Black History Certainly, This Early

Black History

Certainly, this early phase in what we would call the modern civil rights movement was dominated like individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr. They worked for rights for African-Americans and many for integration. To begin with, individual and small group organizing and planning happed. Their methods were legal and passive. However, they were far from a united front. But they were totally united behind the principles of non-violence as a maxim in what they did. It is impossible for this author in this short essay to do justice to the broad spectrum of individuals that made miracles happen, but tragically were not totally successful. In that vein, we will examine a case study of the relationship that developed between Dr. King and his attorney Clarence Jones with regard to the motion of that relationship. It captures so much of the splits in the civil rights movement, but also the things that united disparate people to crusade for equal rights for blacks (Jones, 2008).

Jones was not initially involved at all, but was tapped by King because of his skills to work on behalf of King and the SCLC. Jones had gone to Los Angeles as a copyright attorney. One of the last immediate things on his radar screen was fighting for civil rights. He was simply happy to have a comfortable income and to have made it out of poverty and to support his family. King inspired him to give to his people through his legal brilliance, helping King in a number of harassment lawsuits against him and as a prominent speech writer. What King encouraged him to do was not to forget where he came and to fight for his people with his talents. The struggle united them in the buildup to the March on Washington, D.C. (ibid.). While one understands the frustrations of Malcolm X with the nonviolence pledge, it accomplished very much.

Question #3

One has to understand Malcolm X, probably more than every other black leader because he truly was in all the places that a black person has been. Like most blacks, his ancestors had been raped by white slaveholders. His name X cried out for the tribal heritage denied to him. He saw his activist father murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and his grieving mother end up in an asylum. He was in poverty, in jail, educated himself and pulled himself up by his shoestrings through his own volition via a religious conversion experience. He even had an epiphany of seeing Muslims of all colors at Mecca to kill his own bigotry and hatred, something that may lead to his own downfall in the end. All of these are the experiences of black people as a whole, unite them and inspire blacks to follow his example through self-improvement to better themselves. However, this is not enough. When attacked, they must defend by any means which an ordinary human being would find morally justifiable. This is why his ideas were so broad based and encompassed all blacks. He believed not just in their education and self-defense, but that they become self sufficient and not dependent upon whites. This was initially through the agencies of the Nation of Islam ("Malcolm x biography," 2011).

His ideas certainly changed over time. At first, he favored an Afrocentric viewpoint calling for black power through the nation of Islam. However, after his trip to Mecca, Malcolm X started to preach a universal message because he saw peoples of all colors at Mecca. He participated in demonstrations and boycotts and attempted to organize the black community economically. When he broke with Elijah Muhammad, he formed his own organization. The criticism of Malcolm X was not just due to his radicalism, but due to Afrocentrism (ibid.).

Question#5 Why do you think many people assume African-Americans are united on all issues?