Chickens Come Home To Roost Analysis

The 1950’s and 1960’s was the time period in which the buildup of racial tension created the Civil Rights Movement. Many individuals rose to the occasion and voiced their opinion on the racial matters. Martin Luther King Jr, perhaps one of the most influential, was one individual. Another was Malcolm X, another individual with different ideas on how to fix the racial problems. While both men advocated for rights for the African American race, they went about it in different ways, due to their different ideologies. Comparing Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech, “I Have A Dream,” to Malcolm’s speech “The Chickens Come Home to Roost,” one can see why people gravitated towards Martin Luther King Jr., or MLK.
“I have a dream that one day …show more content…
One of his most important speeches, dubbed “The Chickens Come Home to Roost,” due to his response within the speech, discusses the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. Within the speech, he referred to the assassination as a case of “Chickens Come Home to Roost;” an phrase that means what you did to others will come back and get you. Malcolm meant that “the violence that Kennedy had failed to stop had come back to him.” Due to his membership with the Nation of Islam, and how they felt about his response, he was silenced and suspended for 90 days. Looking back on his speech, Malcolm mentions “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” a total of 34 times. The majority of the times Elijah was mentioned, were referring to what he teaches us. In addition, he makes over 50 references to God, specifically saying at one point, “God himself must first destroy this evil Western world, the white world...a wicked world, ruled by a race of devils, that preaches falsehood, practices slavery, and thrives on indecency and immorality. You and I are living in that great Doomsday, the final hour, when the ancient prophets predicted that God himself would appear in person, in the flesh, and with divine power He would bring about the judgement and destruction of this present evil world. The hour of judgement and doom is upon White America for the evil seeds of slavery and hypocrisy she has sown; and God himself has declared that no one shall escape the doom of this Western world, except those who accept Allah as God, Islam as his only religion, and The Honorable Elijah Muhammad as his Messenger to the twenty-two million ex-slaves here in America.” Malcolm believed he was warning those in “White America” as he dubbed us, that we were doomed. That the only people that would be saved, would be those who “Allah as God,