‘MLK/X’ aims to offer a fuller picture of the two icons and their wives

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

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Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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February 3, 2024

By Ronda Racha Penrice, NBC

Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Aaron Pierre as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in “Genius: MLK/X.” (National Geographic)

For many Black Americans, the legacies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are inextricably linked. Yet the two men’s only documented meeting, on March 26, 1964, was an unintentional one. With the ongoing Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the two crossed paths briefly, posing for the only photographed moments of them together.

Less than a year later, Malcolm X would be dead, with King following three years after. Sixty years since, they are still looming figures in our history. And “MLK/X,” Season 4 of National Geographic’s acclaimed “Genius” series starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Aaron Pierre, takes a deep dive into why.

The dual approach is a departure from the singular focus of the series, which has highlighted Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and Aretha Franklin. Tackling the genius of King and Malcolm X simultaneously in the series came from Hollywood power couple and series executive producers Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Rock Bythewood.

[…]

“So often we’re asked to choose between Dr. King and Malcolm X, and so many of us don’t realize that they’re really two sides of the same coin,” said “Woman King” director Prince-Bythewood.

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