A People's History of the United States Lesson Plan

After the police killed two Black students at Jackson State College who were protesting in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's death, a local grand jury ruled the killings justified. A Kennedy-appointed U.S. District Court Judge, Harold Cox, said of the incident that "students who engage in civil disorders 'must expect to be injured or killed.'" Compare this Malcolm X's caustic description of the March on Washington. How do these two statements contextualize violence? What do they say about violence, with respect to political change?

There is an somewhat unexpected consonance between Malcolm X's theory of political change and this District Judge's abrupt admission...