Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages.
Explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the impact of Malcolm X.
Passage A
The most prominent black critic of the whole strategy of King was Malcolm X. He provided the main critique of the direction of the Civil Rights Movement up to 1963. In fact, he went a lot further and questioned the validity of the movement altogether. The demand for civil rights, Malcolm X asserted, was based on the false assumption that it was desirable for black people to integrate with white.
From his northern perspective, Malcolm X saw nothing but white hostility to the black people in the ghettos, and their treatment was little better than in the south. He saw the unemployment, crime, filth, disease, prostitution and drugs of the ghettos. Many northern black people could identify with him and did so, but his impact was clearly greater after his death. His achievement was to make clear the depth of anti-black feeling in many parts of the USA and not just the Deep South.
He was scornful of the idea that black people should simply accept discrimination. In this way, he certainly had an important influence on emerging Black Power thought; but he was not to live to see its results. He could be viewed as a role model and many northern black people could identify with him, but he brought tension and division to the movement. In rejecting the idea of integration, Malcolm X and his followers were rejecting the central aim of the original Civil Rights Movement.
D. Paterson and D. and S. Willoughby, Civil Rights in the USA, 1863–1980, published in 2001.
Passage B
Malcolm X aimed to improve the lives of black Americans. His main methods were to advertise and encourage critical thinking on race problems, some would say, to encourage racial hatred and violence. Thurgood Marshall was particularly critical of the Nation of Islam which he described as run by a bunch of thugs and of Malcolm X himself, asking ‘What did he achieve?’. Others pointed out that while King and others put their lives on the line in places like Birmingham, Malcolm X stayed in safer places.
Many considered him to be irresponsible and negative. He criticised civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, but he never established organisations as effective or as long lasting as the NAACP* or the SCLC**. His suggestion that blacks were left with no alternative other than violence seemed negative, irresponsible and unhelpful. On the other hand, he drew attention to the dreadful conditions in America’s ghettos, and he brought American blacks more closely in contact with oppressed black people throughout the world. He became a black icon and role model for black youth, making black nationalism in its various forms appealing to the angry generation of black youth. He inspired the new generation of black leaders and the Black Power Movement. He was the first really prominent advocate of separatism and what subsequently became known as Black Power during the great civil rights era.
* NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
** SCLC – Southern Christian Leadership Conference
V. Sanders, Civil rights and Social Movements in the Americas post 1945, published in 2016.
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