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Similarities Between Martin Luther King And Malcolm X

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A/ Plan of investigation

This investigation will answer the question “To what extent did Martin Luther King’s and Malcolm X’s ideas converge during the last period of their lives?”. This is a significant question because it deals with two iconic figures of the Civil Rights Movement who have come to represent opposite approaches to emancipation. Thus, whether they had actually come closer in terms of their ideas may throw a whole different light on the way we tend to understand them.
My investigation covers MLKs and Malcolm X’s active years in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950-60’s. I have looked into their ideas and activity in order to trace any substantial convergence as these developed. Two of their texts are also evaluated. …show more content…

Despite the many differences, both men had a common starting point, institutionalised discrimination over the black people of America, as well as a common goal: the end of this discrimination. The similarity has been in fact recognised by both. For instance, as Malcolm X has stated, “The goal has always been the same, with the approaches to it as different as mine and Dr. Martin Luther King’s.” Lewis V. Baldwin actually argues that King and X had even more things in common. As he puts it, “despite their differences religiously, philosophically, politically and organisationally Malcolm and King, both ministers, were drawn together in dialect of social activism by the nourishment they shared in the Black Folk tradition, by their common devotion to the liberation of the press, by the ideas and convictions they share, by the personal admiration and respect they had for each other, and by the impelling moral, spiritual and intellectual power they received from one another.” This may mean that the image of these two people as “ideological nemeses and antagonists on all important questions involving race in America,” may be very simplistic. Yet, there were certainly many important differences in their outlook and ideas in order to justify their representation as polar

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