Black America has never moved as one bloc. We've always had faultlines in the nineteen sixties. The biggest one was this where you riding with Malcolm or Martin. If you were with Malcolm, you didn't believe in politely waiting for humanity to be recognized. You believe in self - defense. Not as a theory, but as a right. You believe the system wasn't broken. It was built to keep you, you at the bottom. You weren't begging America to change. You are preparing to survive without it. Malcolm called out white liberals for being just as dangerous as open racists because they smile on your face while voting against your future. Not a lot's changed, Huh ? He told black people to stop chasing the American dream when the house was never built for us. His people were not here for marches and end it with police. They were here for building power, arming neighbourhoods and telling the truth without sugar coating for TV. Now, if you are with Martin and the early years, you believe that nonviolence was the only way forward now because you were weak, but because you wanted the world to see the truth of what was happening here. The hoses, the dogs, the beatings all while you stood still. It was a mirror that America couldn't look away from. Martins. Can't believe that exposing America's hypocrisy to the world. We're forced change faster than bullets ever could. They leaned on the church, the press, the Constitution's own words to make this country live up to it's promises. This wasn't just a difference in tactics. It was a deep divide in how you saw freedom being won. One side said freedom is taken and the others have. Freedom is earned through moral victory. And in barbershops, kitchens and organizing meetings, people argued over which side was really protecting the community and which side was risking at all. But here's the part that most people don't want to talk about. By the late nineteen sixties, Martin was in the same man that America put on a postage stamp. He had been to Chicago and seen northern racism just as ugly, just less polite. He spoke out against the Vietnam War and called the US the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Today. Again, not much has changed. He started talking about economic justice, not just civil rights, about guaranteed income, affordable housing and dismantling the kind of capitalism that kept black and poor white people fighting over crumbs. And when he started sounding a little too much like Malcolm, that's when the love from the media and the politicians just dried up. We've been told to choose between Malcolm's fire and Martin Faith for decades But history shows that they were both staring at the same enemy and just coming at it from different angles. And that's the uncomfortable truth. America didn't fear them because they disagreed. America feared them because in the end their visions started to meet. One scared America into paying attention, the other shamed it into action. They both paid with their lives when they started talking about money. And the real fight was never Malcolm vs. Martin. It was all of us vs. A system that would rather kill you than let you be free. Share, believe, inspire, blacks, be.