Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare

“There was a war going on in black and white America between Martin and Malcolm. Everyone was forced to choose sides, but I could not. They were like my left and right hands, both necessary for the full expression of my humanity and for my struggle to find my voice in the black freedom movement.”

-James H. Cone

Upon picking up this book, your perceptions of Martin and Malcolm will be markedly different than when putting it down.

The book begins with providing a bedrock of their childhood experiences that predict their emotional agility and responses to suffering. These differences are more personality than dream. For the dream of Martin turned into a nightmare following his visit to the North and seeing the world through Malcolm’s eyes, and Malcolm too underwent a radical transformation in the last year of his life, recognizing the invaluable contributions of King and his leadership in the civil rights movement.

Their divergence, the Martin vs Malcolm portrayal, is a myth for the masses to “choose a side”, when at the heart of their philosophies was the freedom of Black Americans suffering from systemic injustices.

The most moving piece of this book was towards the end, when Malcolm, publicly spoke against Martin, and then later told his wife that appearing publicly against him would be more helpful for King. “He thought it would be easier for me in the long run."

I so loved the analysis of them being corrective personalities to one another that served to consolidate the unity message etched between the lines of the book. Malcolm’s weaknesses were Martin’s strengths, and vice versa. Martin was a pundit at articulating the racist structure embedded in America's consciousness that he managed to playfully and forcefully put into words that would resonate with the African Americans in the North. The “Canaan” of America was no safe haven, it was a crystal palace swallowing mass poverty, police brutality, and squalor. It was as King famously described a “lonely island” in the midst of a “vast ocean of material prosperity.”

The greatest division that persisted between the two was on nonviolence and self-defense.

Martin King’s philosophy of meeting violence with nonviolence, in order to later win them over with love, is in theory the prophetic way to live, but in practice, it lulls the natural responses of men under attack.  For Malcolm, it was the human response to be angry, and for what happened to Black people in America, he let the world know he was the angriest. To a careless observer, Malcolm’s anger was a pathology, but upon second glance, and as I sifted through the pages of this book, I could not help but question Martin more than I did Malcolm. Martin’s belief in a redemptive love (agape) makes you ponder the deep commitment he had to his faith, and how it served to elevate him above any retaliatory or baser emotions. For Malcolm, the human experience served as the anchor to his faith. The anger he harbored put him on the less-trodden path to justice. Self-defense was part and parcel of his Islamic faith. These differences, however wavering they were, remained the same.

The only thing missing in this book from the perspective of a Muslim reader was a greater background on Malcolm’s faith. His previous attachment to the Nation of Islam was painted as a tool to heal the Black communities from the systemic downstream effects they were facing including drug addiction, crime, etc. But I found an absence of the theoretical views that moved Malcolm. The reason for his sudden awakening to Orthodox Islam was aptly described as due to seeing without the mental confines of the Nation. However, no theological grounding for the push was described.

As a contrast to Martin's commitment to nonviolence and redemptive love due to the claim of Jesus’ suffering on the cross, Malcolm’s beliefs are rooted in an omnipotent God who forgives and punishes whom he wills. He is a separate entity who intervenes in the world but needs not to incur suffering on himself in order to achieve redemption of humankind. Thus, the humanness of Malcolm can be accentuated rather than dimmed down to achieve a Christ-like personality.

Perhaps the truest playful difference between Martin and Malcolm was described by Cone:

“From Martin’s theology of love emerged his absolute adherence to nonviolence, and from Malcolm’s theology of justice emerged his absolute commitment to self-defense.”

The irony here is that love and justice are immutable truths that are not mutually exclusive, thus reenforcing the idea of the two being our “right and left hand.”

Rating: 5/5