Joseph convincingly argues that the two leaders’ overarching goals, however differently expressed, were inseparable … Essential to Joseph’s argument in The Sword and the Shield is his careful debunking of not just the typically overstated conflicts between King and Malcolm X, but also the reductive images that distorted perceptions of them in their own time and dilute their messages today … Joseph quite successfully navigates the inherent challenges of dealing with the political mythologies that muddy the waters of Malcolm X scholarship … delivers both forceful storytelling and exemplary history, dismantling popular distortions of its subjects, and arriving at a nuanced and profoundly revealing portrayal of converging visions that informed, challenged, and sharpened each other even as their proponents seemed publicly and irrevocably at odds.
The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
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