Dreams and Nightmares

Comparing the lives and goals of two icons of Black resistance

One man dreamed of a country united in true racial equality. Another saw this as a nightmare that served only the interest of wealthy white people. Both were sons of Baptist ministers. Both grew up to be icons of the civil rights movement.

Integration versus separatism. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X have come to symbolize the two primary strands of Black political thought during the civil rights movement, much as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois had more than a half-century earlier. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out in his foreword, the parallels and divergences between the two men remain striking.

Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson compares and contrasts these two giants in her fascinating dual biography. She offers a concise account of their lives, accomplishments, and challenges. In a crisp, fascinating narrative, she reveals the interconnectedness of their goals, their visions, and their legacies. Most provocative, she suggests what might have been, as their philosophies began to converge, were it not for a pair of assassins' bullets.