Similarities Between Martin Luther King Jr And Malcolm X

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In the wise words of Erwin McMarus, “We can’t change history, but we can create the future.” The past cannot be changed, but we can make things happen in the future, which is Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X did. These two great leaders with two completely different philosophies made the history of the United States during the Civil Rights Movement. At the March of Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech which portrayed the message of using integration through civil disobedience to achieve racial equality. He conveyed this message by attaining an optimistic and inspirational attitude with a compound-complex sentence structure. Although growing up in a loving and caring environment, Martin Luther King Jr. could not be shielded from the racism and cruelty of …show more content…
Malcolm X also greatly opposed integration and projected his message through the use of an angry and demanding tone and a simple but screaming sentence structure. Malcolm X grew up in very bad surroundings throughout his whole childhood. Many threats came to his family causing them to move multiple times. Their house was burned to the ground and even his father died under very suspicious circumstances. His mother was taken to a mental hospital because of his death causing him and his siblings to be split up in foster homes and orphanages. Malcolm X later got in trouble with the law many times and even jail time. His troubled childhood clearly led to his anger towards the whites represented in his speech. There are many contrasts between Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Malcolm X’s speech given at the Harlem Freedom Rally of 1960. By analyzing the speeches’ messages, tones, and sentence structures, one can understand how divergent their approaches were to achieving more
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