Image of sole meeting reminder of what was lost
They would never meet again before each was assassinated, first Malcolm X and then King
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X met only once. On March 26, 1964, the two black leaders were on Capitol Hill, attending a Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King was stepping out of a news conference, when Malcolm X, dressed in an elegant black overcoat and wearing his signature horn-rimmed glasses, greeted him. “Well, Malcolm, good to see you,” King said. “Good to see you,” Malcolm X replied. Cameras clicked as the two men walked down the Senate hall together.
The exchange would last only a minute, but the photo remains a haunting reminder of what was lost. They would never meet again before each was assassinated, first Malcolm X and then King.
That moment on Capitol Hill would continue to be analyzed by scholars for its import and its potential. Every word would be scrutinized. Some would call it the moment the two leaders reconciled. Others would say they were never that far apart. They both had the same goal: equal rights and justice for black people in America.
King and Malcolm X were often seen as adversaries in the black freedom struggle. Malcolm X, who advocated a nationalist approach to equal rights for black people, often taunted King, criticizing him for subjugating blacks to their white oppressors and teaching them to be “defenseless in the face of one of the most cruel beast that has ever taken a people into captivity.”
In one interview, Malcolm X dismissed King as “a 20th-century or modern Uncle Tom.”
Eight months before their brief meeting on Capitol Hill, Malcolm X sent a letter to King, requesting a meeting. The letter was dated July 31, 1963. The return address was “MUHAMMAD’S MOSQUE NO. 7, 113 Lenox Avenue, New York 26, New York.”
Malcolm X opened the letter with the greeting “Dear Sir.” He called for a united front against racial oppression in the country.
Malcolm X warned that a “racial explosion is more destructive than a nuclear explosion,” citing a recent meeting between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Malcolm X invited King to a rally that August in Harlem to analyze the race problem and a solution. He promised to moderate the meeting and guarantee courtesy for each speaker. He requested that if King could not attend to send a representative, closing the letter with an endearment: “Your Brother, Malcolm X.”
King declined the invitation and did not send a representative, according to the book, Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity, by Louis A. DeCaro.
The next month, on Aug. 28, 1963, King would lead more than 250,000 people in the March on Washington and deliver his now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Malcolm X attended the march, but called it “the Farce on Washington.”
The Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of Kennedy led to a push for the Civil Rights Act, a major piece of legislation that Kennedy had supported.
In Washington, as King presided over a news conference, Malcolm X sat quietly in the back of the conference room. When the news conference ended, King left through one door and Malcolm X exited another. Malcolm X stopped King in his path. The two shook hands.
The following year, Malcolm X went to Selma, Ala., where he had a cordial meeting with Coretta Scott King and other civil rights leaders. King was in jail at the time but recalled later:
“He spoke at length to my wife, Coretta, about his personal struggles and expressed an interest in working more closely with the nonviolent movement. He thought he could help me more by attacking me than praising me. He said, ‘If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.’ ”
Only a few days after his visit to Selma, on Feb. 14, 1965, someone firebombed Malcolm X’s house in New York, while he and his family slept inside. A week later, on Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated by Black Muslim extremists during a rally in New York City’s Audubon Ballroom.
In his Amsterdam News Column, King mourned him. “Like the murder of [Congo Prime Minister Patrice] Lumumba, the murder of Malcolm X deprives the world of a potentially great leader. I could not agree with either of these men, but I could see in them a capacity for leadership which I could respect.”
In a telegram to Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, King wrote: “While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem.”
Three years later, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. He was the same age as Malcolm X: 39.