[Get Solution] Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X

Read my lecture, “Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X,” now available in the Content area, and the texts linked from it: “The Ballot or the Bullet,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and an interview with a scholar about them. Then start a thread in the discussion forum “Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X.”  THIS IS A DISCUSSION ASSIGNMENT MINIMUM OF 2 PARAGRAPHS Lecture: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X   I am pretty sure you are already familiar with the lives and cultural prominence of both King and Malcolm X. I also think it will be clear how activists working toward racial justice for Black people in the future are engaging in Afrofuturism.   Letter from Birmingham Jail In 1963, Rev. Dr. King was in Alabama leading protests against discriminatory laws, and he was imprisoned for it. Eight white clergymen wrote an open letter condemning King as an outside agitator, and saying this kind of unlawful protest was uncalled for. They stated that the protestors should have instead attempted negotiaton. King wrote the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in response. It is addressed to these eight white clergymen, including one rabbi, and leaders of several different Christian congregations, but was subsequently published and made public.   Read “Letter from Birmingham Jail” here: https://swap.stanford.edu/20141218230016/http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/kingweb/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf   In the “Letter,” King’s goal is to explain the role of nonviolent direct action to these men, and to a broader audience. To this end, he employs biblical imagery to address the clergymen, since he, of course, was also a clergyman. He relates personal anecdotes of suffering from discriminatory laws, and states that passively accepting unjust laws does not uphold the value of justice. He also points out that the protestors DID, in fact, attempt negotiation in a variety of ways before they felt forced to action.   The Ballot or the Bullet Almost exactly a year later, Malcolm X gave his famous speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet” to an audience of Black Americans who did not have the vote. In it he speaks against infighting, and urges Black Americans to form a unified front in going after rights regardless of small differences between ideologies. He says that rights already belong to Black Americans, and are being kept from them, and Black Americans should be able to employ whatever means necessary to take back what’s theirs.   Read “The Ballot or the Bullet” here: http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/malcolm_x_ballot.html   (Optional: and if you want a little bit of biographical reading and to hear a snippet of what the speech sounded like, both those are available here: https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/mx.html )     Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in Combination The internet is full of “student” essays you can purchase that compare and contrast Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. I think people are used to seeing them as two ends of a spectrum of Civil Rights Era ideologies. Further, the contrast between them has been played up as an echo of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois’s differences of philosophy.   Personally, I think it makes more sense and is more fruitful to see both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. as two strong parts of a movement, less in opposition than working different areas of the same problem.   To think about this, read this synopsis of an interview with a professor who studies them, Peniel Joseph, “Black Power Scholar Illustrates How MLK And Malcolm X Influenced Each Other:”  https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901632573/black-power-scholar-illustrates-how-mlk-and-malcolm-x-influenced-each-other The interview itself is linked and you can listen to the whole thing if you’d like, but the part that’s assigned is the stuff that’s written on that page as “interview highlights,” in which Dr. Joseph delineates the “nuance” he sees in these historical figures. PLEASE ONLY USE THESE AS SOURCES AND NO OTHER SITES PLEASE!