Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, long a contentious backdrop to the history of civil rights and anti-racist activism in America, is under new scrutiny after the bombshell news that a quote denigrating Malcolm X, published in Playboy and attributed to King, is apparently fraudulent.
This new information adds to the ongoing rethinking of the relationship between King and Malcolm X.
Of course, this is not to suggest that we stop teaching “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” since all memoir and autobiography is an act of literary creation.
The complexity of his relationship to Malcolm X is handled judiciously.
Balancing the bitter and beautiful parts of the relationship between King and Malcolm X helps us come to terms with past and contemporary historical traumas.