Research Description Johanna Pearson

I began my research by compiling a list of people mentioned by Singh and comparing them to people who were noted as important people for the civil rights movement in my digital project. I found that for the most part there was an overlap between the people mentioned in booth sources. However my digital project had chosen to put more emphasis on certain people that Shing had only briefly mentioned. The digital project I reviewed had recommended reading entire books about Malcolm X and Ella Baker, people who are not an integral part of Shing's argument. I was curious as to why some scholars, like Shing, might choose to not fully discuss the role of these individuals. So, I began to look into both Ella Baker and Malcolm X. After doing some research into Ella Baker I began to understand why Shing had only mentioned her in a limited capacity. Although the work that Ella Baker did was remarkable, her views largely aligned with the views of MLK and her focus was largely centered around organizing. It would make sense that if Shing wanted to challenge the idea of a King centered civil rights movement that he might limit the importance of someone like Baker. However upon researching Malcolm X I found that his Ideas often reflected the argument about the globality of the civil rights movement. So I chose to focus my research on Malcolm X. 

As Malcolm X was known for his speeches I looked into some of his speeches, the one that stood out to me the most was his speech “Ballot or the Bullet” where he outlines the principles of black nationalism. This speech provides insight into the origins of black radicalism, separatism, and the role of faith in the civil rights movement. In addition the speech provides direct evidence showing how Malcolm X was inspired by freedom movements abroad in creating his own view towards the american civil rights movement. To show how Malcolm X was able to empower Black people to move towards freedom so I wanted to find a photo of him giving a speech. I found a photo of Malcolm X at a rally in New York holding a headline reading “Our Freedom Can’t Wait".