Comparison of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X Essay Example for Free

Comparison of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X EssayThey were disconsolate men who had a dream, but never lived to see it fulfilled. unmatchable was a man who spoke out to all humanity, but the world was not yet ready for his peaceful words. I have a dream, a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men atomic number 18 created equal. (Martin Luther King) The other, a man who spoke of a violent revolution, which would bring about radical change for the benighted race. Any issue you can think of that you want to change right field now, the only way you can do it is with a ballot or a bullet.And if youre not ready to get knobbed with either one of those, you ar satisfied with the status quo. That operator well have to change you. (Malcom X) While Martin Luther King promoted non-violence, civil rights, and the end to racial requisition, a man of the name of Malcom X dreamed of a separate nation. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the conscience of his generation. A Southerner, a black man, he gazed upon the great wall of segregation and saw that the power of lovemaking could bring it down.From the pain and exhaustion of his fight to free all people from the bondage of separation and injustice, he wrung his eloquent statement of what America could be. (Ansboro, pg. 1) An American man of the cloth and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, he was one of the principle attractions of the American Civil Rights Movement and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest. Kings challenges to segregation and racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s, helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States.After his assassination in 1968, King became the symbol of protest in the struggle for racial justice. (King, Martin Luther, Jr. , pg. 1) In 1964, Malcom X founded an organization called The Muslim Mosque, Inc. In an interview conducted by A. B. Spellman on March 19, 1964, Mal com speaks of his goals for this organization. The Muslim Mosque, Inc. will have as its religious base the religion of Islam, which will be designed to propagate the moral reformations necesary to up the aim of the alleged(prenominal) Negro community by eliminating the vices and other evils that destroy the moral fiber of the community.But the political philosophy of the Muslim Mosque will be black nationalism, as well as the social and economic philosophies. We still believe in the Honorable Elijah Muhammands solution as complete separation. The 22 million so-called Negroes should be separated completely from America and should be permitted to go back home to our native African homeland. (Breitmaned, pgs. 5-6) Perhaps the key to these two African-Americans leaders fence goals lay within their very different pasts. Malcom X was born in Omaha as Malcom Little.Malcoms faith, a Baptist look was an outspoken follower of Marcus Garvey, the black nationalist leader of the 1920s. The f amily moved to Lansing, Michigan, and when Malcom was six years old, his father was murdered after receiving threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Malcoms mother suffered a nervous breakdown and her eight children were taken by the welfargon department. Malcom was send first to a foster home and then to a reform school. After 8th grade, Malcom moved to Boston whither he worked various jobs and eventually became involved in criminal activity. (Malcom X, pg. 1) In 1946, he was sentenced to prison for burglary.While in prison, Malcom became invested in the teachings of Elijah Muhammed, the leader of the black Muslims also called the Nation of Islam. Malcom spent his time in jail educating himself and learning more about the black Muslims, who advocated racial separation. When Malcom was released in 1952, he joined a black Muslim temple in Detroit and became the intimately prominent spokesperson for the Nation of Islam by the early 1960s. It was then that he took the name of Malcom X. (Malcom , pg. 1) Martin Luther King was born in Alanta, Georgia, the eldest son of Martin Luther King, Sr. a Baptist minister, and Alberta Williams King. King attended local segregated public schools, where he excelled. He entered nearby Morehouse College at age 15 and graduated with a bachelors degree in sociology in 1948. After graduating with honors from Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania in 1951, he went to Boston University where he earned a doctoral degree in self-opinionated theology in 1955. (King, Martin Luther, Jr. , pg. 1) Throughout Kings education, he was exposed to influences that related Christian theology to the struggles of oppressed peoples.At Morehouse, Crozer, and Boston University, he studied the teachings on nonviolent Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. King also read and heard the sermons of white Protestant ministers who preached against American racism. He was married in 1953, and in 1954, he accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, a church of well-educated congretions that had recently by a minister who had protested against segregation. (King, Martin Luther, Jr. , pg. 1) Where as King was full of love, peace, respect, and compassion for his fellow white brother, Malcom X was full of hate, anger, and vengeance.He was a dark presence, an angry, cynical, implacable man whose well will or forgiveness or even pity the white race could neither earn nor buy. Coffee, he once remarked in an interview, is the only thing I like integrated. He also pleasantly mentioned that whites were inherently enemies of the Negroes and that integration was impossible without great bloodletting. Nonviolence was as he put it, a mealy-mouth, beg-in, wait-in, plead-in soma of action, and it was only a device for disarming the blacks.He also believed that everything we had heard to the contrary from the Martin Luther Kings and the Roy Wilkinses and the Whiteny Youngs was a deadly dangerous pack of lies. Thats etiq uette, he said. Etiquette means to survive in with society. They are being polite. The average Negro doesnt even let another Negro know what he thinks, hes so mistrusting. Im black first- my whole objectives are black, my allegiance is black, my whole objectives are black. By me being a Muslim, Im not interested in American, because America has never been interested in me. (Goldman, pg. 5)Black blood, claimed Malcom X, is stronger than white. A person can have a teaspoon of black in him, and that makes him black. Black cant come from white, but white can come from black. That means black was first. If black is first, black is supreme and white is dependent on black. He meant to haunt whites, to play on their fears and quicken their guilt and deflate their dreams that everything was acquire let on- and he did. Americas problem is us. Malcom X told whites that if they argued that the sins of the past ought not to visited on them, he would reply Your father isnt here to pay his d ebts.My father isnt here to collect, but Im here to collect, and youre here to pay. (Goldman, pgs. 6-9) Martin Luther King is known for his key role as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), the oganixation that directed the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Montgomerys black community had long standing grievances about the mistreatment of blacks on the citys buses. Many white bus drivers treated blacks rudely, often cursing them and humiliating them by enforcing the citys segregation laws, which squeeze black riders to sit in the back of busses and give up their seats to white passengers on crowded busses.By the 1950s, Montgomerys blacks discussed boycotting the busses in an effort to gain better treatment- but not necessarily to end segregation. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a leading member of the local branch of the NAACP, was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger. When she refused, she was arrested and taken to jail. Local leaders of the NA ACP, especially Edgar D. Nixon, recognized recently arrived Kings public speaking gifts as great assets in the contest for black civil rights in Montgomery. King was soon chosen as president of the MIA, the organization that directed the bus boycott.