MARTIN AND MALCOLM AS CULTURAL ICONS - AN EMPIRICAL-STUDY COMPARING LOWER-CLASS AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND WHITE MALES

A matched sample of lower class African American and white males selec ted for their social marginality rated Martin Luther King Jr. and Malc olm X on semantic differential scales constructed to measure both eval uative and potentiality factors. Two specific hypotheses were tested a nd supported by these data. First, both white and African American mal es rated MX higher on potentiality than MLK Jr., and second, there exi sted an interaction between race and person rated such that African Am erican males evaluated MX higher than MLK Jr. while white males evalua ted MLK Jr. higher than MX.