Hail El-Shabazz

There's a great article on CNN.com today about the intertwined legacies of Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was leaving a news conference one afternoon when a tall man with a coppery complexion stepped out of the crowd and blocked his path.

Malcolm X, the African-American Muslim leader who once called King "Rev. Dr. Chicken-wing," extended his hand and smiled.

"Well, Malcolm, good to see you," King said after taking Malcolm X's hand.

"Good to see you," Malcolm X replied as both men broke into huge grins while a gaggle of photographers snapped pictures of their only meeting.

That encounter on March 26, 1964, lasted only a minute. But a photo of that meeting has tantalized scholars and supporters of both men for more than 45 years.

As the 85th birthday of Malcolm X is marked on Wednesday, history has freeze-framed him as the angry black separatist who saw whites as blue-eyed devils.

Yet near the end of his life, Malcolm X was becoming more like King -- and King was becoming more like him.

"In the last years of their lives, they were starting to move toward one another," says David Howard-Pitney, who recounted the Capitol Hill meeting in his book "Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s."

"While Malcolm is moderating from his earlier position, King is becoming more militant," Pitney says...

For a good long time, it was fashionable for lily-white boys like me to list King as a hero, but certainly NOT Malcolm X. Having read the writings and speeches of both, I can say unequivocally that BOTH men were my heroes.

As a pacifist, I strongly identify with King's message of nonviolence. That said, for me there is no question that much of Malcolm X's critique of the American Way was right on. Our nation has suffered much since both men were gunned down early in life.