I always believed that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had more in common than most mainstream media, pundits or historians would ever admit publicly. In his outstanding classic, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare, professor James H. Cone outlined comprehensively how Martin & Malcolm, two seeming polar opposites, were actually much more alike – and in ways most never fathomed.
“Although the media portrayed them as adversaries, Martin and Malcolm were actually fond of each other,” Cone writes in the book. “There was no animosity between them. They saw each other as a fellow justice-fighter, struggling against the same evil—racism—and for the same goal-freedom for African Americans.”
Their fondness for each other could be confirmed in the famous 1964 photo when the two hooked up for their first — and only — face-to-face meeting in Washington D.C. It could also be seen in the way in which Malcolm told Coretta Scott King personally that he would try to make things easier for her husband. If the Southern racists believed that Malcolm was now coming South and could employ self defense and harsh talk, not nonviolence, then Malcolm reasoned that people would be more willing to agree to Martin’s more digestible terms.
Though the mainstream and many of their followers were clueless, both men tried to help each other. Why? For the following reasons.
Both fought for human rights and civil liberties for African Americans, though they administered different tactics to achieve the same goal. Dr. Torrence Stephens gave a great sports analogy, saying Martin & Malcolm back in the day was like two teams playing AFC and the NFC of the National Football League. They may have been in different conferences, but they were in the same overall league.
Both men were strong believers in self-help and taking action instead of waiting on the so-called benevolence of whites to procure their God-given rights. Both men believed strongly that whites were NOT superior to African Americans.
Both men were ravenous readers and both men implored their followers to study their history to gain understanding of their own historical greatness.
Both men were deeply spiritual men, though Martin was obviously a Christian whereas Malcolm converted to Islam while holed up in prison. Both men were birthed into religious traditions. Martin Sr. was pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, while Malcolm’s father was a minister and a Garveyite [a believer in the philosophy of Marcus Garvey] before he was murdered by white supremacists for daring to speak out against racism.
Both men believe in unqualified freedom, justice and equality for African Americans, though Martin believe it could be achieved through integration and Malcolm at first believed that total separation from racist whites would accomplish the same objective [Malcolm would later amend his philosophy after breaking with the Nation of Islam in 1964, traveling to Mecca and changing his name to El Hajj Malik El Shabazz].s
Both men were nonviolent, although Malcolm believed in self defense, in such case means self preservation, not violence. Malcolm also spoke often with such forcefulness and viciousness in his voice that people wrongly believed that he advocated violence.
Both men were being tailed relentlessly by agencies within the intelligence community, particularly by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, under a highly-illegal program called COINTELPRO or Counterintelligence Program. Both were surrounded by government spies and stool-pigeons who were planted within their organizations to disrupt their movements and cause internal discord and strife. In fact, the head of Malcolm’s security detail was a member of the New York Police Department’s intelligence division.
Both men forecasted their own deaths. And both men knew they would die violently. Malcolm told his co-writer of the Autobiography of Malcolm X that he did not believe that he would live long enough to see the book published. He was right. And Martin’s speech the night before his own assassination has become the stuff of legend. Both men were killed at age 39.
In short, both men employed different rhetors with different rhetorics because of different situations, different audiences, with different immediate goals. However, near the close of both men’s lives — Malcolm X was killed in Feb. 1965 and Martin King in April 1968 –Malcolm’s rhetoric began to resemble Martin‘s; and Martin’s began to speak even more forcefully, not unlike Malcolm had been known to do previously.
Why did they sound so much alike near the end of their lives? Because they were never that much different from the beginning. — terry shropshire
