The disgusting idea of segregation between whites and blacks in the U.S. was put to an end resulting from the tenacious push that the civil rights movement caused in the sixties. Since it was necessary for blacks to obtain equal rights and an equal financial status, many men attempted to be a leader of this movement, but only two of those men ended up becoming prominent leaders. These two men happened to be Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X; they had two contrasting concepts to attack the lingering issue that both eventuated in King and X's assassinations. As a result of these two men coming from separate religions, Christianity and Islam, growing up in areas far from one another, having parents with different ideologies, and receiving different levels of education, King ended up leading a peaceful approach while X took a radical path. 

Martin Luther King Jr. published a numerous amount of writings to spread the ideas to the public, but the chapter from one of his books, "The World House", demonstrates one of his peaceful attempts to integrate people of color into both living communities and financial communities with the whites. The world house that King is referring to is simply our global community that came from technology allowing people to contact each other from separate sides of the planet. After discussing the concept of social change King states, "Today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change  together we must learn to live as brothers  or together we will be forced to perish as fools," (289). Without being open minded and accepting change, no nation will be able to progress forward, which will end in a slow but steady collapse until the nation is forced to rely on another. When discussing JFK's civil rights effort, King states, "There emerges the beginnings of an intelligent approach to the colored peoples of the world. However, there remained little or no attempt to deal with the economic aspects of racial exploitation," (288). Today African-Americans still face this economic problem but not nearly as harsh at the time, where they could not acquire a decent paying job due to segregation. Living on minimum wage is impossible especially when needing to provide for a family. Today some African-Americans still are experiencing the economic wrath from their previous generations due to being born into a family of poverty. King later elaborates on how we need to start a war on poverty since it is extremely prevalent around the globe and crashes nations' economies limiting them from reaching their full potential that could be reached if all citizens are working. After elaborating on all of the technology and resources that are available, King goes on to say, "There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will," (290). If people erased their selfishness and greed from their personalities all people can thrive and boost not just personal assets, but a whole country's. "Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly," (King 292).

Opposed to King's ideologies, Malcolm X's writings as well as speeches most of the time pertained to separation of races. Rather than helping financial matters with integration, X's idea of complete separation could only result in hindering those matters. X refers to the whites in America as wolves and the blacks as sheep that need to separate themselves to be safe. "The black masses don't want segregation nor do we want integration. What we want is complete separation. In short, we don't want to be integrated with the white man, we want to be separated from the white man," (X paragraph 4). X then rants on how separation is the only intelligent solution to the race problem of the time, but states nothing about how the problem is exactly solved since poverty will continue to follow the struggling African-Americans. It is difficult for us to look back at X's philosophy and understand how the blacks could initiate their own economy after separating from the whites where jobs would be available after integration takes place. "Only a blind man will walk into the open embrace of his enemy, and only a blind people, a people who are blind to the truth about their enemies, will seek to embrace or integrate with that enemy," (X paragraph 6). Opposing King and indirectly describing him as a blind man, whites are considered as the black's enemy rather than a potential partner and/or friend. Instead of striving for happiness through peace, X believes that peace can only be achieved with an action along the lines of war against the whites. 

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X came from extremely different backgrounds with King being raised in a prosperous but segregated community in Atlanta, Georgia, while X grew up in Lancing, Michigan, but was surrounded by hateful white supremacists. Pertaining to King's childhood, "His stern but loving father taught Martin Jr., as well as his brother and sister, the value of hard work, and he instilled in them a strong faith in God. With a few notable exceptions, Martin was spared exposure to the pains of racial discrimination," (Ladenburg 30). As a result of his father being a Baptist minister, King was taught the loving and caring faith of Christianity that caused him to strive for a world of respect, peace, and harmony. Without experiencing the harsh wrath of racism during his childhood, King was not able to directly relate to Malcolm X's struggles. As Ladenburg speaks on X's childhood, he states:

His problems with whites continued and the family home was actually burned down to the ground by a white-supremacist organization. Whites in the area did not like the fact that Malcolm's father was an organizer for Marcus Garvey's back to Africa movement. Whites killed Malcolm's father a few years later. (Ladenburg 29) 

After looking at X's one rough patch from these events, his ideologies of hating white become more understandable, due to the fact that a supremacist group not only destroyed the place where X was supposed to feel safe and be able to sleep at night, but also murdered his role model, his father. Regardless of whether we are religious or not, if we put ourselves in the scenario of our parent being murdered, it's going to be exceptionally challenging to forgive those who committed the atrocity. King's father had taught him the Christian value of sharing the world we live in with our brothers and sisters, everyone around the world, since we are all the children of God and are to share his gift to us. On the other hand, with X's father being gone, he never had the opportunity to learn those values from his father that happened to be a Baptist minister. As King proceeded to receive a college education as well as his PhD at Boston University, X dropped out of school and obtained his knowledge through petty crimes on the streets of Boston. After receiving a ten year jail sentence, we hear, "While in prison Malcolm came under the influence of Black Muslims who taught him that whites were devils that had robbed African-Americans of their true homeland, names, and religion," (Ladenburg 29). At this transitional moment in his life, X took his radical approach to the public to attempt to solve the ongoing race problem in the U.S.

After learning about some of the ill events that happened leading up to and during the civil rights movement, in the sixties, one can come to an understanding of both King's reasoning behind his ideas as well as X's. Resulting from the difference of peacefulness versus radicalism, the two most important civil rights leaders were actually enemies, restricting them from using their power of influence to bring everyone together to solve the issue. Different events in one's childhood can lead to completely different human beings in the future. 

