Perspective

Cone's perspective is clear throughout the book. He begins the book with the goal of showing that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X's philosophies of race and political activism were not incompatible, but rather needed one another. He further argued that King and X moved towards one another towards the end of their lives, seeing the point in each other's life and work. King seeks to contrast the two men in order to illustrate their similarities and the ways in which they both represent the soul of African Americans. Cone appears to make a concerted effort to rehabilitate Malcolm X's image, one that he argues has been marred by the followers of King. In fact, the followers of both figures have spent too much time maligning one another rather than working together for racial justice.

Cone criticizes both Malcolm and Martin for their sexism and classism; he...