The people in Washington listened to MLK because he was radicalising hundreds of thousands of people, and if his demands were not met, the politicians worried that those people would start listening to Malcolm X. The radical and moderate sides of any movement exist in symbiosis. They are the carrot and the stick, working together. The owning class likes the carrot much better than the stick, so they give credit to the carrot. But you need radicals so that you can say “look who’s coming for you if you don’t listen to me”. It’s good cop bad cop.
The people in Washington listened to MLK because he was radicalising hundreds of thousands of people, and if his demands were not met, the politicians worried that those people would start listening to Malcolm X. The radical and moderate sides of any movement exist in symbiosis. They are the carrot and the stick, working together. The owning class likes the carrot much better than the stick, so they give credit to the carrot. But you need radicals so that you can say “look who’s coming for you if you don’t listen to me”. It’s good cop bad cop.