Essay on America'S Leader Malcolm X

In the perspectives of both, each philosophy made sense, but in this day and age, Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy is the obvious choice for most Americans. The trauma in Martins life was one thing that was thought to inspire his motives to his philosophy. Martin had to experience the death of his grandmother and his father. Malcolm X has a similar story to the one of Dr. King, but he underwent a bit less trauma and went down paths that led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1946 until 1952. Though both had the same dream and hope in mind they both had different views on a few topics such as Education, Integration and mainly on how to reach their goal.

Dr. King believes that African-Americans and whites can learn together side by side while Malcolm X wants African-Americans to continue to stay segregated to establish new methods and better ways to educate the African-Americans no matter where they live. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Let us march on segregated schools until every vestige of segregated and inferior education becomes a thing of the past, and Negroes and whites study side-by-side in the socially-healing context of the classroom.”(Doc 4.) This is what he set out to achieve and that is just what he did. Malcolm X, however, encouraged other African-Americans to create schools within African-American communities to further achieve his goal(Doc 5.)

Malcolm X’s view on the workplace is drastically different from today’s working environment and the one that Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned. Malcolm thought that the separation of whites and African-Americans would be beneficial in the fact that they would each be bettering themselves and their races by staying segregated and would, in turn, be “working together.” (Doc 3.) Although this was the future to Malcolm this was not what Dr. King had in store or in mind for the days to come. Martin Luther King Jr., however, felt that by living and working together in harmony they could achieve more and better things for the generations to come.

Both Malcolm and Martin Luther King Jr. had different perspectives and with those perspectives, they each had their own way of handling their protests. Malcolm stated that African-Americans should protect themselves in “any means necessary when we are attacked by racists” (Doc 9.) Dr. King said at a staff retreat on November 14th, 1986 that “Violence may-murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder … It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn’t solve any problems” (Doc 8.) They both brought valid reasons to the table, but Dr. King made a great point that violence won’t get you anywhere, but rather create more hate, dishonesty and in turn produce more violence creating a never-ending cycle.

In conclusion, both Malcolm X and Dr. King had great points and each with their own flaws, but overall Martin Luther King would be and is the obvious choice to answer the question; Whose philosophy made the most sense for not only Americans but American in the 1960s? Malcolm X had great plans and ideas for the future of the United States, but his path leading there was corrupted and not would only make things worse for African-Americans instead of aid them in their journey to obtain rights.

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