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Malcolm X believed that if white people truly desired black Americans to be citizens, there would have been no need for protests, experiences of police violence, or brutality. Children wouldn't have had to face integration challenges at Little Rock High School, and young people wouldn't have had to endure arrests and brutality at lunch counters.
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One of the main criticisms against Malcolm X was his perceived advocacy for racial separatism. However, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam did not espouse segregation but rather separatism. In debates with figures like Bayard Rustin, Jim Farmer, James Baldwin, Louis Lomax, and others, Malcolm X argued that racial separatism was necessary because white people did not want Black people to be equal citizens with dignity.
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Meanwhile, Malcolm X was a minister and prominent national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam. Nevertheless, their approaches to achieving racial justice and equality in the United States are widely perceived as divergent.
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Additionally, the two men diverged in matters of religion, which strongly influenced their respective philosophies. King, a Christian Baptist pastor, led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and delivered his message primarily within churches.
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Malcolm X championed complete racial separation, rejecting any form of integration, and opposing King's philosophy of nonviolence as a form of protest. Malcolm X viewed King's nonviolent approach as defenseless against white racism.
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Although both men emerged as influential voices in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X differed significantly in their philosophies and approaches to addressing racial inequality. King advocated for nonviolent direct action and complete integration as the means to achieve full civil rights, contrasting with his fellow activist.
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Malcolm X then became a convert to the Nation of Islam and significantly raised the religious movement’s profile, preaching his message first on street corners and then moving to larger venues as the movement grew in popularity.
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The Nation of Islam preached self-reliance, non-destructive behavior, strict discipline, and advocated for the eventual repatriation of blacks to Africa to achieve true liberation from white supremacy. In 1950, having fully embraced the teachings, Malcolm replaced his birth surname "Little" with "X," symbolizing the African family name that had been denied to him.
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Malcolm X's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement began after he transformed his life following a period of incarceration and aligned himself with the Nation of Islam. While in prison, his siblings wrote to him, sharing the beliefs of this new religious movement, which advocated for complete racial separation as the solution to the challenges faced by black Americans.
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At the end of the day, standing at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now-legendary "I Have a Dream" speech. Rooted in biblical and constitutional ideals, his words conveyed the hope that his dream of equality for all would one day become a reality.
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As Civil Rights protests spread across the South and the nation, King continued to blend peaceful methods of protest with his theological training, striving for equal rights for African Americans. On August 28, 1963, King participated in the March on Washington, a rally where 250,000 people of all races expressed their support for the civil rights bill pending in Congress.
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As the primary representative of the group during the boycott, King successfully employed protest strategies that involved mobilizing the African-American community through their churches and drawing inspiration from the nonviolent protest methods pioneered by Indian civil rights activist Mahatma Gandhi.
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In 1955, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a prominent voice in the Civil Rights movement when he assumed leadership of the Montgomery Improvement Association as a newly appointed pastor in Montgomery, Alabama. The association was formed to coordinate the Montgomery bus boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger.
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These two men became each other's "alter ego." Malcolm X injected political radicalism into the national scene, which made Dr. King and his movement more acceptable to mainstream Americans.
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From the very start, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had contrasting upbringings. King hailed from a prominent middle-class family deeply rooted in the community, representing the atypical experience of southern Black individuals. Conversely, Malcolm X endured a lifetime of trauma, commencing with his father's murder and the terror inflicted upon his mother and siblings by the Ku Klux Klan.
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