3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

used King as a patsy to define his own militance.
Conversely, King used Malcolm to illustrate the alternative to legislative reform :
chaos . Again, the dichotomy came into play, as King and Malcolm confornud to their
media-crafted images . While Malcolm was still alive, King rarely acknowledged that there
were multiple alternatives to legislative reform~ Instead, his rhetoric allowed only one
alternative: death and destruction, courtesy of Malcolm X and his ilk. King would usually
present the matter in terms of a choice : "We can deal with [the problem of second-class
citizenship] now, or we can drive a seething humanity to a desperation it tried, asked, and
hoped to avoid .'"`s In his famous "Letter From Birmingham City Jail," he suggested that if
white leaders failed to had him, "millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair" will
"seek solace" in Malcolm X : a development that "will lei inevitably to a frightening racial
nightmarc:'~ While King helped to demonize Malcolm, what this exchange really proved
was how self-fulfilling prophecies work : by treating him as a doomsayer, King-in a sense-
forced Malcolm to become one.
King's and Malcolm's personalities dictated how they handled the issue of self-
defense . King recognized that talking about self-defense needlessly agitated white audiences ;
therefore, he avoided doing so . Malcolm also recognized that talking about self-defense
agitated white folks-which was exactly why he did it . In championing self-defense,
Chicago represented a turning point for King in this regard . After the open-housing
protests in Chicago in 1966, he increasingly recognized that legislative reform was not
enough .
;SKing, "In a Word: Now," New York Times MaQaz^in_e (September 29, 1963) : 91-92 .
King, "Letter from Birmingham City Jail :'
102