ABSTRACT
The representatives of the growing black middle class seem self-centered and divorced from the daily struggles of low income and unemployed African-Americans. For many black nationalists, Malcolm X experiences a metamorphosis, moving from history into the stage of the cultural icon, with his image duplicated on T-shirts, caps, and various articles of clothing. Malcolm is presented as the hostile critic of white liberalism, while Martin Luther King, Jr. is depicted as the friend of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. According to historian Vincent Harding, Martin had come to the conclusion that "Negroes must therefore not only formulate a program; they must fashion new tactics which do not count on government goodwill but serve, instead, to compel unwilling authorities to yield to the mandates of justice". For both Malcolm and Martin, the language and political logic of both black nationalism and integration became too restrictive and too confining.
