A quote attributed to Martin Luther King that appeared in a famous Playboy interview in which the civil rights leader dismissed Malcolm X’s use of violent tactics and insinuated Malcolm’s advocacy harmed the Civil Rights movement was apparently created by writer Alex Haley, who conducted the interview, newly uncovered research shows, the Washington Post reports.
Asked by Haley to comment on “the articulate former Black Muslim, Malcolm X,” King’s response in the Q&A-style interview was published in the January 1965 issue of Playboy, released one month before Malcolm’s assassination, as this:
I have met Malcolm X, but circumstances didn’t enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views, as I understand them. He is very articulate, as you say. I don’t want to seem to sound as if I feel so self-righteous, or absolutist, that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. But I know that I have so often felt that I wished that he would talk less of violence, because I don’t think that violence can solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.”
However, author Jonathan Eig, researching Dr. King for a new biography, found an unedited transcript of the recorded interview in Haley’s archives at Duke University, and it provides a very different end to that response: “And in his litany of expressing the despair of the Negro, without offering a positive, creative approach, I think that he falls into a rut sometimes.”
Frequently in a Q&A-style interview (and even in quotes in articles), writers will undertake minor editing to the published transcript, taking out hesitations, stumbles and repetitious statements to make the discussion easier to read. Haley did much more than that: Eig’s research shows Haley pieced together parts of King’s responses to different questions, much earlier in the interview, when Haley asked him about “Negro extremists who advocate armed violence and sabotage[.]” At no time did King say anything close to “Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice.”
Though Malcolm and King were contemporaries working in the Civil Rights movement, they only reportedly met once, very briefly, in March 1964. The era’s Mainstream Media painted the two as fierce rivals but in fact, Eig theorizes, the two were merging their efforts closer in the last months of Malcolm’s life, with Malcolm renouncing radical violence to achieve racial equality. After Malcolm’s murder, King sent his widow a telegram expressing sympathy, appreciation, and support.