Two trajectories in one book
Peniel E. Joseph follows Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. as developing figures whose public work belongs to the same struggle for Black freedom.
Book · A CLOSER LOOK
The Sword and the Shield
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. is a dual biography by Peniel E. Joseph. It challenges the habit of treating the two men as fixed opposites and traces how their ideas and public lives developed.
A CLOSER LOOK
The story behind it.
The connected, evolving lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
The familiar opposition reconsidered
The paired biography moves beyond the shorthand of one militant and one moderate. Changes in each man’s thinking give the comparison its movement.
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Sources & credits
Introductions are grounded in the sources below. Collection notes and reading prompts provide an editorial starting point; personal opinions are identified in the collection’s content.
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