Courage, leadership, open-mindedness and hard-working. These qualities describe what it means to be a civil rights activist. A civil rights activist is a hero that dedicates themselves to fighting for equality for groups of people. Without them, there would still be a lot of controversy and inequality in the world. In the eyes of many people, there are no better examples of these types of heroes than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. They are both civil rights activists, however individually they took different approaches to reach their common goal. In addition, both share some of the same qualities of a civil rights activist however one of them managed to have a more civil approach in reaching his goal. Martin Luther King Jr was a more prominent advocate for the Civil Rights Movement because of his …show more content…
Not only was he influenced by his own father, but also he was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. In the 1950’s King went on a trip to India and that trip affected him deeply, increasing his commitment to the civil rights struggle. This showed how hard working he was, an important quality for a civil rights activist. King learned how Ghandi succeeded in India’s independence movement agaisnt the British. He found out that Ghandi engaged in a non-violent protest against the British. He wanted to apply what he learned from Ghandi to his own goal which was being inspirational and not using violence to get equality. Martin Luther King Jr believed in equality between races and that violence is not needed. In contrast, Malcolm believed that black and white people should be separated and that they should achieve equality on their own, whether violence was needed or not. They were basically fighting for the same thing in different