The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X is an unfinished story of justice denied. Two men stuck in the act of historical significance. The conflict over legacy and iconography comes down to memory. How do we remember these two men today? How does society view their respective contributions? Does America’s social memory reflect either of their lived realities? Sadly, modern society is of two minds. Mainstream American society has lionized Dr. King, turning him into a hero, a saint, but a shadow of his actual self, while engaging in deliberate forgetting of Malcolm X’s unwanted message of poisonous white hegemony and radical black dignity; concurrently and opposingly, Black America recalls different men: a Dr. King assassinated for his clarion call against economic inequality and demands for social justice and an X whose very name rejected the inheritance placed upon the black community by its enslaved past – shame, silence, obedience, and fear.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is palatable for white America. His image is malleable, mall-able. Martin is an exemplar of American exceptionalism, a martyr who sacrificed himself on the alter of racial justice so the nation could move past its inequality-burdened history into a post-racial future. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington D.C., opened on August 22, 2011, after “more than two decades of planning, fund-raising, and construction,”[2] finally bookending the time of racial division called “the Civil Rights era” by “consign[ing] confrontation over racial inequities to a politics of the past.”[3] A major problem with this idea, and there are many, is that denial of reality is not the dream Martin died fighting for. Reporter Christa Buschendorf, responding to a comment from Cornel West during a 2011 interview, stated, “[Martin] is no longer able to defend himself, because he has not been turned into a radical leader, but as you always say, he has been sanitized.”[4] West rejoined that Martin was more than sanitized, he was “Santaclausified” into a “jolly old man with a smile giving out toys to everybody from right wing Republicans to centrists to progressives,” a stark contrast to the Martin who spoke against the inherent flaws in the capitalist system, the evils of poverty, the violence in urban ghettos, and the hypocrisy of America’s supposed moral leadership.[5] But this later Martin, this radical Martin is not the Martin enshrined on the Washington Mall. The MLK Memorial in Washington D.C. was constructed with only $10 million of the estimated $120 million price tag coming from the government.[6] The remainder of the cost was covered by private donations and such high-profile corporations as General Electric, General Motors, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Bloomberg, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, Pepsico, Toyota, Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and McDonalds.[7] Rarely do capitalist institutions spend large sums of money for humanitarian or altruistic purposes, so the public can assume these corporations expected some sort of gain from their investment in this memorial. If nothing else, federal project managers would be less inclined to incorporate Martin’s words or actions against the evils of capitalism if the fruits of capitalism were financing the form and structure of the memorial itself. The legacy mainstream politicians and corporate America would chose to memorialize would be a watered down, yet hopeful and inspirational Martin Luther King, Jr. who would strive to bring people together for human rights but not “challenge elite political and economic interests and viewpoints.”[8] The MLK Memorial symbolizes much of how Martin is discussed and remembered across America’s mainstream. Martin’s objections to corporate culture and materialism, with its “weapons of mass distraction,” fade next to broad, ambiguous statements that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”[9] Martin’s strenuous objections to America’s involvement in Vietnam were blacklined from history. Martin’s 1967 Riverside speech best articulated his position toward U.S. involvement in Vietnam, yet the quote elected for his memorial – “Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies” – is not the best known. “That honor goes to King’s claim that he would speak openly and directly ‘to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.’”[10] Unsurprisingly, the MLK Memorial planners went a different direction. Martin Luther King Jr. has been sterilized, cleaned up for public consumption, enshrined into a 30-foot tall statue, white-washed into the perfect, silent, immobile Black man – standing in defiance, true, but quiet and to the side where he should be. Mainstream America also coopted Martin’s image in an innocuous and dubious honor when President Ronald Reagan signed into law a national holiday recognizing Martin’s birthday on the third Monday of January each year. Many African Americans saw this as cause for celebration, but some saw the holiday as a “form of tokenism, ‘a minor concession by whites.’”[11] Talmadge Anderson, editor of the Western Journal of Black Studies, told the New York Times in a 1986 interview, “It is as if the rest of the civil rights leaders, the others who were more radical and may have done more to push the cause of civil rights, have been shut out.”[12] Some critics even echoed Malcolm X’s old charge of Martin as a “twentieth century Uncle Tom” and “the best weapon the white man has” being offered up as a symbol of blackness that all others should aspire to – namely, nonviolent.[13] In fact, Reagan’s praise of Martin led M. Carl Holman, president of the National Urban Coalition, to say, “Frankly, it’s easier for a lot of people to honor Martin when he’s safely dead and deal with him as though he were just a visionary, and not a practical and very pragmatic protestor against the status quo.”[14] Perhaps the most eloquent critique of Martin’s birthday as a day supposedly dedicated to his legacy comes from a young black man shopping in New York City in 1998: “[Shoppers] think it’s a day for recreation, part of a three-day weekend… It surprises me. After everybody fought for it, there’s a day of observance and nobody observes it.”[15]

Black America has reclaimed one legacy from Martin Luther King, Jr. that crosses into the mainstream but has a bit of a secret code to it, one that can only be read properly by the Black community – the renaming of streets to Martin Luther King Jr. Street or Boulevard or Avenue. By renaming public spaces, Black America can regain a bit of lost power, some square footage of local identity, and perhaps even symbolically some control over land that has been previously denied to it. As of 2020, more than 955 streets across America have been named in honor of Martin.[16] Yet, surprisingly, something as simple as renaming public spaces to address the exclusion of African American voices often opens up intense political debate about Dr. King, the legacy of civil rights, and larger issues of race and power in America.[17] Small businesses claim burdensome costs associated with address changes and customer confusion or, often correlated, fears of racial contamination from association. According to research by Matthew Mitchelson at the University of Georgia, in coordination with Derek Alderman and E. Jeffrey Popke at East Carolina University, “street names function as symbolic texts within cities and are embedded in larger systems of meaning and ideology that are read, interpreted, and acted upon socially by people.”[18] Thus, the renaming of new MLK boulevards equates to the extension of Black space into previously non-Black spaces. For many, Martin Luther King Jr.’s street name has become synonymous with “segregated, blighted locations” despite the fact that, although MLK named streets are often found in the African American portions of cities, they are not always economically disadvantaged or suffering from “urban decay.”[19] For Black citizens this is a symbolic victory; for mainstream America, this can feel like an invasion.

If Martin is frozen in 1965, Malcolm is frozen in 1959, cast starkly in the sketchy black and white of The Hate That Hate Produced. For many in today’s mainstream, Malcolm – a Black Muslim, a militant, a bogeyman – still embodies that hate. Some older Americans still recall his fist raising and the white hatred that flooded from him during his time in the Nation of Islam, and the pervasive fear of radical Black terror that followed Malcolm’s death, as his admirers went on the form Black Power movements, some of which were violent, most of which were politically divisive. Yet, for the African American community, Malcolm’s legacy is a deep and selfless love. The posthumous publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X after his assassination in 1965 vaulted him to stardom, a place he more than earned with his brilliant rhetoric and monumental contribution to Black civil rights. For Malcolm did not get any legislation passed, or sit at any lunch counters, or organize any marches on Washington, Malcolm instead created a body of thought that had never existed before that enabled Black America to exist separate from white America. Malcolm did not achieve political separation, although he no doubt would have enjoyed that; he achieved a separate identity, a Black identity with deep African roots as opposed to the Negro slave with no culture or name. According to Rita Kiki Edozie and Curtis Stokes in Malcolm X’s Michigan Worldview: an Exemplar for Contemporary Black Studies, “the ‘Africa’ factor of Malcolm’s politics and identity represented a vehicle for U.S. Blacks to explore the reservoir of their African heritage, to retrace African historical connections, to identify African cultural linkages in diaspora cultures, and to realign transnational relations with postcolonial African peoples.”[20] In other words, Malcolm bequeathed Black America its own history. This gift may be why Malcolm is much more present in modern Black culture, especially youth culture, than Martin.

For many Black Americans, Martin is someone to be respected; someone who acted honorably, nobly, but someone who has become whitewashed. Martin, in being accepted as a national hero, has lost some of his identity as a Black icon. Malcolm, on the other hand, in leaving behind no specific legal legacy, no tangible organizational inheritance, only his voice in the wilderness, takes on a larger and more transformative role. If words are actions, Martin is to be remembered, but Malcolm is still speaking today.[21] Malcolm’s words free his listeners from the “constraints of the dominant culture.”[22] “Malcolm’s speeches… demonstrate for his audiences ways of interpreting the world that do not lead toward liberation as much as they are a liberation.”[23] The hip-hop generation of the 1980s and 1990s rediscovered Malcolm as part of their exploration of Black identity through new forms of music and art, sparked in part by Spike Lee’s biographical feature film of Malcolm. As Herb Boyd, contributor to the Black Scholar, wrote in 1993, “School children will never make the mistake again of asking ‘Who is this Malcolm the tenth?’”[24] Malcolm’s strong connection to the younger generation in his own time seems to hold true today. Cornel West observed that Malcolm had “a style that resonated” with young people, “a certain swagger; there was a certain sincerity in keeping it real.”[25] After Lee’s Malcolm X debuted, millions of young people read Malcolm’s autobiography, bought posters and “X” caps, and T-shirts featuring Malcolm in his signature black glasses in a renewed interest and solidarity with Malcolm’s ideas.[26] Many struggled with the publicly sanitized version of Martin taught in the Martin Luther King Jr. schools located on Martin Luther King Jr. streets, preferring instead to identify with Malcolm’s struggle for self-defense, self-determination, and dignity. Malcolm himself would likely have been comfortable with this state of affairs. He contended that his own generation’s young people had “less of a stake than adults ‘in this corrupt system and therefore can look at it more objectively.’” This was partly why he lectured so consistently on the college circuit. He sought to “nurture this ‘new generation of black people who have come on the scene’ because they were ‘disenchanted’ and ‘disillusioned over the system’ and ‘willing to do something about it.’”[27]

Most Americans remember Martin for his “I have a Dream” speech. He marched in Selma. He went to jail. He went to the mountaintop. He solved America’s race problem. That is where his legacy ends for many. For most Americans, Martin Luther King, Jr. died in early 1965, or maybe froze is a better image. Martin stopped growing. He never went to Chicago and lived in the ghetto. He never affirmed the importance of black identity and beauty. He never condemned America’s political leaders for their hypocrisy over giving lip service to civil rights but balking when economics got involved. He never spoke out against Vietnam. And the hints of those ideas from before 1965? Easily overlooked in the rosy glow of his open and unrelenting love. But Martin was not assassinated because he wanted to sing “We Shall Overcome” in the wrong neighborhood. He was killed for his unrelenting demands for structural change in every American neighborhood, and, while some Black Americans may fault King for his willingness to continue to work with the white establishment to gain incremental change, most salute his untiring dedication to advancing right for his people and all people.

Neither of Martin’s nor Malcolm’s legacy is complete, as neither is treated historically as the man he actually was, not the whole man in all his glorious imperfection and complexity and beauty. To freeze either of these men in time is to ignore the importance of their journeys. In literature, there is something called the hero’s journey. The hero begins in humble circumstances yet is somehow called to higher action. At first, the hero refuses, but then he meets a mentor that guides him to the right path. The hero faces many tests and trials, meeting enemies on the way to the central ordeal. At the critical moment, the hero takes decisive action, up to and including self-sacrifice. But there is always a resurrection; the hero always returns from the dead. If we freeze Martin or Malcolm at the moment of their ordeal or in the middle of their testing, we never reach the sacrifice. We never achieve resurrection. We corrupt our hero and their legacy for the world. Grace Lee Boggs and Scott Kurigashe wrote in their book The Next American Revolution that:

“History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell those stories – triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectically – has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings. Historians of the black experience have a crucial role to play in helping blacks and everyone in this country develop a common understanding of the important role that the black struggle for human rights has played through the years not only to advance blacks but also to humanize this country.”[28]

Yet this burden should not fall on just black historians. Responsibility for American history falls on the shoulders of all Americans, all educators, of all ethnicities and races. American history is American history, white and black, violent and triumphant, progressive and reactionary. The burden for the proper context of history, for developing common understanding falls to each of us alike and should be a directive and imperative for educational institutions everywhere. Only through education can progress be achieved, as only through education can enlightenment come.

[1] Derek H. Alderman and Joshua F. J. Inwood, “The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, Tennessee,” Southeastern Geographer, no. 1 (2015), 2, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/26233715.

[2] “Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial,” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Last modified Sept. 12, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr._Memorial.

[3] Kevin Bruyneel, “The King’s Body: The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the Politics of Collective Memory,” History and Memory 26, no. 1 (2014), 88, doi:10.2979/histmemo.26.1.75.

[4] Cornel West and Christa Buschendorf, “‘We Need Martin More than Ever’: Interview with Cornel West on Martin Luther King, Jr., August 2011,” Amerikastudien/American Studies 56, no. 3 (2011), 458, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/23317683.

[5] West, “‘We Need Martin More than Ever’: Interview with Cornel West on Martin Luther King, Jr., August 2011,” 458.

[6] Bruyneel, “The King’s Body: The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the Politics of Collective Memory,” 80.

[7] Bruyneel, 80.

[8] Bruyneel, 80.

[9] Bruyneel, 83.

[10] Bruyneel, 84.

[11] Matthew Dennis, “Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday: Inventing an American Tradition,” in Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2002) 268, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/10.7591/j.ctv2n7kqs.11.

[12] Dennis, “Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday: Inventing an American Tradition,” 268.

[13] Dennis, 268.

[14] Dennis, 269.

[15] Dennis, 278-279.

[16] Derek Alderman, “Naming a Street After MLK Is Easier Said Than Done,” U.S. News and World Report, Jan. 20, 2020, https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-01-20/for-many-us-towns-and-cities-naming-a-street-after-martin-luther-king-jr-reflects-his-unfinished-work.

[17] Matthew L. Mitchelson, Derek H. Alderman, and E. Jeffrey Popke, “Branded: The Economic Geographies of Streets Named in Honor of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Social Science Quarterly 88, no. 1 (2007), 122, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/42956175.

[18] Mitchelson, “Branded: The Economic Geographies of Streets Named in Honor of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” 123.

[19] Mitchelson, 123.

[20] Kiki, Edozie Rita and Stokes Curtis, eds., “Malcolm X from Michigan: Race, Identity, and Community across the Black World,” in Malcolm X’s Michigan Worldview: An Exemplar for Contemporary Black Studies (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015) 19, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/10.14321/j.ctt13x0p7v.5.

[21] Robert E. Terrill, “Malcolm’s Medium,” in Malcolm X: Inventing Racial Judgment (Michigan State University Press, 2004) 6, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/10.14321/j.ctt163t7zd.4.

[22] Terrill, “Malcolm’s Medium,” 7.

[23] Terrill, 6-7.

[24] Herb Boyd, “1992: Year of the X,” The Black Scholar 23, no. 1 (1993), 26, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/41069659.

[25] West, 460.

[26] Grace Lee Boggs, Scott Kurashige, Danny Glover, and Immanuel Wallerstein, “Let’s Talk about Malcolm and Martin,” in The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2012) 80, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pp1w4.9.

[27] Ibram X Kendi, “Malcolm X and the Black Campus Movement: Shaping Academic Communities,” in Malcolm X’s Michigan Worldview: An Exemplar for Contemporary Black Studies, edited by Edozie Rita Kiki and Stokes Curtis (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015) 188, http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/10.14321/j.ctt13x0p7v.15.

[28] Boggs, “Let’s Talk about Malcolm and Martin,” 79.

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