The biographer discovers that Martin Luther King’s harshest criticism of Malcolm X was invented. ‹ Literary Center

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May 10, 2023, 9:45 a.m.

Writer Jonathan Eig, whose new biography of Martin Luther King Jr, King: A Life, will be released next week, found that Kings’ harshest rebuke of Malcolm X came out of nowhere. The famous review, which appeared in a 1965 Playboy interview with writer Alex Haley, read:

And in his litany of articulating Negro desperation without offering any positive and creative alternatives, I think Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. A fiery, demagogic oratory in black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare for violence, as he has done, can only reap sorrow.

But what the Eig founder didn’t find in the Alex Haley archives at Duke University paints a different picture. Nowhere in the full transcript does King say that I think Malcolm did himself and our people a huge disservice. Nor does he say that he can only reap sorrow. And the most (in)famous part of the review, about Malcolm Xs Fiery, demagogic oratory in black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare for violence is part of an answer to a question entirely different that appears earlier in the interview, a generic prompt that reads: Dr. King, what is your opinion of black extremists who advocate gun violence and sabotage?

While Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were certainly at odds over tactics and philosophies in the civil rights struggle, these revelations suggest their alleged antagonisms were grossly exaggerated. And as King has gone from enemy of white America to one of its secular saints, his radicalism has been conveniently and systematically erased from the historical record, with Malcolm X often cast as his extremist foil.

When it comes to journalism, outright fabrications here are obviously inexcusable, but the piecing together of quotes, without regard to context, is almost as careless. No one will ever know if it was Haleys, or his editors, but this discovery of Eig represents a significant shift in King’s assessment of opinion on his radical foil.

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