Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and W.E.B. Dubois
The writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and W.E.B. Dubois reveal much about each manÆs sense of racial justice. All three men were extremely influential in the fight in America to achieve social, political, economic and educational justice for Black Americans. However, the nonviolent passive resistance strategy of protest adopted by Martin Luther King, Jr. appears to have struck the deepest chord in appealing to both Blacks and whites in American society. All three men lived through a deplorable time with respect to race relations in American society. The injustices all three witnessed about them, however, had a different impact on how each black leader developed their views on achieving racial justice. While W.E.B. Dubois and Malcolm X often adopted aggressive, radical views calling for separatism and Pan-Africanism, Martin Luther King, Jr. hoped to achieve the conditions he yearned for in his I Have A Dream speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial: ôWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their characterö (Badger, 2002, 4).
The ideologies of racial justice in King, Jr., Malcolm X and Dubois all changed over the course of their lifetime. Originally, the speeches and writings of Dubois encouraged black Americans to ôeducate and agitateö as a means of achieving independence and racial justice (Hynes, 2002, 5). Dubois experiences on both sides of the Atlanta caused him to believe that such a strategy fell on deaf ears. In line with this thinking he became interested in the ways social institutions rob African Americans of social justice. After completing a long study of PhiladelphiaÆs seventh war slums, Dubois came to a conclusion that is still posited...