Dr. James Cone's
MARTIN AND MALCOLM AND AMERICA: A DREAM OR A NIGHTMARE is one of the best books I've ever studied.
I made this video (photo-story mini lecture) to introduce a learning
series. Dr. James Cone, one of America's best known architects of Black
Liberation Theology, discusses the liberation strategies of Martin
Luther King, Jr, and Malcolm X as they applied to their particular
audiences: Dr. King to the South and Malcolm X to the North. Dr. Cone
argues that Martin King's strategy of non-violent protest, while
quasi-effective in an extremely racist and segregated South, was not
effective in the North because the discourse and policy of
"integration" was already superficially accepted by Northern white
liberals. The "liberal" North found Dr. King's non-violent social
change rhetoric to be more or less agreeable, even as the structures of
racial discrimination continued to subject us (black people) to a
brutal double-standard. Thus, Malcolm X's philosophy of Black
Nationalism (separatist rather than integrationist) that allowed for
self defense epitomized by the slogan "by any means necessary" was more
successful in the North because it more effectively confronted
intrapersonal, socio-structural and institutional racism. Long story
short: two great leaders with different approaches because of different
situations, different audiences, but with the same ultimate
goal-freedom, justice and equality for the masses of our people... For
more on why a clarification of this relationship is so important to our
struggle today read
