in the 1960s. In the excerpts taken from The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964), Malcolm X made it very clear that he agreed with Mills that elites control the wealth and political power of this nation. However, Malcolm X believed the question of power in the United States really boils down to a racial conflict between whites and non whites. Unlike Martin Luther King Jr., he believed blacks should not rule out any means of attaining self empowerment and self protection from the elites (whites). Interestingly, Malcolm X defends his advocacy of violence (if necessary) by arguing that King's non violent methods would make no gains from an enemy whose emotional constitution did not allow him to perceive non whites as worthy of consideration as dignified or even human (Malcolm X, 1964, 92).
The Port Huron Statement (1962), by Tom Hayden, was a brief treatise which supported C. Wright Mills' notions of a powerful elite dominating American Society. Written just before the Civil Rights and anti Vietnam movements had reached their pinnacles in the American consciousness, Hayden agreed with Mills that there existed a widening economic and social gap in our society between the powerful elite and the lower and middle classes. He labeled the ambivalence he saw in America as a "national stalemate," and used this treatise as a formula for shaking Americans from the "glaze" they were in which allowed them to turn their backs on the spirit of the constitution as well as retarded their willingness to openly embrace social experiments such as civil rights (Hayden, 1962, 91 92).
This analysis will compare the works of the four authors who generally agreed that their was a class conflict occurring in America. However, there are some differences in how each characterized that conflict and even greater differences in how that conflict should be resolved.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote Why We Can't Wait in 1964 just as the Civil Rights Movement, ...