Malcolm X Martin Luther King

Malcolm X Martin Luther King Jr.

Civil Rights -- an International Movement for Justice

Both Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X were assassinated at a time when they began to develop a more international perspective on the condition of African-Americans. What are the implications of each leader's changing perspective?

Although Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X are associated with different factions of the American Civil Rights movement, both leaders brought an international perspective to the persecution of African-Americans. Martin Luther King Jr., even though he was largely identified as a speaker mainly concerned about the fate of African-Americans within the U.S. borders, initially adopted the Indian nationalist Gandhi's strategy of nonviolence to claim the rights of African-Americans to equal treatment under the law. King was a Christian minister, yet he was able to see the parallels between the oppression of his people within the borders of America with that of the oppressed Hindu and Muslim nationals of India in their colonized context.

Malcolm X began his life as Malcolm Little, an admitted drug addict and criminal, who was redeemed through Islam, a non-American religion, and framed his own redemption in the context of a conversion narrative, and a narrative of nationalism that ultimately allied armed colonial struggle with the fight for African-American rights: "The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rifle," he said in one of his addresses making an analogy between the violent (as opposed to non-violent) colonial resistance of the successful Islamic resistance against the French in Algiers with the struggle of his people at home.

Malcolm X famously refused to foreswear all violence unlike Martin Luther King, Jr. The title of his 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet," still suggested that the ballot, or voting and participating in American civic institutions were not enough to win justice for African-Americans. "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," Malcolm X preached (427). In short, greater participation with the American system would be like the oppressed individuals in French-controlled Algiers demanding to be given full French citizenship rather than independence. Colonialism was unjust, and the extrication of Blacks from African had been unwilling, and thus Blacks had more in common with Africans than White Americans. As Malcolm X was later to say in an address on Afro-American unity: "we strongly believe that African problems are our problems and our problems are African problems," because of Black history (427).

Malcolm was outraged and what he saw as a divide and conquer strategy between the plights of oppressed Africans in places such as South Africa. Of one senator: "He said the Africans are not interested in the American Negro. I knew he was lying, but during the next two or three weeks it's my intention and plan to make a tour of our African homeland" (427). Even after he broke with Elijah Mohammad, Malcolm X identified as a Muslim: "I'm still a Muslim. That is, my religion is still Islam. My religion is still Islam. I still credit Mr. Mohammed for what I know and what I am" (427). His philosophy was no pro-violence, he merely believed that one should not turn the other cheek when one was colonized: "The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community...The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that if you and I are going to live in a Black community -- and that's where we're going to live, 'cause as soon as you move into one of their -- soon as you move out of the Black community into their community, it's mixed for a period of time, but they're gone and you're right there all by yourself again," he said (427). Malcolm X was so frightening to Whites not simply because of his refusal to announce violence, but because of his location of American oppression in a larger global and historical context. America was not a uniquely good and pure nation; it had committed the same abuses as South Africa and England upon minorities within its borders and community mobilization and empowerment was the solution to colonial oppression.