Compare And Contrast Martin Luther King Jr And Mlk

Martin Luther King Argumentative Essay

At the times of both Malcolm X and Dr. King, African Americans were not being treated

fairly by white people. During these times, many people believed that segregation had to end.

They were called civil rights leaders. Among these leaders were Malcolm X and Martin Luther

King. They, like their fellow civil rights leaders, believed that segregation had finally gone too

far. While they fought for the same cause, they had very different ways of going about it.

Malcolm X pushed more towards violence, and Dr. King preached for peace. Even though Dr.

King and Malcolm X both fought against racial inequality, Dr. King was more persuasive in his

letter because he is more likely to gain the respect of those who

oppose him with his credibility.
Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a clear representation of how
being a credible source helps people to respect him. In the letter, King first showed his credibility
with starting with “my dear fellow clergymen”(King).

As a result, when he said fellow, he hinted

that he too is a clergyman and that they should listen to him and speak to him as an equal. This

would make more people listen because he is a high ranking man in the church. Another part

where King is very persuasive is when he mentions that he is “president of the Southern

Christian Leadership Conference.”(King) an organization which has “eighty-five affiliated

organizations across the South and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human

Rights”(King). By saying that he is the leader of such a prestigious organization, he is gaining

the respect and support of those who thought that he was not a credible person to be leading a

campaign. This is a clear representation of how he is getting people to respect him because the

extra detail about his credibility would allow people to see him for who he really is, a strong and

respectful man who just wants all men to be treated equally. This is how Martin Luther King

used ethos to gain the respect of his opposers. Just as how Dr. King used ethos to gain his

supporters, Malcolm X believed that pathos was the right course of action.

Likewise, Malcolm X was also a very persuasive writer. Some aspects where he

proved
that he was a very persuasive writer is when he uses pathos to describe what the African
Americans were feeling at the time. Although he was very successful in bringing together the
black community, he did not succeed in bringing together those in the white community who just
like him, were against racial segregation.

A reason why he failed to bring the white communities

support was that he used racial slurs like “Polacks”(X) for those with Polish descent, and

“Honkies”(X) for any white person in general. This would cause the white community to turn

away from his cause and campaign because they would be offended by the way he talks about

them. This would also make them believe that Malcolm X is saying that Blacks are better than

whites, not that they are equal. Another aspect where he failed to be as persuasive is when he

preached violence instead of peace. In his speech, Malcolm X mentioned that if there is no

change then, the African Americans will start using “Molotov cocktails this month, hand

grenades next month, and something else next month.”(X). In the speech, X is saying that if the

African Americans don’t start to get treated right with peace, then they would resort to violence

and fight. This would not help persuade the whole community because if you fight fire with fire,

then you will only result in a larger fire. If he decided to go to war for this, then the only thing

that it would result in was more chaos. Malcolm X was not as persuasive as Martin Luther

King.
Both Dr. King and Malcolm X were very persuasive writers, but King was more
successful when it came to bringing the community as a whole together, regardless of their color
of skin. They had their different methods on how to get attention on this controversial topic, and
they both succeeded. Without both of them this country would still be divided with segregation,
but even though they were both important, Martin Luther King did a better job of persuading the
community than Malcolm X.