Malcolm X
Advocacy and teachings while with the Nation

From his adoption of the Nation of Islam in 1952 until he broke with it in 1964, Malcolm X promoted the Nation's teachings. These included beliefs:

Louis E. Lomax said that "those who don't understand biblical prophecy wrongly label him as a racist and as a hate teacher, or as being anti-White or as teaching Black Supremacy". One of the goals of the civil rights movement was to end disenfranchisement of African Americans, but the Nation of Islam forbade its members from participating in voting and other aspects of the political process. The NAACP and other civil rights organizations denounced him and the Nation of Islam as irresponsible extremists whose views did not represent the common interests of African Americans.

Malcolm X had been equally critical of the civil rights movement. During this period, he denounced Martin Luther King Jr. as a "chump," and referred to other civil rights leaders as being "stooges" of the White establishment and was strongly against any kind of racial integration. He called the 1963 March on Washington "the farce on Washington," and said he did not know why so many Black people were excited about a demonstration "run by Whites in front of a statue of a president who has been dead for a hundred years and who didn't like us when he was alive."

While the civil rights movement fought against racial segregation, Malcolm X advocated the complete separation of African Americans from Whites. He proposed that African Americans should return to Africa and that, in the interim, a separate country for Black people in America should be created. He rejected the civil rights movement's strategy of nonviolence, arguing that Black people should defend and advance themselves " by any means necessary ". His speeches had a powerful effect on his audiences, who were generally African Americans in northern and western cities. Many of them — tired of being told to wait for freedom, justice, equality and respect — felt that he articulated their complaints better than did the civil rights movement.
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