Raymond Fisher: Martin Luther King & Malcolm X Debate

Source:Real Life Journal

The Ali-Frazier of the American civil rights movement and what made this debate inside the African-American civil rights movement so interesting was how different the personalities of Martin King and Malcolm X were. And their different strategies and tactics in accomplishing what they wanted which was freedom, civil rights the constitutional rights to be enforced equally under law for African-Americans.

Martin King played the numbers game so to speak. Knowing that African-Americans only represented around ten percent of the population at this point. Knew that he would need the support of others in the country to accomplish his goals. Including like-minded Caucasian-Americans, as well as Jewish-Americans and Latino-Americans. In order to build the movement to pass the laws he was in favor of. Malcolm X took a more unrealistic approach which was that “we are here and want what is already entitled to us. Which is our freedom and since the Caucasians are in charge, they should simply just give our freedom to us.”

Dr. King had the approach that brought about the civil rights laws of the 1960s and all of those victories. But Malcolm X had a better post-civil rights movement approach for how to fix the African-American community going forward. Which was about individual freedom based through education, economic expansion, for the African-Americans to have the resources to build their communities and run their own business’s. Whereas Dr. King had more of a government centric, pubic assistance approach. That government should just give poor people money and take care of them.