Focus
Does King’s proposal for a “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged” indicate a shift from his earlier vision of the American dream? Does King’s advocacy of “compensatory or preferential treatment” look more to race or poverty as its justification? Is the G.I. Bill of Rights a good analogy for King’s promotion of a federal, economic program to help blacks and the disadvantaged, generally? What does “black power” mean to King?
How does Malcolm X’s theology inform his political thinking? Malcolm X insists that there is no legitimate intermediate position between “the ballot” and “the bullet.” He is highly critical of King’s reliance on “civil” disobedience. Is he correct? How does his understanding of political action, and particularly the justification for violence, compare to the right of revolution as articulated by John Locke and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence? Why did Malcolm X reject integration as an aim of the civil rights struggle? Why must Black Nationalism be an internationalist movement?
Readings:
- Martin Luther King, Jr.:
- King, Why We Can’t Wait (1964)
- Chap. 8, “The Days to Come,” 116-143
- King, I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches
- “Black Power Defined” (June 11, 1967), 153-65
- “I See the Promised Land” (April 3, 1968), 193-203
- Fairclough, Better Day Coming, chap. 11-12
Malcolm X:
- Louis Lomax, When the Word is Given, “A Summing Up” (1963)
- Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks
- “Message to Grassroots” (November 10, 1963)
- “A Declaration of Independence” (March 12, 1964)
- “The Ballot or the Bullet” (April 3, 1964)
- “At the Audubon” (December 20, 1964)
- “Last Answers and Interviews” (Nov. 23, 1964-Feb. 21, 1965), 194-226