Martin Luther King Jr. Vs Malcolm X: The Impact

Categories: HistoryMalcolm X

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X were both influential people within the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King and Malcolm X both fought for the same issues, but they had different means of going about the situation at hand. One wanted to use nonviolent acts to raise awareness and fight the cause. The other decided that nonviolent acts would get us nowhere and that we need to fight harder than we were to get where we wanted to be. They both wanted the same outcome and had different means to get it.

Yet, they were both incredibly influential within the Civil Rights Movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that nonviolence was key to getting a better life for African Americans. Malcolm X believed that the black community should focus and rely on themselves to solve their issues and create better lives for themselves. Dr. King believed that peaceful protests were more beneficial than rioting and fighting. He wanted the world to stop seeing African Americans as “aggressive” and to stop being afraid of us.

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He wanted unity between races and for African Americans to be treated with respect the way that we so rightfully deserve. However, his peaceful protests still ended himself as well as others in the state penitentiary. While Dr. King was in prison, he wrote a letter than changed the wave of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King wrote the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on the sixteenth of April in 1963. The next year, Malcolm X wrote his “By Any Means Necessary” Speech on the twelfth of December in 1964.

The two leaders had separate goals.

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Yet the goals of Dr. King and Malcolm X have been around since the 1960s and are closely related. The two sides had a lot of supporters, yet one was smarter for the period of the Civil Rights Movement. The way of thinking of Dr. King was increasingly helpful during the Civil Rights Movement, contrasted with the way of thinking of Malcolm X. This is due to Dr. King’s lectures about correspondence and needing society to see each other as equivalents. Dr. King stopped segregation in the South by having nonviolent protests that helped enable Black individuals to cast a ballot and pushed integration into social settings. As far as that period, those means that Dr. King took were critical. African Americans could begin getting an equivalent balance in specific regions of America. Dr. King’s peaceful fights and letters from prison helped push the development ahead as it proved his pledge to the cause. Dr. King never stopped pushing for equality and his actions forced legislative decisions to be made. Dr. King’s mindset about equality helped the African American community to prosper and helped changed America as a whole.

However, while Dr. King's way of thinking was necessary for African Americans to understand within the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm X still had valid points that African Americans need to pay attention to. Malcolm was an amazing man, who could motivate others and make them see that they should want more for themselves. Be that as it may, his motivation was not what the Civil Rights Movement required then. America has somewhat consistently managed the issues of racial imbalance, however during the 1960s there was an opportunity for change to have been made. Integration was a major push that looked towards uniformity on all sides. Malcolm's way of thinking of the African American community staying with themselves was anything but a horrible idea, however it would have halted the civil rights movement at that point. Even though, it is significant for the African American network to remain together and learn to work out its issues within itself, the Civil Rights Movement allowed African American individuals to step out of their customary range of familiarity and develop in a multitude of ways including: financially and socially.

Malcolm's way of thinking was pushing the other way in which would have prevented the movement from occurring in that timespan. While Malcolm was posing acceptable inquiries that the African American community should think about during the 1960s, that perspective was going to expand the racial issues within America and cause more issues with. Malcolm's method for going about things could have aggravated African Americans and stopped them from increasing new information on innovation or learning certain exchanges or aptitudes that were kept from the African American community. Which is the reason Malcolm's way of thinking was not the correct way to go about the situation during this time.

Dr. King's way of thinking was essential for the social equality development. In this period, however, his way of thinking isn't what the African American community needs as of now. Integration began happening again 50 years back, yet in specific pieces of the nation, racism is still as common as it was before the Civil Rights Movement. The peaceful protests will no longer work. We have tried to be peaceful and our people are still beaten, killed, and thrown in jails. America has changed and has advanced to a point where we have even had our first African American president. Along these lines, combination and balance have made progress, yet abhor wrongdoings and racial imbalance are still present.

Even though, Dr. King's way of thinking may not be what the present society needs, Malcolm X has the perspective we need. Malcolm was inconsistent clash with Dr. King's uniformity and reconciliation development. In the 1960s integration and unity appeared as though a superior arrangement for all of America would be pushing ahead. In any case, since it has been a long time since the Civil Rights Movement, and African American individuals are still being cruelly treated based totally on the deepness of the shade of their skin. Something needs to change in the manner racial issues are being dealt with in America. Just like the movement states, Black Lives Matter. We deserve to be treated as human beings and not less than. We as a people are not inferior to other races and we deserve repercussions.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were both influential leaders within this period. They are two key components within the Civil Rights Movement that paved the way for our generation. Martin Luther King’s Letter helped to push African Americans to continue to fight peacefully and win. That worked but it still was not enough. Now we need the ideals of Malcolm X to truly be treated as equals instead of as inferior beings.

Works Cited

  • Swap.stanford.edu. 2020. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 April 2020].
  • Mrmansfield.com. 2020. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 April 2020].
Updated: Oct 10, 2024
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Martin Luther King Jr. Vs Malcolm X: The Impact. (2021, Apr 26). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/martin-luther-king-jr-vs-malcolm-x-the-impact-essay

Martin Luther King Jr. Vs Malcolm X: The Impact essay
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