"I want you to watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man in his press, is going to identify me with "hate." He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol of "hatred"—and that will help him to escape facing the truth."
— The Autobiography of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (aka "Malcolm X")
Since his assassination, Malcolm X's legacy has waned and his ideas have made few inroads into mainstream discourse. He is, at best, a marginal historical figure. He is rarely seen except as a t-shirt or a poster, scarcely quoted and generally perceived as a black supremacist hatemonger who got what was coming to him. He certainly remains "radioactive" in the political sphere.
Despite this lingering perception of Malcolm X as a kind of black Hitler, the reality -- easily verified by historical speeches and interviews -- is that Malcolm X was an extremely intelligent, highly logical and rational man who understood and articulated the reality of being black in America as nobody had ever done before.
At the height of his influence he was not only one of the most respected black leaders in America, but he was also beginning to wield enormous influence across the entire planet. He was an honored guest wherever he traveled in Africa and the Middle East. An autodidact who educated himself in prison, he was a keen student of history and as accomplished as any orator of the 20th century. He had an accurate understanding of the global nature of the racial problems facing America and had a plan about what to do about it. His domestic pairing with Martin Luther King is now undeniable. However, that move shocked and disturbed the U.S. intelligence community to its core, and was seen by FBI as the single biggest threat to the national security of the United States.He had left his nationalism behind and became an internationalist. He changed the very nature of the civil rights debate by globalizing it. Rather than discuss the problems of black people in America as an issue of civil rights, he labeled it a struggle for human rights that could be taken to the United Nations. In hindsight, it's difficult to deny that he made a substantial contribution to the political, social, religious and moral discourse of how we treat each other as human beings both in the United States and across the planet. He understood that the United States was not immune to international pressure and he intended to bring that pressure to bear in order to address the racial problems the country faced. Malcolm X's charges against the United States at the International Court of Justice, accusing it of violating the human rights of black people, essentially comparing it to South Africa and charging it with having its own system of apartheid under the name of second-class citizenship.
In a little over a decade, he went from just another prisoner to one of the most respected leaders on the world stage (and a neo-religious movement by name NOI presented him a perfect platform). His transformation was astonishing by any standard. Had his message been simply the pseudo-Islamic, quasi-mystic, black nationalism of Elijah Muhammad(founder of NOI), it's unlikely anybody would have ever heard of Malcolm X or the Nation of Islam. But his appeal to the masses of people was undeniably real. Amidst the language of peace, love, harmony and non-violence, Malcolm X spoke clearly, directly and with an uncompromising voice to articulate what the vast majority of black people were really thinking: the promises of future justice and future equality was small comfort compared to the daily reality of lynchings, murder, rapes, beatings, fire-hoses, police dogs, Jim Crow, disenfranchisement and a history that had been stolen 400 years ago. After 400 years of slavery, the white man had no moral right to ask the black man to wait any longer to enjoy the rights and freedoms upon which America prided itself. It denied black Americans equal rights even as it called on them again and again to fight and die abroad in the very name of those rights that they could not enjoy at home. Forty years later, his arguments still carry tremendous weight and yet for the most part, they remain too brutally honest to be faced directly by the public society of 2010. That brutal honesty is one of his enduring strengths.
He cut America no slack whatsoever and refused to express his criticisms in anything but the harshest terms:
"I am speaking as a black man from America which is a racist society, no matter how much you hear it talk about democracy it’s as racist as South Africa or as racist as Portugal or as racist as any other racialist society on this earth. The only difference between it and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don’t practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing. I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil."
~ (Oxford Union Debate, December 3, 1964)
At his most fierce, he invoked warnings that sounded more like threats:
"I, for one, as a Muslim, believe that the white man is intelligent enough...if he were made to realise how black people really feel and how fed up we are without that old compromising sweet talk...why you're the one who makes it hard for yourself. The white man believes you when you go to him with that old sweet talk, 'cause you've been sweet-talking him ever since he brought you here. Stop sweet-talking him. Tell him how you feel. Tell him what kind of hell you've been catching and let him know that if he's not ready to clean his house up... if he's not ready to clean his house up....he shouldn't have a house. It should catch on fire, and burn down."
~ (Speech in Los-Angeles after an attack on members of the Nation of Islam)
He spoke in simple but striking analogies that painted his argument for him:
"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out three inches, that's not progress. If you pull it out six inches, that's not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress comes from healing the wound that the blow made, but they haven't even begun to pull the knife out...they won't even admit the knife is there."
~ (Interview after the NOI began eviction proceedings)
His desire for revolutionary change was articulated frequently:
"Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that many of our people are using this word "revolution" loosely, without taking careful consideration of what this word actually means, and what its historic characteristics are. When you study the historic nature of revolutions, the motive of a revolution, the objective of a revolution, the result of a revolution, and the methods used in a revolution, you may change words. You may devise another program, you may change your goal and you may change your mind. Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution...what was it based on? The landless against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost, was no compromise, was no negotiation. I'm telling you...you don't know what a revolution is. Because when you find out what it is, you'll get back in the alley, you'll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution...what was it based on? Land; the landless against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. And you're afraid to bleed. I said, you're afraid to bleed. As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people, but when it comes to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls murdered, you haven't got any blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it's true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea? How can you justify being nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you are going to get violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else you don't even know? If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country."
~ (The Ballot or the Bullet, October 10, 1963)
His knowledge of scripture was comprehensive and he knew how to reach a religious audience:
"They charged Jesus with sedition...didn't they do that? They said he was against Caesar. They said he was discriminating because he told his disciples, 'Go not the way of the gentiles, but rather go to the lost sheep.' Don't go near the gentiles. Go to the lost sheep. Go to the people who don't know who they are, who are lost from the knowledge of themselves and who are strangers in a land that is not theirs. Go to those people. Go to the slaves. Go to the second-class citizens. Go to the ones who are suffering the brunt of Caesar's brutality. And if Jesus were here in America today, he wouldn't be going to the white man. The white man is the oppressor. He would be going to the oppressed. He would be going to the humble. He would be going to the lowly. He would be going to the rejected and the despised. He would be going to the so-called American negro."
~ (Malcolm X in Los Angeles, May 22, 1962)
Reading speeches and interviews from the last year of his life is to read Malcolm X urge that Islamic leaders pay greater attention to the plight of Muslim world. Sound advice in 2011, it's an astonishingly prescient message for 1965:
"Since the Arab image is almost inseparable from the image of Islam, the Arab world has a multiple responsibility that it must live up to. Since Islam is a religion of brotherhood and unity those who take the lead in expounding this religion are duty-bound to set the highest example of brotherhood and unity. It is imperative that Cairo and Mecca (the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs and the Muslim World League) have a religious "summit" conference and show a greater degree of concern and responsibility for the present plight of the Muslim world, or other forces will rise up in this present generation of young, forward-thinking Muslims and the "power centers" will be taken from the hands of those that they are now in and placed elsewhere."
~ (Al-Muslimoon Magazine, February, 1965)
None of his speeches or interviews can be properly appreciated without actually hearing them in the context in which they were delivered. His ability to speak about race in uncompromising terms, touch a crowd with the naked truth, articulate their anger, answer audience questions shrewedly and with style and deftly handle hostile interviewers remains unparalleled. Of all his rhetorical skills, his ability to defuse a situation with wit and humor has been buried the deepest but there can be no doubt that he could be a very funny man. The so-called leaders who followed in his wake, be it Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton have never come close to matching Malcolm's oratorical power and thus have never come close to reaching the audience he reached. In 1963, he was second only to John F. Kennedy as the most sought-after speaker on college campuses in the U.S. and was a guest at Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford and Yale.
Contrary to the almost universal public perception of him, Malcolm X never advocated violence. He advocated the right of self-defense and self-preservation that was deemed a fundamental right to all but black Americans. He demanded those rights by any means necessary. If somebody comes at you with a rifle or a club or a noose, and the government is either unwilling or unable to protect you, and you are exercising the freedom of speech or freedom of assembly or freedom of religion that your government prides itself upon, you are completely within your rights to defend yourself. It is a reasonable proposition now and it was a reasonable proposition then. As he once said when discussing the outrage over his statement that black people should go out and buy rifles and join rifle clubs: "White people been buying rifles all their lives...no commotion."
What follows is a letter (in part or in whole) from Malcolm X, known as Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (after his conversion to Traditional Islam), to his followers in Harlem. It was reprinted in The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley.
Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors.
I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca, I have made my seven circuits around the Ka'ba, led by a young Mutawaf named Muhammad, I drank water from the well of the Zam Zam. I ran seven times back and forth between the hills of Mt. Al-Safa and Al Marwah. I have prayed in the ancient city of Mina, and I have prayed on Mt. Arafat.
There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.
America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white - but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.
You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept on the same rug - while praying to the same God - with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the deeds of the white Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.
We were truly all the same (brothers) - because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude.
I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man - and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their 'differences' in color.
With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called 'Christian' white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster - the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.
Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the walls and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth - the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.
Never have I been so highly honored. Never have I been made to feel more humble and unworthy. Who would believe the blessings that have been heaped upon an American Negro? A few nights ago, a man who would be called in America a white man, a United Nations diplomat, an ambassador, a companion of kings, gave me his hotel suite, his bed. Never would I have even thought of dreaming that I would ever be a recipient of such honors - honors that in America would be bestowed upon a King - not a Negro.
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all the Worlds.
Sincerely,
Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
The trip to Mecca immensely affected his insight and it is undeniable that his views changed after looking at the world through the eyes of Islam, and these views would eventually break his relationship with his teacher Elijah Muhammad (NOI Black-nationalist Leader) - and then isolate him and his family - and would therefore lead to his assassination.
As Malcolm X's profile rose, the rumours and lies being whispered into Elijah Muhammad's ears about the young minister's plans to usurp his power and take over the Nation spread steadily. The split between master and student had been well underway for some time.
Forced out of the Nation against his will, the combination of enmity from both the NOI and the American intelligence community meant his days were numbered and he knew it. Throughout 1964 and 1965 he and his followers were under constant attack at home and abroad. As threats against his life grew more frequent and more serious, he publicly labeled the NOI a criminal organization and Elijah Muhammad insane. When he made a public statement about Elijah Muhammad's infidelities, he had signed his own death warrant and publicly stated so in several interview. ("We weren’t training to become black belts: we were training to kill black belts.") In one interview, when asked by CBS' Mike Wallace about the possibility of his life being in jeopardy, he stated matter-of-factly, "I probably am a dead man already". In his autobiography, he stated that he didn't expect to live long enough to see its publication. He was right, again.
On January 14, 1965, his house was firebombed with his wife and children inside. The NOI publicly accused Malcolm X of trying to burn down his own house and murder his own family as a publicity stunt designed to delay eviction proceedings. One week later, Malcolm X prepared to deliver a major speech, outlining the founding principles of his newly established Organization of Afro-American Unity. On Sunday February 21, 1965, just after 3:00 p.m., Malcolm began speaking to an audience of about 400 people at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, just north of Harlem. His wife (pregnant with twins) and his four daughters sat in the audience near the front. Just after Malcolm greeted the crowd with the traditional "As-Salamu Alaykum," an argument between two men started near the back of the crowd. Malcolm's security rushed to investigate, a smokebomb went off and the crowd began to panic. In the confusion, assassins who had been sitting in the front rows rushed the stage and unloaded on Malcolm with a shotgun blast and pistol shots, hitting him 16 times in total, killing him. He was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m., shortly after he arrived at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
The best book on the assassination of Malcolm X is Karl Evanzz' 1992 book The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X. Evanzz had access to the FBI's complete file on Malcolm X and knows the subject matter intimately. His book is absolutely essential to understanding the massive campaign directed against Malcolm X.
While his autobiography has never gone out of print and the text of many of his speeches have been available for years, the difference between reading his words on the page and seeing him deliver them in front of a receptive audience is the difference between black and white. While the climate may not have changed enough for his ideas to reach the mainstream, more and more people every day realize that the story of the hatemonger is a lie. They hear his actual words for himself and they see no reason to disassociate themselves from him thoroughly and completely:
"I really don’t know what to think about Malcolm X. The media has portrayed him as a violent man, yet all the quotations that I could find from him were things I agree with completely. If I were to judge this man, solely on the quotations that I was able to find for him...I would laud him."
~ (Laura S. Moncur, Staff Writer, quotationspage.com)
"People today who claim Malcolm X was racist obviously have nowhere near a full comprehension of the type of era he lived in: lynching, burnings, and senseless random killings of black people. He just said out loud what most black people thought. For those who believed he should have been more peaceful and kind well he needed a reason to be. He believed in fighting back, and not taking any crap. Sorry if that isn't politically correct enough for you guys."
~ (youtube user, l9ois)
"I don't know much about Malcolm X but that one minute talk made a lot of sense to me....perhaps I have been lied to about this man."
~ (youtube user, snowball1776)
"I'm white, and growing up in school during Black History Month it was always like 'OK kids, there were these two guys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and they were both civil rights leaders but Malcolm X was violent so he wasn't as good.' And I believed that for a long time, but I've watched a lot of these videos and even at his most radical he was only talking about self defense and almost everyone is OK with that. I wonder if it was like that for everyone else? I wonder if little kids today are still learning like that?"
~ (youtube user, shondeaphid)
I'm pretty sure they are. He was not only too advanced for his own time, but for our time as well. In the end, he preached internationalism to a world that was still adjusting to life after colonialism. As long as the public associates him with hate and violence, it demonstrates a lack of understanding and perpetuates a lie that runs against our own best interests. However, it is a simple fact that the real philosophy of Malcolm X, a philosophy that cannot be erased or ignored and continues to spread, is still being seen and heard by more people every day. Over time, however long that time is, the truth does overcome lies. A time will come when Malcolm X is restored to the position of authority he held for many people during the last year of his life; as one of the most important human rights leaders the world has ever seen. Despite the best efforts of the FBI, the CIA, the NOI and the NYPD to silence the man, his words remain as strongly accusatory and accurate as ever. The criticism of global forces that denied human beings their legitimate rights remains as sharp and relevant as ever and the solution--peace, freedom, justice and equality for all people, by any means necessary--retains all of its honesty and power.
“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.”
~ El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
NOTE:
The original detailed documentary based on which this post was inspired can found -- here
