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.