Source M
Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 16 April 1963.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace to a substantive and positive peace.
Source N
American editorial cartoon published in a national newspaper, 1964, showing two paths diverging from a crossroads. On one path, a figure in a suit carries a sign reading "Nonviolence" and leads a peaceful march. On the other path, a figure with raised fist carries a sign reading "By Any Means." A signpost at the crossroads reads "Civil Rights."
Source O
Malcolm X, speech at the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, New York, 28 June 1964.
We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. The day of nonviolent resistance is over. We tried nonviolence. We tried sitting in. We tried freedom rides. And every time we tried, they bombed a church. Every time we tried, they beat us. Every time we tried, they set dogs on us. You don't take your case to the criminal; you take your criminal to court. And when a government fails to protect its citizens, those citizens have the right to protect themselves. The philosophy of nonviolence has failed, and those who preach it are keeping black people defenceless in the face of an armed enemy.
Source P
Historian Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, published 1981.
The tension between nonviolent integrationism and militant black nationalism was not simply a disagreement between King and Malcolm X as individuals. It reflected a deeper generational and strategic divide within the Civil Rights Movement. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which had begun as an offshoot of King's philosophy of nonviolence, became by 1966 the vehicle through which younger activists rejected both King's gradualism and the NAACP's legalism. Under Stokely Carmichael's leadership, SNCC's call for "Black Power" in June 1966 represented a fundamental reorientation: away from moral appeals to white conscience and towards independent black political organisation. The shift alienated white liberal allies and divided the movement, but it also gave voice to an urban black population whose experience of poverty and police violence was not addressed by Southern desegregation campaigns.
(a) What, according to Source M, were King's criticisms of the "white moderate"?
(b) What is the message conveyed by Source N?
