What If?

On February 1, 2024, the NatGeo Network will air the fourth season of its Genius series featuring the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The official description of the season states it will follow:

“…both King and X from their formative years, where they were molded by strong fathers and traumatic injustices, to their rich, parallel stories as they shaped their identities and became the change they wished to see in the world. Influenced as children by different upbringings and experiences: King by the Jim Crow-era South and life in the church before finding his voice at Morehouse and Boston University, and X growing up under the constant, deadly violence of the Klan and falling into a life of vice and incarceration where he was introduced to the Nation of Islam and found his voice. The two visionaries ultimately rose to pioneer a movement.” Variety

These are two leaders of the mid-20th Century Civil Rights Movement operating from two distinctive perspectives. Actually, for most of their careers, their strategies were actually diametrically opposed. Dr. King orchestrated a non-violent approach to altering the national agenda and Brother Malcolm preached a revolution to force their way into equal rights.

As someone who was born in the midst of this movement and grew up in the southern aftermath, I have been a student of both of these iconic leaders and the impact they had on my generation. We lost both of these men in the midst of their campaigns, before the completion of their missions, which always leads me to this question:

What if?

Without regurgitating history lessons, we lost both of these leaders in their primes. Malcolm X died in 1965 at age 39; MLK in 1968 also at age 39. And even though they were leading from opposite ends of the spectrum, Malcolm X’s fiery rhetoric began to temper in his final months, which arguably got him assassinated. Even though they were contemporaries in the same movement, they only had one opportunity to come together by chance on March 26, 1964 as they were waiting for their appearances at a press conference. What would our society in the late 1960’s and beyond look like if they had found the common ground to collaborate?

What if MLK and Malcolm X had found common ground to communicate earlier in the movement? What if the two men co-created a strategy to accentuate the strengths of each movement where they could collaborate and lead together?  What if their followers had combined efforts in a concerted campaign to alter the narrative of equal rights? What if…

We all have our What If scenarios, most of mine are sports related. But the reality is these men were called to action by God and specifically placed in their situations to live out their mission. I think one of the challenges that impedes our ability or focus to stay the course is when adversity hits and we start asking what if.

Now from another perspective (I play on both sides of the fence), asking what if can be the start of a learning or evaluating process to adjust your course or learn from previous experiences. Learning or creative thinking is a valid and important use of the what if to grow, improve, or adjust. But it only works when we take action on that analysis and keep moving forward. God calls us into our own missions to take action and be impactful.

I truly wish either or both of these iconic leaders had asked the question, what if, regarding their missions. How could the movement have been accelerated or the passage of legislation enacted sooner if they had found a way to work collaboratively. They didn’t and we will never know. But now we can learn from history and I look forward to NatGeo’s representation of the work of these two men and the impacts they made.

My challenge for this year and beyond is to tackle the what ifs in my work and community to find ways to work together to make impact or improvements. I am pledging to myself not to dreamily wallow in the missed opportunities, but learn from them to take new action. How do you think you can approach your own what ifs going forward? I would love to hear about them, please share in the comments if you feel comfortable.