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Malcolm x vs martin luther king jr.: comparison between two great leaders’ ideologies .

Oct 24, 2021

The Civil Rights Movement against racism of the 1960s in the US gave birth to some of the most global-scale renowned activists. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, we all know these two great men. It is impossible to analyze the twentieth-century race conflicts without mentioning these two people. They are the civil rights leaders who have genuinely made a big change on the issue of racial equality in the US and around the world.

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What is most intriguing is that, although they were fighting for civil rights at the same time, their ideology and way of fighting were completely distinctive. This can be for a plethora of reasons: background, upbringing, the system of thought, and vision. But keep in mind, they devoted their whole life to the same prospect. 

So, what influenced the direction of these two's struggles? And in retrospect, can we figure out which ideal is more probable? 

Let's dig in! 

Table of Contents

Disparities in upbringings development , criminal vs pastor , christianity vs islam , identical fight, distinctive approaches , nothing but severe conflict , no right or wrong answer for all this stuff , they both fought for one future .

It can be said that the family situation has the most decisive influence on the ideology of the two civil rights activists. 

Malcolm X's childhood was as tragic as most black children at that time. Born into a poor and child-crowded family in Ohama to one of the black activist parents, Malcolm grew up under the threat and discrimination of white people. After many times suffering from beating, threatening, and enduring the pain of losing his father when he was only 6 years old, the terror and hatred towards white supremacists reached their peaks. 

Having been repeatedly bullied at work while trying to take care of her children, Louise Little (Malcolm X’s mother) suffered from severe mental health problems. She then was forced to send Malcolm X and his siblings to different charity houses. During this process, teenager Malcolm had to fight tooth and nail with white supremacists everywhere. Besides, joining gangs also made Malcolm understand how difficult life was for black people. With an insecure standard of living, low educational attainment, and oppression in every way, most African-Americans have become victims of violence, evils, alcohol abuse, rape, and many other crimes.

Malcolm X licensed under CC BY

Later in his civil rights activity, we can see that Malcolm's early concerns are still rather significant. Aside from unfavorable perceptions about white people, he felt that peaceful cohabitation between the two races was impossible. More crucially, the black community must resort to violence to fight for their rights. 

Martin, in another development, represents the rare middle-class black family with status in society. He was born into the family of a Baptist pastor. The wealth and status of his family allowed Martin early access to a higher level of knowledge than most blacks at the time. 

Unlike Malcolm's more extreme experiences, Martin experienced class inequality to a higher degree. For him, equality is more than just being provided with the most basic needs of the oppressed race. According to the martin ideal, equality must be present in the absolute harmony between the races and the eradication of all racial distinctions. That is, black people could achieve the same freedoms and rights as white people or any other color in the world. 

Despite his unstable home life, Malcolm was successful at school. Unlike the other children at the detention center who were sent to a reformatory, Malcolm was allowed to attend Mason Middle School, the only regular middle school in town. 

By the time he was in middle school, Malcolm had earned the best grades even among his white classmates. However, a white teacher told Malcolm he couldn't become a lawyer but should consider becoming a carpenter instead. Malcolm was so disturbed by the remarks that he dropped out right after finishing grade 8.  

After moving to Boston, Malcolm fell prey to the social evils here. This was the time when he started the heist, gambling, drug dealing, and bloody gang killings. After several attempts to circumvent the law, Malcolm was arrested in February 1946 for theft and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was sent to Charlestown State Prison in Boston. 

A mugshot of Malcolm X in 1944 , Public domain

Pastor Martin, on the contrary, goes further in his studies than anyone else. Entering university at the age of 15, having 2 university degrees, becoming a doctor of philosophy at the age of 26, Martin's talent is undeniable. In addition, he also received home education to become a prestigious ding Baptist pastor. 

While the only subjects Malcolm could deal with were criminals, illiterate people, alcoholics, and homeless people, Martin was able to converse with many forward-thinking people (including whites). The difference in the way they receive education is also evident in their views and the way to fight later. Although after his release from prison, Malcolm X has become an influential journalist and public speaker, his messages are still more direct and powerful than the peaceful and humble speeches of Martin. 

Their faith also had a significant impact on their future lives. King accepted his Christian views, which he showed in his famous address in 1963: 

“ I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists… that one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers .” 

King frequently spoke of the "American Dream," referring to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution's notion of equality. King's ideal was worldwide and everlasting, not just for racial equality in the United States. A universal dream is shared by all peoples, regardless of color, sex, ethnicity, country. 

Malcolm X, on the other hand, was a Muslim cleric who advocated for African Americans' equal rights. He believed in racial segregation, the inherent wickedness of whites, and the necessity to embrace African culture as a member of the Nation of Islam (NOI). 

American Black Rights Activist Malcolm X  licensed under  CC BY

In comparison to Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm's tone was harsher in his critique of America and its tactics for attaining equality. Malcolm struggled with poverty, misery, and impotence. As a result, he attempted to inspire and enlighten black people as someone who had lived through the "American Nightmare" rather than the "American Dream." 

Dr. King and Malcolm X both worked hard to establish legal equality for blacks. These include voting rights, desegregation, and increased representation in government and politics. However, both men's tactics and strategies were vastly different. 

Negotiations, according to Dr. King, might be brought about by the perseverance of a peaceful approach. In the hearts and minds of the country, the oppressed people's determination would triumph against the oppressor's will. He was a staunch believer in Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent resistance approach, which had been effective in pushing the British out of India. 

According to King, the aim of the protestors, or black people, is not to embarrass the adversary (the white American), but to gain his affection and sympathy. He desired collaboration between Whites and African Americans to be one nation - America.

" We shall be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day ," he stated in his famous speech. He asserted that the heart of nonviolence is founded on the idea of love or understanding. Dr. King underlined that the white man should not be held accountable for the oppression of minorities and blacks. 

This is where the two leaders disagree. 

On the other hand, Malcolm X believed that social injustice and racism had gone on for far too long. Malcolm X stated unequivocally that he felt African Americans and White people should remain separate but be treated equally. He encouraged white people to " work alongside us—each of us working among our own kind. " 

Malcolm, who publicly denied being an American, worked for the Nation of Islam, which wanted to establish a distinct society for its members. Malcolm opposed integration with white America as a worthy goal, and he was especially opposed to nonviolence as a way of achieving it. In Malcolm's opinion, an African American could never give up his right to self-defense the white aggression " by any means necessary ".

Aside from their differences in racial beliefs and ideologies, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King's struggles have a distinct trajectory. The most essential attribute of an activist is their capacity to inspire others as well as persuade others to follow their ideals. 

Malcolm X's manner of protest includes utilizing violence against violence and unequal rights, as well as advocating segregation of African Americans and whites. Martin Luther King's method, on the other hand, includes peaceful marches and struggles against violence, as well as pushing for black and white integration. During the Civil Rights Movement, the leadership styles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X deliver significant evidence of how different styles of endeavor may result in very separate fights. 

In the 1960s black liberation struggle, King and Malcolm embody two opposing responses: nonviolence against violence. 

King was America's most well-known nonviolent activist. Nonviolence, he believed, was a successful approach for social transformation and the foundation of his life philosophy. He predicted that nonviolence would be an effective weapon for blacks in the American Civil Rights Movement, as well as for other oppressed people all over the world. The following successes highlight the strength of nonviolence: the Montgomery bus boycott (1955), student sit-ins (1960), Freedom Rides (1961), Birmingham protests (1963), the March on Washington (1963), the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965), and the Selma March (1965).  

Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco June 30 1964   by  geoconklin2001  is licensed under  CC BY-ND 2.0

According to King, segregation in America and colonialism in the Third World were denials of human dignity and value. Through boycotts and marches, he hoped to end racial segregation. He felt that the abolition of segregation would improve the likelihood of integration. 

Malcolm X, on the other hand, spearheaded a movement for black empowerment. His goal was to restore the power of oppressed black people via spiritual teaching of racism, economic growth, and self-defense training. His political philosophy was founded on the connection between the struggle of African Americans and that of other oppressed peoples across the world. 

Malcolm, in contrast to King, was viewed as a preacher of hatred and violence. Malcolm X chastised King and his views on nonviolence. As a member of the Nation of Islam, he embraced white America's value system, making everything black good and everything white evil. Unlike Martin Luther King, Malcolm saw violence as a necessary response to illegal conduct. 

In reality, he encouraged self-defense rather than violence. He believed that the right to self-defense was the foundation of mankind. So he couldn't see how black people could be considered human if they don't protect themselves. If the government fails to protect black people, they have the right to defend themselves. 

According to the history of black movements in the United States since the days of slavery, the struggle for emancipation and equality has taken two distinct paths: integration and separation, with the latter requiring either a return to Africa or the formation of a distinct African-American society. Martin Luther King picked the first, whereas Malcolm X chose the second. 

In the last years of his life, Malcolm X did not consider Martin an adversary anymore. After breaking away from NOI ((Nation of Islam) and away from negative religious influences, Malcolm X looked at the issue of race in a completely different light. With this in mind, he founded African American Unity (OAAU). 

This new organization had nothing to do with religion. On the contrary, they appealed to African-Americans to participate regardless of their religious background and called for the creation of a widespread movement. The line of this organization clearly reflected the ideology of Malcolm at that time: Not encouraging revenge against white people or promoting violent resistance. However, this ideology was considered far more advanced than the nonviolent protest movement of the time and allowed self-defense against racist attacks. 

Although the movement still denied white participation, Malcolm's series of statements during this time showed a decline in hostility towards whites. He argued that, before the unification of whites and blacks could be achieved, blacks had to unite with each other. 

Malcolm X traveled to Washington in 1964 to testify on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He claimed that he was " throwing himself into the heart of the civil rights struggle ". During this period, Malcolm was also very interested in the black suffrage movements. During a speech arranged by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Selma, Alabama, he met with Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King's widow, and remarked, " I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his work difficult. " 

While Malcolm never accepted Uncle Tom and his dedication to nonviolent resistance, he indicated his intentions of collaborating with this fellow preacher. They may not be allies, but they are no longer rivals in the fight for civil rights. Only at his last word did Malcolm admit: 

" Dr. King wants the same thing I want — freedom! " 

Perhaps for these reasons, not long after the two assassinations took place, Martin and Malcolm's wives expressed a strong fellowship. 

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X fought for the African-American dilemma from separate perspectives as a result of their diverse experiences. However, each of them showed remarkable leadership skills, extraordinary vision as well as a strong desire for justice. 

Decades after their deaths, the messages of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X still touch the hearts of millions. Despite their differences, they are both black civil rights activists who have made significant contributions to global racial equality. Their idea preceded and influenced the current thought. They were the forefathers of many generations of black people. 

One last fact: Although their common goal has deeply connected their lives, throughout their lives, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X only met once in just over a minute (Long enough just to take a single picture). Perhaps without the conflicts and injustices, difficulties and misunderstandings, they would have become real soulmates. 

As Martin Luther King Jr. once  said , " While we did not always see eye-to-eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems we face as a race.... " 

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Home Essay Samples Social Issues Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King Jr. vs. Malcolm X: A Comparative Analysis

Table of contents, philosophies and approaches, rhetorical styles, approaches to integration, legacy and impact.

• Branch, T. (2006). Parting the waters: America in the King years, 1954-63. Simon and Schuster.
• Marable, M. (2011). Manning Marable speaks on Malcolm X: A documentary film. AK Press.
• Carson, C., & Shepard, S. (2001). A call to conscience: The landmark speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Grand Central Publishing.
• Haley, A. (1965). The autobiography of Malcolm X. Ballantine Books.
• Garrow, D. J. (1986). Bearing the cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. HarperOne.

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

Introduction to the civil rights movement.

• African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
• Emmett Till
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
• The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• SNCC and CORE

Black Power

• The Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement is an umbrella term for the many varieties of activism that sought to secure full political, social, and economic rights for African Americans in the period from 1946 to 1968.
• Civil rights activism involved a diversity of approaches, from bringing lawsuits in court, to lobbying the federal government, to mass direct action, to black power.
• The efforts of civil rights activists resulted in many substantial victories, but also met with the fierce opposition of white supremacists .

The emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

Civil rights and the supreme court, nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, what do you think.

• See Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
• See C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955).
• See Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
• See Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Stephen Tuck,  Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
• See Michael J. Klarman, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
• See Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).
• See Michael Eric Dyson, The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).
• See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010).
• See Tavis Smiley, ed., The Covenant with Black America: Ten Years Later (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc., 2016).

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Rhetorical analysis: compare and contrast four speeches on civil rights.

Common Core Standards

Purpose: The following four speeches explore the tensions found within the American ideals of individual liberty and universal equality. Each speech argues a position in regards to how these ideals should relate to the application of civil rights within a nation that struggles to come to terms with its radical declaration that all people are created equal and endowed with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Studying the four speeches – three given in the 1960s in the midst of the civil rights movement and one contemporary speech – will allow students to explore how the speakers use rhetorical strategies to present their ideas on a topic that continues to be relevant today.

Lesson Goals and Overview: Students will read Malcolm X’s “Racial Separation” and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “The Voting Rights Act” together, and George Wallace’s “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” and Barack Obama’s “Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention” together in order to compare and contrast the way the speaker’s use different rhetorical strategies. Students will use both the College Board’s SOAPS technique and a T-chart graphic organizer to help them identify and compare these different strategies. They will then choose three speeches and write a compare and contrast essay exploring how the speakers use rhetorical strategies.

George C. Wallace, “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” (1963) Malcolm X, “Racial Separatism” (1963) President Lyndon Baines Johnson, “The Voting Rights Act,” (1965) Barack Obama, “Keynote Speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention

Students will need to be familiar with the rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos and pathos) and be able to differentiate between arguments of fact, policy and value.At the end of the unit, students will be able to write an essay analyzing how speakers use different rhetorical strategies to support their claims.This lesson includes handouts for the SOAPS worksheet and T-chart, and a sheet defining different rhetorical strategies.

SOAPS T-Chart Sheet Defining Rhetorical Strategies

Preparation:

Before assigning homework, have students respond to the following journal question: Is it more important for the American government to ensure that individuals have the liberty to do what they want, or ensure that society gives everyone equal opportunities? Be sure that students have some historical context on the civil rights movement of the 1960s and who the speakers are before assigning them Malcolm X’s “Racial Separation” and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “The Voting Rights Act” for homework. Here are a few major resources on the Civil Rights Movement:

• Larry Dane Brimmer, Black and White: The Confrontation Between Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Eugene Bull Connor (2001)
• J.L. Chestnut, Jr., Black in Selma: The Uncommon Life of J.L. Chestnut, Jr. (2007)
• Matthew J. Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (2006)
• Russell Freedman, Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (2008)
• Patrick Jones, The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee (2009)
• Jill Karson, ed., Civil Rights (2003)
• David Rubel and John Lewis, The Coming Free (2005)
• Bruce Watson, Freedom Summer: The Savage Summer that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy (2012)

Day 1: Students should come to class having read both speeches and filled out a graphic organizer for both using the College Board’s SOAPS technique:

S ubject: Students summarize what the speech is about O ccasion: Students explain the context that inspired the speech A udience: Students explain to whom the speech was delivered P urpose: Students explain the reason the speech was given Speaker: Students explain what they know about the speaker based on both internal evidence from the text and external evidence

Students work in groups to compare their homework responses for both speeches, then as a class guided by the teacher work to get a consensus on the two texts so the class has a shared understanding and the teacher can respond to any misunderstandings or fill in any necessary information. The teacher will call on students to offer their responses to the homework, and will then write appropriate responses on the board as a classroom example. Review the concepts of ethos, pathos and logos, as well as arguments of fact, policy and value

Rhetorical Devices Sheet.

Day 2: Students return to their groups to compare their homework responses, then work as a full class to create a consensus for the chart for each speech, as done the day before. In groups, students work to compare and contrast Wallace’s arguments in favor of individual freedoms pursued separately as a “united of the many” with Obama’s arguments in favor of equality of opportunity pursued “as one American family…Out of many, one.” Place these arguments next to each other in a T-chart.As students list the arguments, they will indicate whether they appeal to ethos, pathos or logos, and whether they are arguments of fact, policy or value

In groups, students work to compare and contrast Johnson’s arguments for the government to enact civil rights legislation to ensure equality of opportunity with Malcolm X’s arguments to reject civil rights legislation and pursue freedom separate from the government’s interventions. Students place these arguments next to each other in a T-chart. As students list the arguments, they will indicate whether they appeal to ethos, pathos or logos, and whether they are arguments of fact, policy or value. The two contrasting arguments side by side will allow students to easily compare and contrast the speeches when they write their essays. Assign George Wallace’s “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” and Barack Obama’s “Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention” for homework and have students complete the SOAPS chart for each.

Day 3: Return to the journal prompt that started the lesson. Have students write a journal responding to this question again, this time with the arguments from the speeches in mind. After the students finish writing, the teacher conducts a classroom discussion exploring which arguments students found most convincing in relation to the question, and why. As a class discussion, compare and contrast various rhetorical strategies used within the speeches to prepare for an essay they will write. See below for possible guiding questions. Students then choose any three of the speeches and in a well-written essay compare and contrast how the speakers use rhetorical strategies to support their arguments. This can be done as homework outside of class or as an in-class essay on a fourth day.

Questions to Guide Discussion of the Speeches:

• How does each speech allude to other speeches or texts?What is the goal of this rhetorical strategy?
• How is religion invoked in each of these speeches as a rhetorical appeal?Is this appeal still convincing beyond the speech’s specific audience?
• How is the emotional appeal to hope used in each speech?Does the historical context of the speech affect this appeal?
• Does the speaker appeal primarily to logos, ethos or pathos?Do you think the speaker would make a different choice if this were a written document rather than a speech?
• How does the speaker’s public role affect the speech’s appeal to ethos?Would this appeal work differently for different audiences?

Contributor:

Joel C. Jacobson ,

Nathan Hale High School, Seattle, Washington

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Black Power Scholar Illustrates How MLK And Malcolm X Influenced Each Other

Terry Gross

A man walks past a mural of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. in London. Thabo Jaiyesimi/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

A man walks past a mural of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. in London.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are frequently seen as opposing forces in the struggle for civil rights and against white supremacy; King is often portrayed as a nonviolent insider, while Malcolm X is characterized as a by-any-means-necessary political renegade. But author and Black Power scholar Peniel Joseph says the truth is more nuanced.

"I've always been fascinated by Malcolm X and Dr. King ... and dissatisfied in how they're usually portrayed — both in books and in popular culture," Joseph says.

In his book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph braids together the lives of the two civil rights leaders. He says that King and Malcolm X had "convergent visions" for Black America — but their strategies for how to reach the goal was informed by their different upbringings.

"Malcolm X is really scarred by racial trauma at a very early age," Joseph says. "King, in contrast, has a very gilded childhood, and he's the son of an upper-middle-class, African-American family, prosperous family that runs one of the most important churches in Black Atlanta."

Joseph says that, over time, each man became the other's "alter ego." Malcolm X, he says, "injects a political radicalism on the national scene that absolutely makes Dr. King and his movement much more palatable to mainstream Americans."

Now, with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Joseph says that King and Malcolm X's visions have converged: "What's really extraordinary is that the Black Lives Matter protesters really are protesting for radical Black dignity and citizenship and see that you need both. So Malcolm and Martin are the revolutionary sides of the same coin, and really the BLM movement has amplified that."

Interview highlights

On what Malcolm X meant by racial separatism

This idea of separatism is really interesting. The deeper I investigated Malcolm X, the more I understood what he meant and what the Nation of Islam meant by racial separatism. It wasn't segregation. It was separatism, they argued, and Malcolm does this in a series of debates against Bayard Rustin , against Jim Farmer , against James Baldwin , Louis Lomax. He says that racial separatism is required because white people do not want Black people to be citizens and have dignity. And if they did, you wouldn't have to protest and experience police violence and police brutality: small children trying to integrate Little Rock High School, young people trying to integrate lunch counters, and they're arrested and brutalized, sometimes people were killed, of course. So what's interesting about this idea of separatism, Malcolm argues separatism is Black people having enough self-love and enough confidence in themselves to organize and build parallel institutions. Because America was so infected with the disease of racism, they could never racially integrate into American democracy.

On Malcolm X's vision of "by any means necessary" protest

Code Switch

Malcolm x's public speaking power.

Malcolm is making the argument that, one, Black people have the right to self-defense and to defend themselves against police brutality. It's really striking when you follow Malcolm X in the 1950s and '60s, the number of court appearances he's making, whether it's in Buffalo, N.Y., or Los Angeles or Rochester, N.Y., where members of the Nation of Islam have been brutalized [and], at times, killed by police violence. So Malcolm is arguing that, one, Black people have a right to defend themselves. Second part of Malcolm's argument — because he travels to the Middle East by 1959, travels for 25 weeks overseas in 1964 — is that because there [are] anti-colonial revolutions raging across Africa and the Third World in the context of the 1950s and '60s, he makes the argument that the Black revolution in the United States is only going to be a true revolution once Black people start utilizing self-defense to end the racial terror they're experiencing both in the 1950s and '60s, but historically. And one of the reasons Malcolm makes that argument, obviously, is because his father and his family had experienced that racial terror.

On King's policy of non-violent protest v. self defense

One thing that's important to know is that when we think about nonviolence versus self-defense, it's very, very complex, because even though Martin Luther King Jr. is America's apostle and a follower of Gandhi and believes in nonviolence, there are always people around King who are trying to protect him and in demonstrations, who actually are armed, they're not armed in the same way that, say, the Black Panthers would arm themselves later, but they're armed to actually protect and defend peaceful civil rights activists from racial terror. And of course, King famously had had armed guards around him in Montgomery, Ala., after his home was firebombed during the bus boycott of 1955 to '56. And it's Bayard Rustin who famously told him he couldn't have those armed guards if he wanted to live out the practice of nonviolence.

The Power Of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Anger

So King usually does not have his own people being armed. But when he's in the Deep South, there are civil rights activists who actually are armed and at times protecting him. They're not necessarily connected to his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but the movement always had people who were trying to protect peaceful demonstrators against racial terror.

On King's response to Malcolm X's argument against non-violent civil disobedience

Peniel E. Joseph, Ph.D., is the founding director of the LBJ School's Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas, Austin. Kelvin Ma/Basic Books hide caption

Peniel E. Joseph, Ph.D., is the founding director of the LBJ School's Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas, Austin.

King has several responses: One is that nonviolence is both a moral and political strategy. So the morality and the religious argument is that Black people could not succumb to enemy politics. And this idea that when we think about white racism, we would become as bad as the people who are oppressing us. So he pushes back against that. Politically, he says, well, then there aren't enough Black people, even if they arm themselves to win some kind of armed conflict and struggle. And then finally, he says and there's a great speech in 1963 in Los Angeles where he doesn't mention Malcolm X, but he's speaking out against Malcolm X in terms of what's happening in Birmingham. And Malcolm has called him an Uncle Tom and all kinds of names. He says that non-violence is the weapon of strength. It's the weapon of people who are powerful and courageous and brave and heroic and disciplined. It's not the weapon of the weak, because we're going to use this non-violent strategy to actually transform the United States of America against its own will. ...

I say Malcolm is Black America's prosecuting attorney. He's prosecuting white America for a series of crimes against Black humanity that date back to racial slavery. Dr. King is Black America's defense attorney — but he's very interesting: He defends both sides of the color line. He defends Black people to white people and tells white people that Black people don't want Black supremacy. They don't want reverse racism. They don't want revenge for racial slavery and Jim Crow segregation. They just want to be included in the body politic and have citizenship. But he also defends white people to Black people. He's constantly telling — especially as the movement gets further radicalized — Black people that white people are good people, that white people, we can redeem the souls of the nation. And we have white allies who have fought and struggled and died with us to achieve Black citizenship. So it's very interesting, the roles they both play. But over time, after Malcolm's assassination, one of the biggest ironies and transformations is that King becomes Black America's prosecuting attorney.

On how Malcolm X and King's visions merged

They start to merge, especially in the aftermath of Malcolm's assassination on Feb. 21, 1965. And in a way, when we think about King, right after Malcolm's assassination, King has what he later calls one of those "mountaintop moments." And he always says there are these mountaintop moments, but then you have to go back to the valley. And that mountaintop moment is going to be the Selma to Montgomery march, even though initially, when we think about March 7, 1965 — Bloody Sunday — demonstrators, including the late Congressman John Lewis , are battered by Alabama state troopers, non-violent demonstrators, peaceful demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

'A Proud Walk': 3 Voices On The March From Selma To Montgomery

But by March 15, LBJ, the president, is going to say these protesters are right and they are part of a long pantheon of American heroes dating back to the revolution. And then March 21 to the 25, the Selma to Montgomery demonstration is going to attract 30,000 Americans — including white allies, Jewish allies like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel — to King and the movement. So King is going to make his last, fully nationally televised speech on March 25, 1965, where he talks about American democracy, racial justice, but the long road ahead. By that August, Aug. 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act has passed. So these are real high points.

But then five days after the Voting Rights Act is passed, Watts, Los Angeles explodes in really the largest civil disturbance in American history up until that point. And when we think about after Watts, that's where King and Malcolm start to converge, because Malcolm had criticized the March on Washington as the "farce on Washington," because he said that King and the movement should have paralyzed Washington, D.C., and forced a reckoning about race in America. And they didn't do that. By 1965, King says that in this essay, "Beyond the Los Angeles Riots," that what he's going to start doing is use non-violent civil disobedience as a peaceful sword that paralyzes cities to produce justice that goes beyond civil rights and voting rights acts.

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.

Introductory Essay: Continuing the Heroic Struggle for Equality: The Civil Rights Movement

To what extent did Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for African Americans during the civil rights movement?

• I can explain the importance of local and federal actions in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
• I can compare the goals and methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Malcolm X and Black Nationalism, and Black Power.
• I can explain challenges African Americans continued to face despite victories for equality and justice during the civil rights movement.

Essential Vocabulary

Continuing the heroic struggle for equality: the civil rights movement.

The struggle to make the promises of the Declaration of Independence a reality for Black Americans reached a climax after World War II. The activists of the civil rights movement directly confronted segregation and demanded equal civil rights at the local level with physical and moral courage and perseverance. They simultaneously pursued a national strategy of systematically filing lawsuits in federal courts, lobbying Congress, and pressuring presidents to change the laws. The civil rights movement encountered significant resistance, however, and suffered violence in the quest for equality.

During the middle of the twentieth century, several Black writers grappled with the central contradictions between the nation’s ideals and its realities, and the place of Black Americans in their country. Richard Wright explored a raw confrontation with racism in Native Son (1940), while Ralph Ellison led readers through a search for identity beyond a racialized category in his novel Invisible Man (1952), as part of the Black quest for identity. The novel also offered hope in the power of the sacred principles of the Founding documents. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun , first performed in 1959, about the dreams deferred for Black Americans and questions about assimilation. Novelist and essayist James Baldwin described Blacks’ estrangement from U.S. society and themselves while caught in a racial nightmare of injustice in The Fire Next Time (1963) and other works.

World War II wrought great changes in U.S. society. Black soldiers fought for a “double V for victory,” hoping to triumph over fascism abroad and racism at home. Many received a hostile reception, such as Medgar Evers who was blocked from voting at gunpoint by five armed whites. Blacks continued the Great Migration to southern and northern cities for wartime industrial work. After the war, in 1947, Jackie Robinson endured racial taunts on the field and segregation off it as he broke the color barrier in professional baseball and began a Hall of Fame career. The following year, President Harry Truman issued executive orders desegregating the military and banning discrimination in the civil service. Meanwhile, Thurgood Marshall and his legal team at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meticulously prepared legal challenges to discrimination, continuing a decades-long effort.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund brought lawsuits against segregated schools in different states that were consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 1954. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that “separate but equal” was “inherently unequal.” Brown II followed a year after, as the court ordered that the integration of schools should be pursued “with all deliberate speed.” Throughout the South, angry whites responded with a campaign of “massive resistance” and refused to comply with the order, while many parents sent their children to all-white private schools. Middle-class whites who opposed integration joined local chapters of citizens’ councils and used propaganda, economic pressure, and even violence to achieve their ends.

A wave of violence and intimidation followed. In 1955, teenager Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was lynched after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman. Though an all-white jury quickly acquitted the two men accused of killing him, Till’s murder was reported nationally and raised awareness of the injustices taking place in Mississippi.

In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks (who was a secretary of the Montgomery NAACP) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Her willingness to confront segregation led to a direct-action movement for equality. The local Women’s Political Council organized the city’s Black residents into a boycott of the bus system, which was then led by the Montgomery Improvement Association. Black churches and ministers, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, provided a source of strength. Despite arrests, armed mobs, and church bombings, the boycott lasted until a federal court desegregated the city buses. In the wake of the boycott, the leading ministers formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) , which became a key civil rights organization.

Rosa Parks is shown here in 1955 with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background. The Montgomery bus boycott was an important victory in the civil rights movement.

In 1957, nine Black families decided to send their children to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to prevent their entry, and one student, Elizabeth Eckford, faced an angry crowd of whites alone and barely escaped. President Eisenhower was compelled to respond and sent in 1,200 paratroops from the 101st Airborne to protect the Black students. They continued to be harassed, but most finished the school year and integrated the school.

That year, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act that created a civil rights division in the Justice Department and provided minimal protections for the right to vote. The bill had been watered down because of an expected filibuster by southern senators, who had recently signed the Southern Manifesto, a document pledging their resistance to Supreme Court decisions such as Brown .

In 1960, four Black college students were refused lunch service at a local Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, and they spontaneously staged a “sit-in” the following day. Their resistance to the indignities of segregation was copied by thousands of others of young Blacks across the South, launching another wave of direct, nonviolent confrontation with segregation. Ella Baker invited several participants to a Raleigh conference where they formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and issued a Statement of Purpose. The group represented a more youthful and daring effort that later broke with King and his strategy of nonviolence.

In contrast, Malcolm X became a leading spokesperson for the Nation of Islam (NOI) who represented Black separatism as an alternative to integration, which he deemed an unworthy goal. He advocated revolutionary violence as a means of Black self-defense and rejected nonviolence. He later changed his views, breaking with the NOI and embracing a Black nationalism that had more common ground with King’s nonviolent views. Malcolm X had reached out to establish ties with other Black activists before being gunned down by assassins who were members of the NOI later in 1965.

In 1961, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) rode segregated buses in order to integrate interstate travel. These Black and white Freedom Riders traveled into the Deep South, where mobs beat them with bats and pipes in bus stations and firebombed their buses. A cautious Kennedy administration reluctantly intervened to protect the Freedom Riders with federal marshals, who were also victimized by violent white mobs.

Malcolm X was a charismatic speaker and gifted organizer. He argued that Black pride, identity, and independence were more important than integration with whites.

King was moved to act. He confronted segregation with the hope of exposing injustice and brutality against nonviolent protestors and arousing the conscience of the nation to achieve a just rule of law. The first planned civil rights campaign was initiated by SNCC and taken over mid-campaign by King and SCLC. It failed because Albany, Georgia’s Police Chief Laurie Pritchett studied King’s tactics and responded to the demonstrations with restraint. In 1963, King shifted the movement to Birmingham, Alabama, where Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed his officers to attack civil rights protestors with fire hoses and police dogs. Authorities arrested thousands, including many young people who joined the marches. King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after his own arrest and provided the moral justification for the movement to break unjust laws. National and international audiences were shocked by the violent images shown in newspapers and on the television news. President Kennedy addressed the nation and asked, “whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities . . . [If a Black person]cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?” The president then submitted a civil rights bill to Congress.

In late August 1963, more than 250,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in solidarity for equal rights. From the Lincoln Memorial steps, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. He stated, “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson pushed his agenda through Congress. In the early summer of 1964, a 3-month filibuster by southern senators was finally defeated, and both houses passed the historical civil rights bill. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, banning segregation in public accommodations.

Activists in the civil rights movement then focused on campaigns for the right to vote. During the summer of 1964, several civil rights organizations combined their efforts during the “ Freedom Summer ” to register Blacks to vote with the help of young white college students. They endured terror and intimidation as dozens of churches and homes were burned and workers were killed, including an incident in which Black advocate James Chaney and two white students, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered in Mississippi.

In August 1963, peaceful protesters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to draw attention to the inequalities and indignities African Americans suffered 100 years after emancipation. Leaders of the march are shown in the image on the bottom, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the center.

That summer, Fannie Lou Hamer helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as civil rights delegates to replace the rival white delegation opposed to civil rights at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Hamer was a veteran of attempts to register other Blacks to vote and endured severe beatings for her efforts. A proposed compromise of giving two seats to the MFDP satisfied neither those delegates nor the white delegation, which walked out. Cracks were opening up in the Democratic electoral coalition over civil rights, especially in the South.

Fannie Lou Hamer testified about the violence she and others endured when trying to register to vote at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her televised testimony exposed the realities of continued violence against Blacks trying to exercise their constitutional rights.

In early 1965, the SCLC and SNCC joined forces to register voters in Selma and draw attention to the fight for Black suffrage. On March 7, marchers planned to walk peacefully from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. However, mounted state troopers and police blocked the Edmund Pettus Bridge and then rampaged through the marchers, indiscriminately beating them. SNCC leader John Lewis suffered a fractured skull, and 5 women were clubbed unconscious. Seventy people were hospitalized for injuries during “Bloody Sunday.” The scenes again shocked television viewers and newspaper readers.

The images of state troopers, local police, and local people brutally attacking peaceful protestors on “Bloody Sunday” shocked people across the country and world. Two weeks later, protestors of all ages and races continued the protest. By the time they reached the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, their ranks had swelled to about 25,000 people.

Two days later, King led a symbolic march to the bridge but then turned around. Many younger and more militant activists were alienated and felt that King had sold out to white authorities. The tension revealed the widening division between older civil rights advocates and those younger, more radical supporters who were frustrated at the slow pace of change and the routine violence inflicted upon peaceful protesters. Nevertheless, starting on March 21, with the help of a federal judge who refused Governor George Wallace’s request to ban the march, Blacks triumphantly walked to Montgomery. On August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act protecting the rights to register and vote after a Senate filibuster ended and the bill passed Congress.

The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act did not alter the fact that most Black Americans still suffered racism, were denied equal economic opportunities, and lived in segregated neighborhoods. While King and other leaders did seek to raise their issues among northerners, frustrations often boiled over into urban riots during the mid-1960s. Police brutality and other racial incidents often triggered days of violence in which hundreds were injured or killed. There were mass arrests and widespread property damage from arson and looting in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, and dozens of other cities. A presidential National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders issued the Kerner Report, which analyzed the causes of urban unrest, noting the impact of racism on the inequalities and injustices suffered by Black Americans.

Frustration among young Black Americans led to the rise of a more militant strain of advocacy. In 1966, activist James Meredith was on a solo march in Mississippi to raise awareness about Black voter registration when he was shot and wounded. Though Meredith recovered, this event typified the violence that led some young Black Americans to espouse a more military strain of advocacy. On June 16, SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael and members of the Black Panther Party continued Meredith’s march while he recovered from his wounds, chanting, “We want Black Power .” Black Power leaders and members of the Black Panther Party offered a different vision for equality and justice. They advocated self-reliance and self-empowerment, a celebration of Black culture, and armed self-defense. They used aggressive rhetoric to project a more radical strategy for racial progress, including sympathy for revolutionary socialism and rejection of capitalism. While its legacy is debated, the Black Power movement raised many important questions about the place of Black Americans in the United States, beyond the civil rights movement.

After World War II, Black Americans confronted the iniquities and indignities of segregation to end almost a century of Jim Crow. Undeterred, they turned the public’s eyes to the injustice they faced and called on the country to live up to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and to continue the fight against inequality and discrimination.

Reading Comprehension Questions

• What factors helped to create the modern civil rights movement?
• How was the quest for civil rights a combination of federal and local actions?
• What were the goals and methods of different activists and groups of the civil rights movement? Complete the table below to reference throughout your analysis of the primary source documents.

How do today’s Black Lives Matter protests compare to the civil rights movement of the 1960s?

• Search Search

The Black Lives Matter protests that have followed the killings of George Floyd  and     Breonna Taylor  by police officers remind Margaret Burnham of 1968. At that time, the national response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. combined with ongoing protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War to plunge an already divided nation more deeply into turmoil.

“This is taking place in a world that is not only deeply fractured, but also deeply fragile because of the coronavirus, the economic crisis that makes the country look a little bit like 1929, and the existential threat of climate change,” says Burnham, university distinguished professor of law at Northeastern. “It’s everything collapsing all around us.”

As part of Northeastern’s “Day for Reflection, Engagement, and Action” on Monday,  when the university will close in remembrance of all Black people whose lives have been taken unjustly, Burnham at 2 p.m. will be leading a  Facebook Live discussion,  How Do We Restore Justice for George Floyd? . Her talk will be preceded by a screening of Murder in Mobile , an award-winning documentary film that tells the poignant story of a Jim Crow-era hate crime brought to light seven decades later by a Northeastern law student on behalf of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project , which was founded by Burnham more than a decade ago.

In 1964, Burnham was a young civil rights activist working in the Deep South, where three of her colleagues disappeared as victims of the “Mississippi Burning” murders by members of the Ku Klux Klan. As a lawyer, she represented fellow activists on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , and in 2010 she headed a team that settled a federal lawsuit in which Mississippi law enforcement officials were accused of assisting Klansmen in the 1964 kidnapping, torture, and murder of two 19-year-old Black men, Henry Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. 

As director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, whose staff of Northeastern students investigates acts of racial injustice that took place in the Jim Crow South from 1930 to 1970, Burnham offers a lifetime of perspective on how to confront systemic racism.

She is heartened by what she says is the unprecedented diversity of the people who are protesting the deaths of Floyd and other Black victims.

“People who are taking to the streets are doing so not just because they never thought they would see a lynching played out on on video,” she says of Floyd, who was asphyxiated when a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. “But it’s also because they sense that there is no real plan either to face and defeat the virus, or to acknowledge and defeat the pandemic of racism in this country.

“This is what has led to the frustration, as it has in the past.”

As a young civil rights activist, you were of the same age as many students at Northeastern now. What do you take away from what must have been discouraging and frightening experiences?

What is important to remember today is that African Americans are in a class of their own in a traumatized nation. I think it would be hard to name an African American family in the United States who has not had an experience with the justice system in which they felt their loved one got the short end of the stick. We have all been personally touched by this, and for those of us who are Black, we see not just the horror of that person [George Floyd] on the ground, crying out for his mother—he literally looks like and sounds like people we know and love.  

It’s deeply, deeply personal trauma. But having said that, it’s also clear that the world has been traumatized by this.  

I relate back to my own experiences as a young person in the civil rights movement, when three of my colleagues— James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andy Goodman —from a conference about the Mississippi Movement that we were all at—or about the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. And we knew them. I knew them. And to this very day, I think about them, and I think about what they were thinking before they died.

That kind of trauma, it lasts a lifetime. It lasts a lifetime.

The murders of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman created nationwide alarm for the civil rights movement. What were the consequences legally? Do you see a connection to the recent deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor?

With respect to my friends Mickey Schwerner and Goodman and Chaney, who died on June 22, 1964, there were no consequences until recently, when that case was retried . On top of the traumatic impact of the crime itself, there is a realization that these lives don’t matter: That our justice system will move on without remedying these wrongs. And so that becomes an additional trauma. 

I think what the young people who are in the streets today are saying is, it’s not the world we want to live in. We want to create our own world. We want to create a world that is responsive to our understandings of what it means to be human. And we want a justice system that’s not going to lie to us anymore, that’s not going to tell us that he died from arteriosclerosis , when actually he died from suffocation. I think that’s what it’s all about.

Why did you devote yourself to the civil rights movement?

Everybody has to understand how they come to the privileged position that they occupy. And it’s not just about white people; it’s Black people too, to know that your privilege comes at someone else’s expense. The first step is understanding where you stand in the world, and how it is that you made it. You made it to college, you’re going to get an education, you’re going to have a shot—and a lot of other people won’t. How is that? Is it just about your hard work? Or is it also about a system that’s rigged against some people and not others? It’s for all of us to understand the nature of our privilege. 

And then it’s also to appreciate that this is a long road, and everyone has to figure out how they’re going to walk it. You have to figure out the battle you’re going to take. Which is the battle where you think you can be most effective? But you’ve got to pick. 

You’ve got to pick a battle.

How did you decide to become a lawyer?

I was born in Birmingham, Alabama; I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I came to law school because I was a young activist in the civil rights movement in Jackson, Mississippi. And one day I ended up in jail. A woman lawyer came and magically, I thought, got us all out of jail. It was at that point that I said to myself, this is what I want to do. I want to be able to master these tools and use them in service of the movement for Black liberation.

What was your approach to creating change in the 1960s and ‘70s?

We did exactly what young people are doing today. We pushed all the buttons—electoral politics, policy reforms. 

Pressure on the streets was a critical, dynamic element to get voices heard that had been shut out of the American conversation, and so we took to the streets. We demonstrated in Washington on a very regular basis; I remember going once a year. We understood that local politics was critically important to what we were trying to do, and so a lot of us went into local government to try to make change on the local level. 

I think students today have to see all of this as legitimate expressions of the imperative to change the American narrative, and to finally make a decisive pivot from the old world—the old domination of white supremacy.

In terms of the current protests, are you seeing buy-in from all sectors of society?

There have always been white allies in the struggles, including 100 years ago; these always have been multiracial movements in which people of all races participate. 

What is different is the level of participation by people beyond the African American community, and even beyond the community of color. This is different from these other periods of civil unrest that have spilled over into the streets. It is very, very different this time.

How important is the next presidential election?

Well, I read President Obama’s invocation to both protest and vote, and obviously we all need to vote. But I do think that that response misunderstands the deep dissatisfaction and distrust that is reflected on the streets today. And so voting certainly is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. 

People have to take these issues to the places that they work. Maybe they have to be prepared to return to the streets if it’s necessary to maintain pressure on our leadership. 

I recall somebody was looking for Franklin Delano Roosevelt to move the needle on a question of policy. And FDR said, well, you know, you have to make me do it. 

And that’s our job. That’s our civic responsibility to make the change happen. Voting is one way that that takes place, but the reform is going to have to be far more thoroughgoing and reach far more deeply into these systemic disaster zones if it’s going to be effective. It can’t be the same old, same old.

Is the country as divided today as it was during the 1960s, when it was torn by the battle over civil rights and the Vietnam War?

We are as divided as we were then. 

I think there are large swaths of this country that have not accepted the reality that white supremacy should be seen as a thing of the past. It’s about white men who are deeply, deeply worried about their loss of authority. That’s what this is about. When I see that guy’s knee on George Floyd’s throat, that is what I see: A white man acting out of an old playbook and expressing frustration that indeed there has been change in this country.

Were you concerned that the election of Barack Obama as the first Black president would lead to backlash in the U.S.?

Yes. Yes, I was.

In 1967 the president [Lyndon B. Johnson] convened the Kerner Commission , in the wake of the riots in Newark, Detroit, and elsewhere, to look closely at some of the civil disorder, and document the disparities and the deep concerns of African Americans that led people into the streets. They issued a report that indicated the kind of thoroughgoing change that needed to take place in order to meet the unresolved grievances and dissatisfaction of these communities. And very little was done.

When President Obama came to office, one of the first things he did was to address issues of police accountability. Obviously, his reform plan was not as far-reaching or as successful in reining in police as it needed to be. But it was something.

As soon as President Trump got into office, he dismantled all of that.

It is obviously very much a backlash. We saw it after slavery with the redemption. So, this constitutes kind of a second Redemption [an 1873 demand by members of Southern states for the return of white supremacy] in which the effort is to erase any authority, any power, any equality that people of color have achieved in this country, and any progress that has been made. 

If you combine the fallout of the coronavirus [which has affected communities of color disproportionately ] with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery , Breonna Taylor, and others, you have to say that this system of white supremacy is unyielding. It’s holding on, and not by the skin of its teeth—it’s holding on fiercely and making itself truly visible. And I think that’s what people are fighting about.

Why did you launch Northeastern’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project?

It’s about uncovering things that people don’t want to see, that they want to avert their eyes to, so that we can fully understand how we got the criminal justice system that we have today—that if the police are involved in a killing, they can pretty much guarantee that they’re not going to be held to book. How did we get here? So our project helps tell that story. 

We have those folks whose last moments, when they could not breathe, were not captured on a video. They have been lost to history. And we revive them. 

This represents a huge stain on our legal system. If we were in Germany, we would call this a de-Nazification project.

The students recently uncovered a set of police files in Birmingham, Alabama, that tell the story of 140 victims of police killings in the city in the mid-20th century. Of those 140 police killings, something like 135 are African American men.  

Unless you understand that the function of the police was literally to keep Negros in line, then you can’t understand anything about policing today, anywhere in this country. And so that’s what we’re trying to do.

Do you see the Justice Project making a difference?

All across the country we’ve been getting current police departments to own their histories, to understand their histories, and to insist that these histories be made available to the officers who are walking the streets today. Because you need to understand what African Americans bring to current encounters with police officers. They bring all of the trauma—all of the hostility, all of the anger, all of the rage, and they try to keep it in check, obviously. But it’s somewhere in the back of their head when they get stopped by a police officer. 

That clearly makes it tough for the cops. And so officers need to learn how to deal with that.

What do you make of the destruction of property and looting that has resulted from many of the public protests?

People take advantage of chaos wherever it is. You see that when people try to rip people off and sell hand sanitizer for $50. I think there are equivalencies there.

The Trump administration has left the door open to postponing the 2020 election and has made unsubstantiated claims that voting by mail is fraudulent. Do you worry about the sanctity of the election?

I do, and I think anyone who doesn’t is not watching the press conferences. Our country is really no different from Austria in the 1930s. We think we are insulated from authoritarian rule, and we’re not. 

I study the Jim Crow South, epitomizing in every way what authoritarian governments look like. It was an exclusively white regime, Blacks were excluded at every level from participation, and they died at the whim of police officers. And so it’s happened in our country before, on a racialized basis, and it could certainly happen again. I worry very much about that.

What do you make of President Trump’s declaration to use military force to quash protests within the U.S.?

I question the legality of it; I don’t think the authority is there yet. Perhaps more important than whether it can be legally justified, I certainly question the political wisdom and the morality of it. 

Let me just say that this is consistent: President Trump has called on, inspired, and rewarded both police and extrajudicial violence from the very inception of his political career. You know, this is the same president who [shared a video of a supporter who said] that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat . This is the same president who said that there are good people on both sides in response to the death of a woman in Charlottesville. This is the same president who stood silently by while somebody at one of his rallies said that the people trying to cross our border should be shot . 

You reap what you sow. The president has done nothing to encourage peaceful, thoughtful resolution of these deeply ingrained divides, and as a matter of fact he has done everything to inflame them. 

The police union chief of Minneapolis, by the name of [Lieutenant Bob] Kroll, attended a Trump rally [in 2019] and congratulated the president for ‘letting the cops do their jobs.’ And so the administration essentially provided a green light to the police to engage in the kind of violence that has directly led to the death of George Floyd, because apparently the police officer charged here had a record of abuse and was never disciplined for it. Any effort toward for civilian oversight was essentially removed. 

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Mahatma Gandhi vs Martin Luther King Junior: Difference and Comparison

Key Takeaways Mahatma Gandhi was the leader of the Indian independence movement while MLK Jr. was part of the American civil rights movement. Gandhi focused on nonviolent civil disobedience while MLK used nonviolent protest like marches and sit-ins. Both led inspirational social justice movements based on civil rights and freedom through nonviolence.

Who Was Mahatma Gandhi?

Mahatma Gandhi was an essential figure in the history of India’s Independence movement from British Rule in 1947. He is renowned for his philosophy of nonviolence and Satyagraha. Gandhi was profoundly influenced by his beliefs and commitment to social justice.

Gandhi’s political and social change approach was rooted in nonviolence and civil disobedience. He believed that individuals could confront oppressive regimes through peaceful means. One of his most notable achievements was the Salt March in 1930, a protest against the British salt tax. This symbolic act of defiance captured the attention and highlighted the power of non-violent resistance.

 Gandhi’s life was a testament to his principles. He practised what he preached, leading a simple and austere life. Gandhi also emphasized the importance of self-discipline, truth, and humility. He aimed to create a society where people lived harmoniously, respecting one another’s dignity. He was assassinated in 1948.

Who Was Martin Luther King Jr.?

Martin Luther King was a crucial figure in the American Civil Rights movement who was inspired by his Christian faith and Gandhi’s philosophy. King advocated for racial equality, justice and ending segregation in the US. His leadership and eloquent speeches energized a generation and brought significant social change.

 His emphasis on non-violent protest rooted in love and equality drew attention to the systematic racism in the US. His efforts were met with resistance, including violence and arrests, but his commitment to nonviolence remained steadfast.

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His iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech showcased his vision for a nation where individuals were judged by their character rather than the colour of their skin.  King also spoke against poverty and economic inequality. Tragically, he was assassinated in 1968. His dream of a more just and equitable society has inspired a generation of activists to work towards a world free from discrimination and inequality.

Difference Between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior

• Mahatma Gandhi was a prominent leader in India’s struggle for Independence against British colonial rule. In contrast, Martin Luther King Jr. was crucial in the American civil rights movement for racial equality.
• Mahatma Gandhi emphasized nonviolence in peaceful protests, boycotts and hunger strikes, whereas Martin Luther King Jr. incorporated nonviolence through sit-ins, freedom rides and direct action.
• His beliefs influenced Mahatma Gandhi’s approach to Hinduism and principles like Satyagraha and Ahimsa. In contrast, Martin Luther King Jr. believed in Christianity and shaped his message of love, justice and equality.
• Mahatma Gandhi was seen as a spiritual and moral leader, while Martin Luther King Jr. was more of a charismatic and vocal leader.
• Mahatma Gandhi’s influence was primarily focused on India and its independence movement. In contrast, Martin Luther King’s impact extended beyond the borders of the United States and inspired the Civil rights movement globally.

Comparison Between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior 

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/40015106
• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10804-016-9236-7

Last Updated : 25 November, 2023

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Emma Smith holds an MA degree in English from Irvine Valley College. She has been a Journalist since 2002, writing articles on the English language, Sports, and Law. Read more about me on her bio page .

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Web Dubois — Comparing and Contrasting the Ideologies of Booker T. Washington and W.e.b Du Bois

Comparing and Contrasting The Ideologies of Booker T. Washington and W.e.b Du Bois

• Categories: African American Web Dubois

About this sample

Words: 723 |

Published: Jan 4, 2019

Words: 723 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

​Comparison Of Booker T. Washington’s and W. E. B. Du Bois’s Novels

Works cited.

• Washington, B. T. (1901). Up from Slavery. Doubleday, Page & Co.
• Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk. A. C. McClurg & Co.
• Huggins, N. I. (1978). Harlem Renaissance. Oxford University Press.
• Harlan, L. R. (1984). Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1901. Oxford University Press.
• Lewis, D. L. (1993). W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919. Henry Holt and Company.
• Washington, B. T. (1995). Up from Slavery: An Autobiography. Penguin Classics.
• Du Bois, W. E. B. (1996). The Souls of Black Folk. Dover Publications.
• Harlan, L. R. (2006). Booker T. Washington: Volume 2: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915. Oxford University Press.
• Lewis, D. L. (2009). W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography, 1868-1963. Macmillan.
• Anderson, J. D. (2014). Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. University of North Carolina Press.

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