How Did Martin Luther King Jr's Approach To Civil Rights

Martin Luther King Jr’s approach to civil rights was nonviolent civil disobedience protests. This meant that when they marched on Birmingham they let the police beat, release dogs on them, spray them with fire hoses and didn’t fight back. They just kept peacefully assembling and marching for their rights. He knew that if the northern media would cover the abuses they faced that it would end segregation in the south. So the march on Birmingham happened, and in front of cameras the children and young people marching through Birmingham Alabama having their rights violently violated went all around the world. This motived John F Kennedy who was president to demand via a televised broadcast that discrimination be made illegal by passage of a law. This later fell to President Johnson as it was passed signed into law under him, as a memorial to John F Kennedy after his assassination.
Malcolm X clearly cites Dr.
Kings’ position by citing how Dr. King thinks they should wait for elected officials to vote on it. In the same sentence he chastises Dr Kings opinion by begging the question will those whose are elected by people who support segregation vote against that when many of them support segregation. This leads Malcolm X to where he is different than Dr. King. Malcolm X believed that the time for passive resistance and waiting for freedom to be given was over. He believed that people had a right to fight back for their freedoms. He states in the quote from “By any Means Necessary” that African Americans have the right to defend themselves against the inappropriate force being used against them. This is very similar to traditional white anti-federalist thoughts that have been prevalent in the United States since the founding. Equal retaliatory violence to defend yourself and your rights is supposedly guaranteed under the constitution and the African American community should just take their rights unto
them. WEB Dubois would have liked Malcolm X’s opinion in my view as I stated in the last tests essays that African Americans should seek their own empowerment through higher education and all the tools legally available to them. This would include the right to self-defense, the right to voting, voting with their economic power, power of presence and media. Dr King’s position to me reflects Booker T Washington’s opinion of not rocking the boat too hard. Use your economic power, wealth and mere presence to slowly affect change by appealing to economic interests and their common decency. Malcolm X like WEB DuBois believed that anyone who favored slavery or segregation was incapable of common decency and understanding that African Americans were entitled to the freedoms the country was founded upon. This militant approach both in terms of economics, politics, and physical protection was the natural extension of WEB Dubois use all of the tools available. Malcolm X believes that for as long as African Americans have been following the guidance of Booker T Washington and submitting themselves politically, socially, economically to the racists in the south has gained them nothing and that it’s time to forcefully take back their rights to participate in government and all aspects of daily life with no restrictions making them second class Americans.