It's "journalistic malpractice," Eig said, to misrepresent what King thought about Malcolm X in this way. ( Eig spoke with NPR's Steve Inskeep about the new biography.)Įig's discovery was recently reported by The Washington Post. "I would say they were engaged in an awkward dance, but they were listening to the same music," Eig said.īiographer calls it 'journalistic malpractice'Įig says he realized the interview's original transcript didn't contain the widely cited quote as he was reading through archives at Duke University while researching his book, King: A Life, which comes out on Tuesday. Their rivalry was played up during their lives and in the years that followed, despite their overlapping goals. The words King and Malcolm X said about each other are vital to understanding the relationship between two leaders who took different approaches to confronting systemic and deadly racism in America. "This is really important," Eig said, "because we've been teaching kids this quote from the Playboy interview." King never said he felt "Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice," author Jonathan Eig told NPR, despite that famous quote appearing in a 1965 interview with Alex Haley, for Playboy magazine. But a new biography of King suggests history books about these two men may need to be rewritten - because King never actually said the words. It's a biting piece of criticism aimed at Malcolm X that for decades was attributed to Martin Luther King Jr.
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