How Childhood Can Impact Adult Viewpoints
Dawn Bradshaw
ENG/220
September 7, 2015
Instructor Tracy Banis

How Childhood Can Impact Adult Viewpoints Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were great civil rights icons. They both worked diligently for the equality of blacks, but on different platforms. When people think of Dr. King, they think of nonviolence, preaching love thy neighbor, and the integration of blacks and whites. On the other hand, Malcolm X brings thoughts of militant force, the infamous phrase, “by any means necessary” (Carson, 2005), violence, and segregation. While Martin and Malcolm’s common goal was fighting for the justice and equality of civil rights for blacks, their approach and viewpoints differed on the matter, and this is perhaps due to their early childhood and young adulthood experiences in racial relations. Both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X’s fathers were politically active Baptist preachers, but growing up in the 1920s was an entirely different experience for them, respectively. While Martin as an adolescent lived a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle, Malcolm suffered great tragedies. As the family slept, the home interrupted the pitch black night with blazes of fire set by two white men (Hatch 2001). Luckily, no one was hurt. Then, Malcolm’s father was brutally and savagely ripped away from him and his family by the hands, he believes, of the Ku Klux Klan (Hatch 2001). Subsequently, after losing the head of the household, the family had to seek government assistance and at times go without necessities like food and water. Losing the father and raising six children alone without any money proved to be too much for Malcolm’s mother; she succumbed to all pressure, and was committed to a mental institution (Carson 2005). After the committal of his mother, Malcolm went into the foster care system and