, rather successfully, a quite upsetting image of a “type”.

Malcolm X: It depends on what angle [booing against questioner], no let the gentleman bring out his point. It depends on which angle you look at it sir. I never try and hide what I am.

Question: I am referring to your treatment of the previous speaker.

Malcolm X: You are referring to my treatment of the previous speaker? You make my point! That as long as a white man does it, it’s alright, a black man is supposed to have no feelings. But when a black man strikes back he’s an extremist, he’s supposed to sit passively and have no feelings, be nonviolent, and love his enemy no matter what kind of attack, verbal or otherwise, he’s supposed to take it. But if he stands up in any way and tries to defend himself, then he’s an extremist.

No, I think that the speaker who preceded me is getting exactly what he asked for. My reason for believing in extremism, intelligently directed extremism, extremism in defense of liberty, extremism in quest of justice, is because I firmly believe in my heart, that the day that the black man takes an uncompromising step, and realizes that he’s within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom, or put a halt to that injustice, I don’t think he’ll be by himself. I live in America where there are only 22 million blacks against probably 160 million whites. One of the reasons that I am in no way reluctant or hesitant to do whatever is necessary to see that black people do something to protect themselves, I honestly believe that the day that they do, many whites will have more respect for them, and there’ll be more whites on their side than there are now on their side with these little wishy-washy “love thy enemy” approach that they have been using up until now. And if I am wrong than you are racialist.

As I said earlier, in my conclusion, I’m a Muslim. I believe in Allah, I believe in Mohammed, I believe in all of the prophets, I believe in fasting, prayer, charity, and that which is incumbent on a Muslim to fulfill in order to be a Muslim. In April I was fortunate to make the Hajj to Mecca, and went back again in September, to try and carry out my religious functions and requirements, but at the same time that I believe in that religion, I have to point out that I am an American Negro. And I live in a society whose social system is based upon the castration of the black man, whose political system is based upon castration of the black man, and whose economy is based upon the castration of the black man.

A society which, in 1964, has more subtle, deceptive, deceitful methods to make the rest of the world think that it’s cleaning up its house, while at the same time, the same things are happening to us in 1964 that happened in 1954, 1924 and 1884. They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three civil rights workers were murdered in cold blood. And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they’ve known ever since it happened, and they’ve done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain. No matter how many bills pass, black people in that country, where I’m from, still our lives are not worth two cents. And the government has shown its inability, or either it’s unwillingness to do whatever is necessary to protect black property where the black citizen is concerned. So my contention is that whenever a people come to the conclusion that the government, which they have supported, proves itself unwilling, or proves itself unable to protect our lives and protect our property, because we have the wrong color skin, we are not human beings unless we ourselves band together and do whatever, however, whenever, is necessary to see that our lives and our property is protected, and I doubt that any person in here would refuse to do the same thing if he were in the same position, or I should say were he in the same condition.

Just one step farther to see if I am justified in this stance, and I am speaking as a black man from America which is a racist society, no matter how much you hear it talk about democracy it’s as racist as South Africa or as racist as Portugal or as racist as any other racialist society on this earth. The only difference between it and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don’t practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing. I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.

The system of government that America has consists of committees, there are sixteen senatorial committees that govern the country and twenty congressional committees. Ten of the sixteen senatorial committees are in the hands of southern racialists, senators who are racialists. Thirteen of the twenty, this is before the last election I think it is even more so now, ten of the sixteen senatorial committees are in the hands of senators who are southern racialists, thirteen of the twenty congressional committees were in the hands of southern congressmen who are racialists. Which means out of the thirty-six committees that govern the foreign and domestic direction of that government, twenty-three are in the hands of southern racialists. Men who in no way believe in the equality of man. And men who do anything within their power to see that the black man never gets to the same seat, or to the same level that they’re on. The reason that these men, from that area, have that type of power is because America has a seniority system, and these who have this seniority have been there longer than anyone else because the black people in the areas where they live, can’t vote. And it is only because the black man is deprived of his vote that puts these men in positions of power that gives them such influence in the government beyond their actual intellectual or political ability, or even beyond the number of people from the areas that they represent.

So we can see, in that country, that no matter what the federal government professes to be doing, the power of the federal government lies in these committees and any time a black man or any type of legislation is proposed to benefit the black man, or Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. give the black man his just due, we find that it is locked up in these committees right here. And when they let something through these committees, usually it is so chopped up and fixed up that by the time it becomes law, it is a law that can’t be enforced. 43

Another example is the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision that was handed down in 1954. This is a law, and they have not been able to implement this law in New York City or in Boston or in Cleveland or Chicago or the northern cities. And my contention is that any time you have a country, supposedly a democracy, supposedly the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” and it can’t enforce laws, even in the northern most cosmopolitan and progressive part of it, that will benefit a black man, if those laws can’t be enforced, how much heart do you think we will get when they pass some civil rights legislation which only involves more laws. If they can’t enforce this law, they’ll never enforce those laws.

So my contention is, we are faced with a racialistic society, a society in which they are deceitful, deceptive, and the only way we can bring about a change is speak the language that they understand. The racialists never understands a peaceful language, the racialists never understands the nonviolent language, the racialist has spoken his type of language to us for over four hundred years. We have been the victim of his brutality, we are the ones who face his dogs, who tear the flesh from our limbs, only because we want to enforce the Supreme Court decision. We are the ones who have our skulls crushed, not by the Ku Klux Klan, but by policeman, all because we want to enforce what they call the Supreme Court decision. We are the ones upon whom water hoses are turned on, practically so hard that it rips the clothes from our back, not men, but the clothes from the backs of women and children, you’ve seen it yourself. All because we want to enforce what they call the law. Well any time you live in a society supposedly and it doesn’t enforce its own laws, because the color of a man’s skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice where the government can’t give them justice.

I don’t believe in any form of unjustified extremism. But I believe that when a man is exercising extremism, a human being is exercising extremism, in defense of liberty for human beings, it’s no vice. And when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings, I say he’s a sinner.

And I might add in my conclusion, in fact, America is one of the best examples, when you read its history, about extremism. Ol’ Patrick Henry said “liberty of death”—that’s extremism.

I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare. I only read about him passingly, but I remember one thing he wrote, that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet, I think it was, who said “to be or not to be”. He was in doubt about something. Whether it was nobler, in the mind of man, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune— moderation—or to take up arms against the sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them. And I go for that; if you take up arms you’ll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who is in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time. And in my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change, people in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change. And a better world has to be built and the only way it’s going to be built is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone—don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth. Thank you.

Question Answer

Malcolm X, in the second paragraph, clarifies his thoughts on racial separation? Explain

Also, Malcolm X, in the second paragraph, finds is necessary to defend himself from the previous speaker. Explain.

According to Malcolm X, in the third paragraph, what does the “West” do to those whose opinions fall outside acceptable bounds?

Malcolm X, in the fourth paragraph, describes how he thinks the West defines “radicalism” (acceptable and not) and how he gets past that? Explain.

Relatedly, in the fifth through eighth paragraphs, how does Malcolm contest the “Western” conception of extremism?

In Malcom X’s response to the first question, what does he claim is the double standard regarding the death of certain human beings versus others?

How does he use himself as an example?

How does Malcolm X’s response to the second question reinforce his response to the first question?

In Malcolm X’s response to the second question, what does he think will be the result of what he calls “intelligently directed extremism?” Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

What does Malcolm X mean when 45 he states “And if I am wrong than you are racialist.”?

Also in response to the second question, how does Malcolm X express his frustration with the state of the civil rights movement?

How does Malcolm X think that the United States compares to apartheid South Africa?

Why does Malcolm X discuss the “committee” process in the United States congress?

What does Malcolm X mean when he argues that negroes in the United States must speak the language of the white man?

Why does Malcolm X think that extremism is justified in the case of the Civil Rights Movement? How does he use “white” history to support his claim?

How does Malcolm X use Shakespeare to support his entire thesis?

15 - Malcolm, Sincere Whites (That Coed Again), 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 382-385

Annotation Below is another excerpt taken from Malcolm X’s autobiography. It illustrates the affect Malcolm’s hajj and international trips had on his beliefs, especially his willingness to entertain the possibility of white goodwill and of interracial harmony.

One of the major troubles that I was having in building the organization that I wanted-an all-black organization whose ultimate objective was to help create a society in which there could exist honest white-black brotherhood-was that my earlier public image, my old so-called "Black Muslim" image, kept blocking me. I was trying to gradually reshape that image. I was trying to turn a corner, into a new regard by the public, especially Negroes; I was no less angry than I had been, but at the same time the true brotherhood I had seen in the Holy World had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision.

… I made a lot of speeches, saying: "True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete.

"Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds -- some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists -- some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white!"

…I knew, better than most Negroes, how many white people truly wanted to see American racial problems solved. I knew that many whites were as frustrated as Negroes. I'll bet I got fifty letters some days from white people. The white people in meeting audiences would throng around me, asking me, after I had addressed them somewhere, "What can da sincere white person do?"

When I say that here now, it makes me think about that little co-ed I told you about, the one who flew from her New England college down to New York and came up to me in the Nation of Islam's restaurant in Harlem, and I told her that there was "nothing" she could do. I regret that I told her that. I wish that now I knew her name, or where I could telephone her, or write to her, and tell her what I tell white people now when they present themselves as being sincere, and ask me, one way or another, the same thing that she asked.

The first thing I tell them is that at least where my own particular Black Nationalist organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is concerned, they can't join us. I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are "proving" that they are "with us." But the hard truth is this isn't helping to solve America's racist problem. The Negroes aren't the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their "proving" of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America's racism really is -- and that's in their own home communities; America's racism is among their own fellow whites. That's where the sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work.

…I tell sincere white people, "Work in conjunction with us -- each of us working among our own kind." Let sincere white individuals find all other white people they can who feel as they do-and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist. Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people!

We will completely respect our white co-workers. They will deserve every credit. We will give them every credit. We will meanwhile be working among our own kind, in our own black communities-showing and teaching black men in ways that only other black men can-that the black man has got to help himself. Working separately, the sincere white people and sincere black people actually will be working together.

In our mutual sincerity we might be able to show a road to the salvation of America's very soul. It can only be salvaged if human rights and dignity, in full, are extended to black men. Only such real, meaningful actions as those which are sincerely motivated from a deep sense of humanism and moral responsibility can get at the basic causes that produce the racial explosions in America today…

Question Answer

What did Malcolm describe as a major obstacle hindering his efforts of creating an “honest white-black brotherhood”?

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

47

Why does Malcolm again discuss the coed?

According to Malcolm, what is at stake?

Malcolm X: A Coda Nonetheless, Malcolm’s continual attempts to offer the olive branch – combined wit an important shift in King’s objectives following Selma – have been leading them towards some kind of accord. Both leaders could sense the growing momentum of the mass revolt among African Americans, and the anger and militance percolating up from the bottom compelled them to alter some of their earlier positions. Malcolm was forced to recognize that the mostly nonviolent mass movement in the South had changed the American legal and political order and created much greater opportunity for his kind of nationalist politics. King had to respond to the grassroots approach of SNCC, to the desire of younger blacks for greater solidarity and identification with Africa, and to uprisings by poor blacks in northern ghettos. By the mid-sixties such trends were starting to push Malcolm and King in similar directions. King’s top goal after Selma was to address inner-city poverty. The SCLC know that if King’s antislum crusade ever reached Malcolm’s turn in New York, their efforts could benefit enormously from Malcolm’s rapport with Harlems’ black poor. This strategic consideration and the “new” Malcolm’s oft-stated wish to join in civil rights demonstrations were nudging the two nearer – but not enough time remained to see how this process would play out. Some of Malcolm’s and King’s common influential acquaintances and supporters in New York, such as the writer James Baldwin, actor Ossie Davis, and lawyer Clarence Jones, believed that some type of upcoming cooperative relation between them was likely. During Malcolm’s final days, both camps were sending out feelers about arranging a meeting between the two men sometime soon in New York City. King and Malcolm had spoken by phone about it. But on February 21, 1965, just two days before a scheduled meeting for exploring collaborative possibilities between them, assassins’ bullets cut down Malcolm. Malcolm’s true genius was as an artist of the spoken word. He was in inspirational cultural-psychologist who believed that until an interior change, until the “decolonization of the mind” occurred, external acts to change the world could never materialize. Mental liberation had to precede social liberation. Consequently his greatest success lay in his ability, through his inspiring personal example and moving words, to awaken a proud new consciousness of color in African Americans.

Back to King –

For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions, a little here, a little there. Now I feel differently. I think you’ve got to go for a reconstruction of the entire society, a total revolution of values. -- Martin Luther King

Truly America is much, much sicker than I realized when I began. -- Martin Luther King

Annotation During the last part of each man’s public career – circa 1966-1968 for King, and 1964-65 for Malcolm, the leaders moved so rapidly toward goals and rhetoric more associated with the other that they closed much of their once yawning gap in programs and ideologies. By 1960 King had become deeply disturbed by the rapidly deteriorating state of national affairs, particularly with the explosion of urban riots and was in Vietnam. There were also polarizing pubic opinion trends of urban Black Power movements on the one hand and, on the other, a “white backlash” against further racial protests and support for tough “law and order” responses in urban areas in which riots took place. Driven by a growing sense of frustration after having focused his attention in the North, King struck out ever more boldly and bravely to present solutions for the nations’ severe multiple crises. He was never more discouraged about the prospects for national reform than in the mid to later 1960s.

From mid-1965 on, with legal segregation being substantially dismantled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and African Americans ability to vote largely secured by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, King raised combating poverty and slum conditions in the North to the top of his agenda. The SCLC’s 1966 Chicago Campaign, therefore, focused on achieving materially better and racially open housing in America’s cities. Ironically, this and the Poor People’s Campaign (which was still being organized when King was assassinated), were substantially what Malcolm had recommended back in 1963 as a real, meaningful black counter-protest to that year’s great march on Washington.

Now – to warm up to the next few pieces we will read, let’s watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwy7pWvO3p0 To warm up more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyYdKD0af78 16 –MLK on rioting:

Here's What Martin Luther King Jr. Really Thought About Urban Riots

—By Allie Gross | Wed Apr. 29, 2015

Since the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police, many commentators have stressed the need for peaceful protests, while others have expressed empathy for the violent unrest that soon followed. It wasn't long before some in the former camp invoked the ideas of an iconic civil rights leader: "I just want to hear you say there should be peaceful protests, not violent protests, in the tradition of Martin Luther King," Wolf Blitzer told DeRay McKesson, an activist and community organizer he interviewed on CNN on Tuesday. But what did MLK really think about urban riots? "They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood," King said in a speech at the American Psychology Associations' annual convention in Washington, DC, in September 1967. Here's what else he had to say:

Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity. A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.' The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws 49 on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society. Question Answer

How does MLK feel about rioting?

According to MLK, what is the purpose of African American rioting?

Why does MLK use a quote from Victor Hugo?

List the examples MLK provides of the ways in which “the policymakers of the white society” have caused the “darkness?”

17 – Still not leaving MLK:

What Martin Luther King Jr Really Thought About Riots Lily Rothman April 28, 2015 As the city of Baltimore is shaken by riots in the wake of peaceful protests over the death of Freddie Gray, observers have had cause to reflect on the relationship between nonviolent and violent demonstration. In particular, one quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., has become a touchstone for those who seek to understand why those individuals have taken to the streets: “A riot,” King said, “is the language of the unheard.” The quote is often traced to 1968, but it was actually a frequent rhetorical turn for King, appearing years earlier than that. In 1966, for example, in a Sept. 27 interview, King was questioned by CBS’ Mike Wallace about the “increasingly vocal minority” who disagreed with his devotion to non-violence as a tactic. In that interview, King admitted there was such a minority, though he said that surveys had shown most black Americans were on his side. “And I contend that the cry of ‘black power’ is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro,” King said. “I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.” …The following year (1968), in delivering his “The Other America” speech at Stanford University, King returned to his idea about what goes unheard: …I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. King’s point, though subtle, is clear. He does not support violent tactics, including riots, but he argues that the way to stop citizens from rioting is to acknowledge and fix the conditions that they are rioting against…King also makes the point that those who talk about riots being counterproductive because they caused white backlash are missing the whole picture. “It may well be that shouts of Black Power and riots in Watts and the Harlems and the other areas, are the consequences of the white backlash rather than the cause of them,” he said. Even as major steps forward were taken, steps backward—the backlash, often harder to pin down—were constantly on the horizon. Desegregation was the law of the land and the Civil Rights Act had been passed, but economic inequality and racism were alive and well [I.E. THE NEW CONTEXT!!!!!]. The result was, he posited, despair. Despair is linked to anger, and thus to riots. A few months later, in April of 1968, King was assassinated. Some citizens in cities across the country reacted with what TIME called a “shock wave of looting, arson and outrage.” Those cities included Baltimore. Question Answer

According to MLK, his message still resonates with the black community more so than the message of “black power.” To what, then, does he attribute some of the success of the “black power” movement?

Paraphrase – in bullets – the 1968 quote from MLK.

How does MLK respond to the argument that rioting by blacks causes white backlash?

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

18 – We will view an excerpt form the film “13th,” an Oscar nominated documentary film form 2016 by Ava Duvarney. Excerpt 1 – https://www.screencast.com/t/MgGSqb9T3Nb 51 Excerpt 2 – https://www.screencast.com/t/aLSTxhmrn Excerpt 3 – https://www.screencast.com/t/lvX1jrER6 Excerpt 4 – https://www.screencast.com/t/M78oIECJdd Excerpt 5 – A Coda - https://www.screencast.com/t/GoMoT2INq2 Notes: ______- ______In 13th, Duvarney emphasizes that the current crisis of mass incarceration is directly tied to our country’s legacy and history of slavery. Explain – perhaps a flow chart. ______

19 – King, “A Time to Break the Silence, April 4, 1967. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

YouTube: https://youtu.be/vvbt7n5ND3A

Annotation By 1967, King had become an outspoken critic on the US war in Vietnam. King increasingly considered the goals of advancing human rights and making peace internationally [similar to Malcolm in his Oxford speech], to be inextricably entwined. As his critique of capitalism and of the US government and its foreign policy grew more strident, his support in the government and his popularity in which opinion plummeted. President Lyndon Johnson privately raged against King’s “ungrateful” criticisms of his war policies, and the FBI bugged and harassed him, aiming to destroy his public effectiveness. King’s optimism about whites’ goodwill and reformation waned; he was deeply discouraged in his final years about the nation’s will and direction.

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in New York City on the occasion of his becoming Co-Chairman of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (subsequently renamed Clergy and Laity Concerned.) Titled “Beyond Vietnam,” it was his first major speech on the war in Vietnam— what the Vietnamese aptly call the American War. In these excerpts, King links the escalating U.S. commitment to that war with its abandonment of the commitment to social justice at home. His call for a “shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society” and for us to “struggle for a new world” has acquired even greater urgency than when he issued it decades ago. To be sure, King was somewhat criticized for coming out against the Vietnam War. Many asked why he would feel the need to go public, considering, they thought, that it would take away from his message of racial equality at home. King anticipated their condemnation and responded to his critics in his introduction: “when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live…” King meant that the Vietnam was part of a larger, very militaristic, national malady, the effects of which hurt folks – white and non-white – all over the world. In this speech, he was trying to “save the soul of America.” To him, there was a connection between the decision makers of the United States and their tendency to turn a blind eye toward the true suffering of the Vietnamese people, and the suffering of Americans back home.

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that “America will be” are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. … The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find our-selves organizing Clergy and Laymen Concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. … In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past 10 years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” [applause] Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. … True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A 53 nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. … These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. … Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain …” (53:34-53:44) Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world.

Annotation This speech was a major media event; until this address King had remained mainly silent about the war. King had hoped to persuade some elements of the US government, the national media, and the middle-class African-American establishment. This hope was dashed; immediately after the speech, King was blasted by the national political establishment and press for his “traitorous’ remarks. Negative response to his stand against the war deepened King’s growing sense of urgency and pessimism by the late 1960s about the nation’s ability and will to reform.

Question Answer

What larger national illness does MLK think that the Vietnam War is evidence of?

What 3-4 pieces of evidence does MLK use to defend his claim that the US has a dying soul?

How, according to MLK, can we get on the “right” side of history? The “right” side of the current trend of non-white peoples worldwide shedding their colonial status?

How does MLK define true compassion?

What additional piece of evidence does MLK provide (related to our defense spending) to argue that the US is struggling spiritually?

Does MLK think the US should support the global revolutions?

What course of action does MLK recommend?

20 – King, Where do we Go from Here? August 16, 1967 http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/where_do_we_go_from_here_delivered_at_th e_11th_annual_sclc_convention.1.html

YouTube: https://youtu.be/7qkmTfTbCJg

Annotation On January 7 1966, Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) announced plans for the Chicago Freedom Movement, a campaign that marked the expansion of their civil rights activities from the South to northern cities. King believed that ‘‘the moral force of SCLC’s nonviolent movement philosophy was needed to help eradicate a vicious system which seeks to further colonize thousands of Negroes within a slum environment’’ (King, 18 March 1966). King and his family moved to one such Chicago slum at the end of January so that he could be closer to the movement.

Groundwork for the Chicago Campaign began in the summer of 1965. In July, Chicago civil rights groups invited King to lead a demonstration against segregation in education, housing, and employment. The Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), convened by Chicago activist Albert Raby, subsequently asked SCLC to join them in a major nonviolent campaign geared specifically at achieving fair housing practices. King believed that turning SCLC’s attention to the North made sense: ‘‘In the South, we always had segregationists to help make issues clear.… This ghetto Negro has been invisible so long and has become visible through violence.’’ Indeed, after riots in Watts, Los Angeles, in August 1965, it seemed crucial to demonstrate how nonviolent methods could address the complex economic exploitation of African Americans in the North.

CCCO had already organized mass nonviolent protests in the city and was eager to engage in further action. In addition to tapping into this ready•made movement, Chicago politics made the city a good choice for a northern campaign. Mayor Richard Daley had a high degree of personal power and was in a position to directly mandate changes to a variety of racist practices. In addition to targeting racial discrimination in housing, SCLC launched Operation Breadbasket, a project under the leadership of Jesse Jackson, aimed at abolishing racist hiring practices by companies working in African American neighborhoods. The campaigns had gained momentum through demonstrations and marches, when race riots erupted on Chicago’s West Side in July 1966. During a march through an all-white neighborhood on August 5, black demonstrators were met with racially fueled hostility. Bottles and bricks were thrown at them, and King was struck by a rock. Afterward he noted: ‘‘I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today’’

The title of King’s final presidential address of the 1967 annual convention of the SCLC conference, which was also the title of his last book, indicates his profound concern over the nation’s state. King presented, here before his closest colleagues, his best thinking about how the SCLC should proceed in the present crisis.

This speech shows King in his late, most radical phase. Near its end, King answered his own query, “Where do we go from here?” saying, “The movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society.” This speech Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. reflects King’s considerable similarities with the nationalistic Black Power movement. King endorsed such nationalistic themes as African American cultural pride and building independent black power through self-organization. To be sure, King also reiterated his 55 unconditional commitment to nonviolence.

…In short, over the last ten years the Negro decided to straighten his back up (Yes), realizing that a man cannot ride your back unless it is bent. (Yes, That’s right) We made our government write new laws to alter some of the cruelest injustices that affected us. We made an indifferent and unconcerned nation rise from lethargy and subpoenaed its conscience to appear before the judgment seat of morality on the whole question of civil rights. We gained manhood in the nation that had always called us "boy." It would be hypocritical indeed if I allowed modesty to forbid my saying that SCLC stood at the forefront of all of the watershed movements that brought these monumental changes in the South. For this, we can feel a legitimate pride. But in spite of a decade of significant progress, the problem is far from solved. The deep rumbling of discontent in our cities is indicative of the fact that the plant of freedom has grown only a bud and not yet a flower…

With all the struggle and all the achievements, we must face the fact, however, that the Negro still lives in the basement … He is still at the bottom, despite the few who have penetrated to slightly higher levels. Even where the door has been forced partially open, mobility for the Negro is still sharply restricted. There is often no bottom at which to start, and when there is there's almost no room at the top. In consequence, Negroes are still impoverished aliens in an affluent society. They are too poor even to rise with the society; too impoverished by the ages to be able to ascend by using their own resources. The negro did not do this himself. It was done to him. For more than half is his American history, he was enslaved. Yet, he built the spanning bridges and the grand mansions, the sturdy docks and stout factories of the South. His unpaid labor made cotton "King" and established America as a significant nation in international commerce. Even after his release from chattel slavery, the nation grew over him, submerging him. It became the richest, most powerful society in the history of man, but it left the Negro far behind.

And so we still have a long, long way to go before we reach the promised land of freedom. Yes, we have left the dusty soils of Egypt, and we have crossed a Red Sea that had for years been hardened by a long and piercing winter of massive resistance, but before we reach the majestic shores of the promised land, there will still be gigantic mountains of opposition ahead and prodigious hilltops of injustice. (Yes, That’s right) We still need some Paul Revere of conscience to alert every hamlet and every village of America that revolution is still at hand. Yes, we need a chart; we need a compass; indeed, we need some North Star to guide us into a future shrouded with impenetrable uncertainties.

Now, in order to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus, half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share: There are twice as many unemployed; the rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites; and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population. (Yes) [applause]

In other spheres, the figures are equally alarming. In elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools (Yeah) receive substantially less money per student than the white schools. (Those schools) One-twentieth as many Negroes as whites attend college. Of employed Negroes, seventy-five percent hold menial jobs. This is where we are.

Where do we go from here? First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amid a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being black. (All right) The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is not easy.

Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading. (Yes) In Roget's Thesaurus there are some 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are offensive, such words as blot, soot, grim, devil, and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity, and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie. (Yes) The most degenerate member of a family is the "black sheep." (Yes) Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced to teach the Negro child sixty ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of superiority. [applause] The tendency to ignore the Negro's contribution to American life and strip him of his personhood is as old as the earliest history books and as contemporary as the morning's newspaper. (Yes)

To offset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. (Yes) Any movement for the Negro's freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried. (Yes) As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. (Yes) Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation, no 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. (Oh yeah) I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. (Go ahead) I have a rich and noble history, however painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents (That’s right), and now I’m not ashamed of that. I'm ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave." (Yes sir) Yes [applause], yes, we must stand up and say, "I'm black (Yes sir), but I'm black and beautiful." (Yes) This [applause], this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling (All right) by the white man's crimes against him. (Yes)

Now another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in to economic and political power. Now no one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power. From the old plantations of the South to the newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness (That’s true) and powerlessness. (So true) Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of the white power structure. The plantation and the ghetto were created by those who had power, both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. Now the problem of transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a problem of power, a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo. Now, power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, "Power is the ability of a labor union like UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say, 'Yes' when it wants to say 'No.' That's power." [applause]

Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often we have problems with power. But there is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly.

… What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. (Yes) Power at its best [applause], power at its best is love (Yes) implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. (Speak) And this is what we must see as we move on.

Now what has happened is that we've had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power, and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience…

Now we must develop … a program … that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in the century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual's abilities and talents. And in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We've come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available…

Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problem of housing, education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor, transformed into purchasers, will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay …

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.

Now, our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth. [applause]

Now, let me rush on to say we must reaffirm our commitment to nonviolence. And I want to stress this. The futility of violence in the struggle for racial justice has been tragically etched in all the recent Negro riots. Now … There is something painfully sad about a Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. riot. One sees screaming youngsters and angry adults fighting hopelessly and aimlessly against impossible odds. (Yeah) And deep down within them, you perceive a desire for self-destruction, a kind of suicidal longing. (Yes) 57

…And when one tries to pin down advocates of violence as to what acts would be effective, the answers are blatantly illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state and local governments and they talk about guerrilla warfare. They fail to see that no internal revolution has ever succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence unless the government had already lost the allegiance and effective control of its armed forces. Anyone in his right mind knows that this will not happen in the United States. In a violent racial situation, the power structure has the local police, the state troopers, the National Guard, and finally, the army to call on, all of which are predominantly white. (Yes) Furthermore, few, if any, violent revolutions have been successful unless the violent minority had the sympathy and support of the non-resisting majority. Castro may have had only a few Cubans actually fighting with him and up in the hills (Yes), but he would have never overthrown the Batista regime unless he had had the sympathy of the vast majority of Cuban people. 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 the Negroes themselves.

…And so I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence. (Yes) And I am still convinced [applause], and I'm 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, I'm concerned about a better world. I'm concerned about justice; I'm concerned about brotherhood; I'm concerned about truth. (That’s right) And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. (Yes) Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. (That's right) Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate through violence. (All right, That’s right) Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that. [applause]

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. (Yes) …

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here?" that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. (Yes) There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. (Yes) And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. (Yes) But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. (All right) It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?" (Yes) You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" (Yes) You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?" (All right) These are words that must be said. (All right)

Now, don't think you have me in a bind today. I'm not talking about communism. What I'm talking about is far beyond communism. (Yeah) My inspiration didn't come from Karl Marx (Speak); my inspiration didn't come from Engels; my inspiration didn't come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn't come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago (Well), and I saw that maybe Marx didn't follow Hegel enough. (All right) He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called "dialectical materialism." (Speak) I have to reject that.

What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. (Yes) Capitalism forgets that life is social. (Yes, Go ahead) And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. (Speak) [applause] It is found in a higher synthesis (Come on) that combines the truths of both. (Yes) Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. (All right) These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

…In other words, "Your whole structure (Yes) must be changed." [applause] A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. (Speak) And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. (Yes) And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. (Yes) [applause]

What I'm saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!" [applause] (Oh yes)

And so, I conclude by saying today that we have a task and let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction. (Yes)

Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. (All right)

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. (Yes sir)

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history (Yes), and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home.

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.

Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.

…Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, "White Power!" when nobody will shout, "Black Power!" but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. [applause]

…Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice … This is our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow, with a cosmic past tense, "We have overcome! (Yes) We have overcome! Deep in my heart, I did believe (Yes) we would overcome." [applause]

Question Answer

What metaphor does King use to describe African Americans insisting on equality?

Explain King’s views on African American poverty.

What “R” word does King use to describe the direction the movement needs to take? Why does it sound like?

According to King, what is the current status of the African- American?

According to King, “where do we go from here?” What are the next steps he recommends for the movement? Identify 5 things.

Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

59 What, according to King, would be the result of an increased focus on full employment and a guaranteed income?

King calls for a “restricting the whole of Americans society” and questions who owns (and profits) off of their ownership of human resources. How does King respond to those who would call him Marxist?

What is King referring to when he exclaims “Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.”?

Martin Luther King, Jr: A Coda King and Malcolm’s late agreement on civil rights; concern for the urban poor, and opposition to racism, capitalism, and imperialism were broadly parallel. Indeed, by the time of the above speech, after having spent the previous two or three years voicing ever stronger criticisms of US domestic policy and foreign policy, King’s popularity declined sharply, and he was increasingly seen by whites as an unpatriotic rabble-rouser. As King’s critique of American society grew unmistakably more radical and fiery, his tone also turned harsher and more pessimistic. David Halberstam, who covered King in 1967, wrote that by that year King sounded “like a nonviolent Malcom X.” A widespread tendency to ignore or minimize the later “moderate Malcolm” and “militant Martin” remains a major reason for the common misrepresentation of them as total opposites. Acknowledgement of the words, actions, and beliefs of the two leaders later lives, would complicate the collective white memory of King as the “acceptable negro” and Malcolm as the “angry black man.”

22 - Some last words from Malcolm’s autobiography, which were spoken to Alex Haley shortly before his death The Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 385, 388-389

Every morning when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day. In any city, wherever I go, making speeches, holding meetings of my organization, or attending to other business, black men are watching every move I make, awaiting their chance to kill me. I have said publicly many times that I know that they have their orders. Anyone who chooses not to believe what I am saying doesn't know the Muslims in the Nation of Islam. …Anyway, now, each day I live as if I am already dead, and I tell you what I would like for you to do. When I am dead -- I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form -- I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate." He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol of "hatred" -- and that will help him to escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race. … And since I have been some kind of a "leader" of black people here in the racist society of America, I have been more reassured each time the white man resisted me or attacked me harder -- because each time made me more certain that I was on the right track in the American black man's best interests. The racist white man's opposition automatically made me know that I did offer the black man something worthwhile. Yes, I have cherished my "demagogue" role. I know that societies often have killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America -- then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.

23 - One Last video about King!: https://youtu.be/DX4jn_mClCY Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Final Assessment: 61 How can these great leaders of the modern African American freedom struggle – and their relation to each other – be most accurately understood? When the two were first well known to each other in the early 1960s, they were viewed by virtually everyone – by supporters and detractors, by the vast majority of whites, by most blacks, and by themselves – as ideological nemeses and antagonists on all important questions involving race in America. This view of King and Malcolm as exact opposites continues to have many adherents today (certainly in white-dominated “mainstream” opinion, considerably less so among African Americans). There are reasons, some good, for the predominant dualistic image of King and Malcolm. First, through most of their careers (especially early on), King and Malcolm had very substantial disagreements. A partial list of their areas of major dispute includes: the goals of interracial integration versus black separatism, using only nonviolent means of struggle versus seeking freedom “by any means necessary,” and commitments to Christianity versus Islam. In these and other key areas large gaps separated their positions, especially early on, but their political ideologies began to grow closer in their later years. A second reason for their portrayal as opposites – chiefly, then and now, created and perpetuated by the white-controlled media – resides in widespread white phobias about blacks’ feelings towards whites. Part of slavery’s psychological inheritance in America is whites’ (often repressed) guilty knowledge that their kind has done abominable things to African Americans on their way to becoming the wealthiest and most powerful the planet has ever witnessed. This knowledge makes many whites consciously deny this historical connection between past and present but are still fearful that blacks resent them and wish to take revenge on them. Alternately, whites yearn to believe that, notwithstanding past and present oppression, blacks forgive and accept them. Viewed through the lens of white racial guilt, King and Malcolm appear as symbols of these two so-called opposite black responses towards whites, Malcolm, in the eyes of whites, representing an avenging angel, spewing hatred, and King a saintly figure who would lovingly correct and forgive whites. In background and temperament, the two men were quite dissimilar. Sociologically, too, King and Malcolm were quite dissimilar – other than both being black men in white supremacist America. King was born comfortably middle-class and received exceptional educational opportunities, whereas Malcolm came from a poor broken home, then lived as a semi-illiterate criminal and prisoner before commencing his life’s reformation. King was the kind of respectable and privileged bourgeois Negro for whom Malcolm had contempt; Martin and his wife Coretta regarded the NOI teachings spouted by the younger Malcolm as bizarre. Another reason the dualistic vision of these men’s relationship still circulates is that too little focus tends to be given to each leader’s most advanced, latest thinking (which this packet seeks to rectify). Too many commentators dwell almost exclusively on the men’s early careers in the 1950s and early 1960s, when they functioned mainly as foils to each other. After Malcolm’s acceptance of true Islam and departure from the NOI, he began to favor blacks pursuing traditional civil rights goals of desegregation and voting rights, and he no longer automatically defined whites as unchangeably evil. In his own last years, circa 1966-1968, King, now increasingly active in Northern cities, and expanding his activities towards economic justice, nearly as dramatically revised his own views on such things as the nature and tenacity of white racism, which was far deeper and harder to remove than he had earlier imagined, and on the extent of the many systematic changes that needed to be made in US society to eradicate racism and remedy its damage. Alas, as far as the collective memory of King goes, he might as well have died in 1963 too. As King widened his view of the structural evils plaguing American society by stressing the evils of poverty and imperialism and went beyond civil rights in identifying their solution, he moved rapidly toward views and rhetoric more associated with Malcolm than his younger self. Additionally, King and Malcolm themselves understood the “good cop/bad cop” aspect of their public persona that existed, especially among white folks. They grasped the value to civil rights forces of having the “scary” nationalists around to point to as the alternative if whites refused to deal forthrightly with more reasonable, “responsible Negro leaders.” King often made references to the nationalists with the implied threat that blacks might turn to such philosophies if the nonviolent movement’s demands for change we rent met. Malcolm, in true rhetorical form, put it most bluntly: He claimed he had “made the whole civil rights movement become more militant, and more acceptable to the white power structure. The white man would rather have them than us.” To be sure, Malcolm, even in his later years, remained adamant about black people’s right to self-defense and to wage their freedom struggle “by any means necessary.” Even if he did hedge slightly in his new moderate image by suggesting that violent self-defense might prove unnecessary, Malcolm never wavered in asserting the simple intelligence, in any event, of being seen as ready and willing to use it. For his part, King likewise never fully retreated from his unconditional moral and tactical commitment to nonviolence. It is difficult to see his this impasse between King and Malcolm on violence’s role in the liberation movement could ever have been bridged. At the time of his death, Malcolm’s refusal to reject the possibility of physical self-defense (or retaliation) during demonstrations still kept King from permitting Malcolm to participate in any event in which King took part. Of course, it is possible that one or both of them might yet have gone on to revise significantly their positions on that issue. Even is no such compromise ever occurred, they could conceivably have found a way to disagree on that and still explore areas for cooperation, particularly in inner-city settings. It must be remembered that each side was taking steps toward opening a dialogue between the leaders to explore just such possibilities. It looked like Malcolm’s overtures to King, which started with that brief handshake in the Capitol, were finally about to pay off. But then, two days before they were scheduled finally to meet again, Malcolm was tragically cut down in a hail of bullets, leaving everyone afterward with only tantalizing “what ifs” and irresolvable conjecture about the future course of these great leaders relations. The influence of King and Malcolm did not end with their lives, for they have achieved mythic status and their images carry enormous symbolic weight. Although white Americans are almost universal in their reverence for King, that is significantly less true about Malcolm. Indeed, when King’s birthday became a national holiday in 1983, he joined George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln as the only Americans so honored. Despite some conservatives who insist that King was a Communist stooge, or agent, or a moral reprobate undeserving of public esteem, King’s stature as a heroic icon is nearly as universal among whites ad blacks. Although among African Americans Malcolm is as revered as King, Malcolm’s iconic stature among whites is far less universal, as many whites still see Malcolm as a ranting, crazed white-hater. Indeed, our memory of the mythic leaders gets flattened and drained of complexity. Their body of work is often simplified and distorted. Precisely because King and Malcolm continue to influence people potently, however, and because of the conflicting purposes for which they are used by modern public figures, it is vital for educated people to know some of the real range and depth of their thought and leadership. Otherwise, how can one help but be misled and manipulated by simplistic (Wolf Blitzer-ish!) or outright false images of them put out be interested parties with an agenda? No one-dimensional, frozen snapshots of them viewed outside the totality of their evolving lives and ideas will do. How tragic it would be it most people got beyond crude caricatures: Malcom as raving racial fanatic and King as mild, harmless saint. If King and Malcolm’s messages and lives still hold relevance for a society not completely delivered form personal and structural racism, and a world still with too many people who are unfree and poor, if we can learn anything worthwhile from them in a world of rising ethnic and racial conflict and hatred, then we owe it to ourselves and posterity to look at these leaders and their ideas in a manner approaching their true depth and complexity.

Now that you hopefully have a very intelligent understanding of the key ideas of the two leaders/strategies, you are ready, as reporters, to complete your culminating task of writing a persuasive column for a journal/magazine.

The article should include the following points:

a. An introduction, including gobs of specific details about conditions facing black Americans then and now, using info gleaned from your two years of studying US history, and from our many packets. You will also need to be aware of some current events); b. A section explicating the evolving argument of Malcolm X's vision and, c. A section explicating the evolving argument of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision and, d. A section in which you will discuss the extent to which our memories of King versus Malcolm may differ from the reality, and, e. A concluding section in which you discuss why we need to understand this; in other words, how knowing this stuff can help us today. In this section, you are to move outside our classwork and conduct research. You are to take a deep dive into the provided website.

Other Requirements:

• Gobs of research for your conclusion (the modern connection) – use the research website devoted to this essay! You are to use at least 5 sources from the provided website. • Typed • Clever Title of your essay, often chosen after completing the essay • Minimum 2000+ words (one typed, double spaced page is about 250 words -- so think at least 8 pages) • By-line • 3+ images (with caption) required • Citations of primary sources (i.e. the speeches/writings we studied in the packet, sources from website, outside research). o This is to be done in Chicago Style with Footnotes and Endnotes o You can cite the source as a website when that is all provided (ie. Follow the link). When I give the name of the publication, cite it as such. The idea is to practice using a citation method. I will provide a short handout showing you what Chicago Style looks like. o If you use information from any of the text boxes in this packet, they were most influence by David Howard- Pitney’s Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. Find the book online to get the proper citation information. o If you use information from any of the selections of Malcolm X’s autobiography that he co-wrote with Alex Haley, the page numbers for each selection are indicated throughout, and the pagination refers to the 1999 Ballantine Books edition. (https://tinyurl.com/y73md6oc)