Edición Número 12, Girardot, Enero 19 de 2018 – MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. MET MALCOM X JUST ONCE. THE PHOTO STILL HAUNTS US WITH WHAT WAS LOST
Edición Número 12, Girardot, Enero 19 de 2018
Martin Luther King Jr. met Malcolm
X just once. The photo still haunts us with what was lost.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm
X met only once. On March 26, 1964, the two black leaders were on Capitol Hill,
attending Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X meet at the U.S. Senate on March
26, 1964, after a hearing on the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
( The Library of Congress).
( The Library of Congress).
King was stepping out of a news conference, when
Malcolm X, dressed in an elegant black overcoat and wearing his signature
horn-rimmed glasses, greeted him.
“Well, Malcolm, good to see you,” King said.
“Good to see you,” Malcolm X replied.
Cameras clicked as the two men walked down the Senate
hall together.
“I’m throwing myself into the heart of the civil
rights struggle,” Malcolm X told King.
King would say later: “He is very articulate, but I
totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views — at least
insofar as I understand where he now stands.”
The exchange would last only a minute, but the photo
remains a haunting reminder of what was lost. They would never meet again
before each was assassinated, first Malcolm X and then King.
That moment on Capitol Hill would continue to be
analyzed by scholars for its import and its potential. Every word would be
scrutinized. Some would call it the moment the two leaders reconciled. Others
would say they were never that far apart. They both had the same goal: equal
rights and justice for black people in America.
King and Malcolm X were often seen as adversaries in the black freedom
struggle. Malcolm X, who advocated a nationalist approach to equal rights for
black people, often taunted King, criticizing him for subjugating blacks to
their white oppressors and teaching them to be “defenseless in the face of one
of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken a people into captivity.”
[Martin Luther King Jr.’s scorn for ‘white moderates’ in his Birmingham
jail letter]
In one interview, Malcolm X dismissed King as “a
20th-century or modern Uncle Tom.”
King ignored the criticism. “We still advocate
non-violence, passive resistance, and are still determined to use the weapon of
love,” he had said earlier during a March 22, 1956, news conference in
Montgomery. “We are still
insisting emphatically that violence is self-defeating, that he who lives by
the sword dies by the sword.”
Although the two men held what appeared to be
diametrically opposing views on the struggle for equal rights, scholars say by
the end of their lives their ideologies were evolving. King was becoming more
militant in his views of economic justice for black people and more vocal in
his criticism of the Vietnam War. Malcolm X, who had broken with the Nation of
Islam, had dramatically changed his views on race during his 1964 pilgrimage to
Mecca.
The latest trove of formerly classified
documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy
included an FBI dossier on Martin Luther King’s personal and political life,
Havovi Cooper reports.
Eight months before their brief meeting on Capitol
Hill, Malcolm
X sent a letter to King, requesting a meeting. The letter was dated July 31, 1963.
The return address was “MUHAMMAD’S MOSQUE NO. 7, 113 Lenox Avenue, New York 26,
New York.”
Malcolm X opened the letter with
the greeting “Dear Sir.” He called for a united front against racial oppression
in the country.
“The present racial crisis in this country carries
within it powerful destructive ingredients that may soon erupt into an uncontrollable
explosion,” Malcolm X wrote. “The seriousness of this situation demands that
immediate steps must be taken to solve this crucial problem, by those who have
genuine concern before the racial powder keg explodes. A United Front involving
all Negro factions, elements and their leaders is absolutely necessary.”
Malcolm X warned that a “racial explosion is more
destructive than a nuclear explosion,” citing a recent meeting between President Kennedy and Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
“Despite their tremendous ideological differences,”
Malcolm X wrote, “it is a disgrace for Negro leaders not to be able to submerge
our ‘minor’ differences in order to seek a common solution to a common problem
posed by a Common Enemy.”
[‘I have all the guns and money’:
When a woman led the Black Panther Party]
Malcolm X invited King to a rally that August in
Harlem to analyze the race problem and a solution. He promised to moderate the
meeting and guarantee courtesy for each speaker. He requested that if King
could not attend to send a representative, closing the letter with an
endearment: “Your Brother, Malcolm X.”
King
declined the invitation and did not send a representative, according to the
book, “Malcolm and the Cross: The
Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity,” by Louis A. DeCaro Jr.
On August 28, 1963, King would lead more than 250,000
people in the March on Washington and deliver his now-famous “I Have a Dream”
speech.
King acknowledges the crowd during
the 1963 March on Washington. (AFP/Getty Images)
Malcolm X attended the march, but
called it “the Farce on Washington.”
“Yes, I was there,” he wrote. “I observed that circus.
Who ever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing ‘We Shall Overcome. .
.Suum Day. . .’ while tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very
people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against? Who ever heard of
angry revolutionists swinging their bare feet together with their oppressor in
lily-pad park pools, with gospels and guitars and ‘I Have A Dream’ speeches?
And the black masses in America were—and still are—having a nightmare.”
The Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John
F. Kennedy led to a push for
the Civil Rights Act, a major piece of legislation that Kennedy had supported.
[‘You are done’: A secret letter
to Martin Luther King Jr. sheds light on FBI’s malice]
In Washington, as King presided over a news
conference, Malcolm X sat quietly in the back of the conference room.
When the news conference ended, King left through one
door and Malcolm X exited another.
Malcolm X stopped King in his path. The two shook hands.
The following year, Malcolm X went to Selma, where he
had a cordial meeting with Coretta Scott King and other civil rights leaders.
King was in jail at the time but recalled later:
“He spoke at length to my wife, Coretta, about his
personal struggles and expressed an interest in working more closely with the
nonviolent movement. He thought he could help me more by attacking me than
praising me. He thought it would make it easier for me in the long run. He
said, ‘If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will
be more willing to hear Dr. King.’ ”
Only a few days after his visit to Selma, on Feb. 14,
1965, someone firebombed Malcolm X’s house in New York, while he and his family
slept inside. A week later, on Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated by
black Muslim extremists during a rally in New York City’s Audubon Ballroom.
Malcolm X lies mortally wounded on the
Audubon Ballroom stage in New York City after being shot Feb. 21, 1965. (AP/WCBS-TV)
In his Amsterdam News column, King
mourned him. “Like the murder of [Congo Prime Minister Patrice] Lumumba, the
murder of Malcolm X deprives the world of a potentially great leader. I could
not agree with either of these men, but I could see in them a capacity for
leadership which I could respect.’’
In a telegram to Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, King
wrote: “While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race
problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great
ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem.”
Three years later, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther
King was assassinated in Memphis. He was the same age as Malcolm X: just 39.
URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/14/martin-luther-king-jr-met-malcolm-x-just-once-the-photo-still-haunts-us-with-what-was-lost/?tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.90af0e9de80a
Edición Número 12, Girardot, Enero 19 de 2018
**
*
