"Malcolm was our manhood, our living black manhood."
------Ossie Davis
"Treat me like a man, or kill me."
-------Malcolm X[1]
February 21, 2025 marks sixty years since Malcolm X was gunned down in a hail of bullets at the Audobon Ballroom in New York City as he was starting to give a speech. The previous week his house had been firebombed, and days before that the French government had refused to allow him into the country to fulfill a speaking engagement, apparently fearing the assassination might take place on French soil.
Malcolm fully expected these attempts on his life, which grew out of circumstances surrounding his break with the Nation of Islam the previous year. U.S. intelligence had infiltrated his security team, and at the time of his death Malcolm recognized that though the assassination plot originated with the corrupt advisers around Elijah Muhammad in the Nation of Islam, by the end the circle of intrigue had broadened considerably and the U.S. government was certainly involved.
Malcolm was undergoing rapid transformation in the final year of his life. He renounced the aberrant strand of Islam favored by Elijah Muhammad, shed his view that white people could do nothing to end racism, and apologized for having repeatedly called civil rights leaders "Toms" and other degrading nicknames. He lectured and traveled widely, met and talked with important leaders of national liberation movements abroad, and embraced a broad, internationalist vision focused on delivering freedom and justice to all peoples regardless of race. But he stuck to his view that black organizational unity in the United States was a pre-requisite to any constructive change in American race relations.
Though often portrayed as a violent extremist (he insisted on self-defense against racist attacks), he was actually quite conservative in his habits (he didn't drink, smoke, gamble, or swear), and was never known to have laid a hand on anyone. James Baldwin considered him one of the gentlest men he ever met, and when Baldwin was once called on to referee a debate between Malcolm and a young civil rights activist - on the assumption that Malcolm would overpower the youth - Baldwin discovered that he was not at all needed. Like an oldest son protecting a younger brother, Malcolm treated the youngster with tender solicitude, smiling indulgently and gently correcting his view that being born in the U.S. was all it took to be a full U.S. citizen: "Now, brother, if a cat has kittens in the oven, does that make them biscuits?"[2]
The same gentleness was evident in Malcolm's home life. In a 1992 interview his daughter Attalah remembered him as a firm father, a mushily romantic husband, and a gentle and funny presence sparking frequent laughter throughout the house. Though work required he be away for long periods, he managed to be present even when he was absent by hiding little surprises around the house for his daughters. Then when he was on the road, he would send letters home telling them to go into a certain room and look in a special place to find a treat he had left for them.[3]
How did such a man gain a reputation for uncontrolled rage and violence? Easy. He was born in a deeply racist country.
He grew up broke and hungry in a family of eight. "We were so hungry we were dizzy," he recalled years later.[4] His father Earl died when Malcolm was six, run over by a rail car, and his mother was slowly driven insane trying to raise eight children alone after her husband's life insurance company refused to honor the $10,000 policy it had issued him.[5]
Disciples of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm's parents were proud and rebellious, living isolated from whites but refusing to reside in officially segregated housing. Malcolm's father took his son along on trips to secret, private homes to hear the "Back To Africa" gospel. This early public exposure with its heavy emphasis on black racial pride prepared Malcolm for the speaker's platform and the barricades years later,[6] but he took a very circuitous route before re-connecting with Garvey's ideas and fashioning them into his life's work and legacy after years of evasive wandering.[7]
Born in Omaha, raised in Lansing, the flash of Michigan street life claimed Malcolm by age twelve. Strutting into town with a fistful of reefers, he quickly became a rising star on the streets. Bold to the point of recklessness, he openly challenged authority, once telling a notoriously abusive police officer who put a gun to his head to, "Go ahead! Pull the trigger, Whitey." [8]Kids who knew Malcolm at the time foresaw a future of jail and an early grave for him.[9]
Malcolm’s fascination for the streets deepened at fifteen, when he spent a summer in Boston, where he was exhilarated by the neon lights, fancy cars, and late-night partying.[10] Though he briefly returned to Michigan, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the fact that blacks from New York and Boston always had a hustle going that gave them money or kept them in clothes, a far better fate than being a ditch-digger or a janitor, which was the limit of realistic black aspirations in the Mid-West. Boston soon proved to be his most natural habitat, a place where he could live out his desire to survive by his wits.[11]
Living with his half-sister Ella on "Sugar Hill," Malcolm loathed the status-conscious blacks he encountered there, preferring to hang out with "his people" in the "valley" below - pool sharks, pimps, hustlers, and hard-working blacks pursuing snatches of weekend escapism. They, and the pawnshops, bars, pool halls, cheap restaurants, walk-up flats, barbershops, beauty salons, and scattered storefront churches that surrounded them, were Malcolm's entire world.[12]
Blessed with a steely self-confidence taught him by his Garveyite parents, Malcolm thrived in this environment and quickly became a commanding presence on the streets. But he rejected his parents' proud work ethic, and cared not a whit about morality or religion. A fast-talking con artist who excelled at finessing himself out of dangerous situations, easy money was all he lived for.[13]
Employed as a shoeshine "boy" at a Boston dance hall, Malcolm was thrilled to see the great bands of the day - Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Gene Krupa, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and the Andrews sisters.[14] No small part of his excitement was making piles of cash as the middleman for sexual hookups of white men wanting black women and white women wanting black men, proclivities that were not at all in line with racial pronouncements in the land of the supposedly free.[15] Malcolm’s knowledge of this reality would prove to be a source of great uneasiness in his future debate opponents.
Inevitably, Malcolm’s life as a hustler drew him to Harlem, where he attracted broad attention with his wide-brimmed hats, orange shoes, and exuberant, loose-fitting “zoot suits.” A familiar figure at uptown magnets like the Audobon Ballroom, Smalls Paradise, the Theresa Hotel, and the Savoy and Renaissance Ballrooms, Malcolm narrowly escaped death on various occasions working as a quasi-pimp, petty thief, and drug dealer for traveling musicians and curbside junkies. His ambition, he wrote in his autobiography, was “to become one of the most depraved, parasitical hustlers among New York’s eight million people.”[16]
After eight years of drug-dealing, burglary, numbers-running, and occasionally armed robbery, Malcolm landed in a Massachusetts federal prison at the age of twenty.[17] There he underwent a religious conversion, gave up drugs, dedicated himself to Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, and became a voracious reader and skilled debater. Paroled in 1952, within a year he was named assistant minister of Temple No. 1 in Detroit, and the year after that minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem.[18]
He soon proved himself an extraordinarily adept disciple, gaining a reputation as the most ascetic young zealot for Allah imaginable.[19]A superb organizer and proselytizer, he was adored by Harlem blacks for his courage and wit, and they called out to him to "make it plain" with his blunt and uncompromising declarations and exquisite sense of drama. He was far and away the Nation’s most effective recruiter, provoking envy and resentment among his peers, which would ultimately form the basis for his assassination. In just a few years, he expanded the flock of the faithful from a few thousand members to many tens of thousands, easily surpassing the efforts even of Elijah Muhammad himself. He was especially good at making converts on streets he formerly prowled as a hoodlum.[20]
In short, he found his calling as a minister, though it was not his first choice. In his final year in school his eighth grade English teacher had urged him to “be realistic about being a nigger” and abandon his goal of becoming a lawyer. In a way, though, Malcolm ended up achieving his goal, becoming the most electrifying “lawyer” in U.S. history by relentlessly advancing the most powerful case ever made against American racism.
Possessed of a fierce, nationalist critique and a broad international outlook, no one could take Malcolm in debate. A spell-binding speaker with a bitter wit, he spoke in an emotionally charged tone of angry eloquence that blacks considered "good preaching,"[21] always bristling with unimpeachable facts leading directly to heretical conclusions. When unwary adversaries detected what they naively took to be loopholes in his arguments, James Baldwin once observed, they quickly found out they were really hangman's knots that left their cherished rebuttals dangling lifeless in mid-air.
Drug dealer, convict, hustler, thief, Malcolm rose to become the greatest black revolutionary of the 20th century, a prophet telling truths few could comprehend and nobody wanted to hear.[22] Deeply religious, he identified the fight for justice as the central act of faith, which made him that rarest of men who practice what they preach.[23]
Flatly refusing to abide the hypocritical pieties of racist Christianity, he angrily denounced the nerve of its God and his preachers for plaguing American blacks in the name of love. He found temporary solace and self-respect under the paternal guidance of Elijah Muhammad, but ultimately could not accept a theology claiming that whites were a genetically impoverished, degenerate race of “blue-eyed Devils,” however compelling the thesis might appear in a white supremacist society dedicated to slavery, lynching, and segregation.[24]
Nevertheless, it has to be conceded that the Nation of Islam was a considerable draw in the North, being a religion created by and for blacks, especially those trapped in ghettos and prison, and highly effective at teaching discipline and self-respect as a cure for drug addiction, crime, unemployment, gambling, prostitution, and juvenile delinquency, among other problems routinely found in such environments.[25]
Seeing clearly the connection between low self-esteem and such vices, Malcolm indignantly rejected civil rights champions claiming that blacks should love whites, insisting instead that they love themselves, at least enough to rise in self-defense when violently attacked, as they all too frequently were. He recommended that advocates of the “love your enemies” approach teach it to the Klan before expecting it of blacks, and insisted in the meantime on "an eye for an eye" as the only language a racist oppressor could reasonably be expected to understand.[26]
Appealing to the conscience of the oppressor was simply a fool's errand, Malcolm thought, as the whole point of racism was to allow whites to subjugate blacks on the pretext that they were sub-human and therefore by definition without rights. There was no point in appealing to a conscience that either didn't exist or wasn't allowed to exist, which amounted to the same thing.[27]
As sit-ins swept the south in the early sixties Malcolm denounced the hypocrisy of nonviolence at an appearance in Alabama. "If the Negro clergy didn't discourage us from participating in violent action in Germany, Japan, and Korea to defend white America from her enemies,” he announced, “why do these same Negro clergymen become so vocal when our oppressed people want to take the same militant stand against these white brute beasts here in America who are now endangering the lives and welfare of our women and children?"[28]
Though a committed Muslim, the most influential holy book Malcolm had to appeal to was the Christian Bible, as he had no path to large black audiences until and unless he successfully engaged with the religious tradition they were most familiar with. Elijah Muhammad taught that whites were simply evil, preaching Christianity to blacks to make them hate themselves, with devastating consequences.[29] With more political sophistication than Muhammad, Malcolm developed the most formidable race critique of Euro-American Christianity of anyone in the modern world, condemning the faith as a "perfect slave religion" that preached salvation in the next life to enslaved, colonized, and segregated blacks while white hypocrites had their heaven in this world.[30]
Malcolm blamed the plight of blacks squarely on their acceptance of this white racist Christianity. "Christianity is the white man's religion," he emphasized. "The Holy Bible in the white man's hands and his interpretations of it have been the greatest single ideological weapon for enslaving millions of non-white human beings. Every country that the white man has conquered with his guns, he has always paved the way, and salved his conscience, by carrying the Bible and interpreting it to call people 'heathens' and 'pagans'; then he sends in his guns, then his missionaries behind the guns to mop up."[31]
Rejecting focus on the hereafter, Malcolm told his black audiences that their hell was obviously right here on earth. "Hell is when you're dumb. Hell is when you're a slave. Hell is when you don't have freedom and when you don't have justice. And when you don't have equality, that's Hell."[32]
One of Malcolm’s greatest strengths was his courage in adopting unpopular stances when conscience and the facts demanded it. Unlike Christian ministers, for example, who reflexively sided with Israel’s Jewish-supremacy in the Middle East, Malcolm's support for the Arab world was so fervent that he was frequently labeled anti-Semitic.[33] He would not have been at all surprised at Israel’s current wholesale massacre and expulsion campaign in Gaza.
Unlike civil rights leaders, Malcolm rejected the self-defeating idea that blacks in the United States were a small minority, internationalizing his focus to state that they were in fact part of a world-wide Islamic community of "725 million Muslim brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia and in the brotherhood of Islam," also pointing out that people of color with more than passing familiarity with white racism formed the vast majority of the world's population.[34]
Finally, Malcolm’s critical dissection of the March on Washington demonstration in Washington D.C. in August 1963 showed remarkable insight into the direction black rage was beginning to take due to the persistence of white terrorism after nearly a decade of “non-violent resistance” that was supposedly the cure for it. Acidly dismissing the protest as "the farce on Washington," Malcolm deftly pointed out this appropriate and necessary anger had been deliberately excluded from the day’s agenda:
"The Negroes were out there in the
streets . . . .They were talking about how they were going to march on
Washington . . .That they were going to march on Washington, march on the
Senate, march on the White House, march on the Congress, and tie it up, bring
it to a halt, not let the government proceed. They even said they were going
out to the airport and lay down on the runway and not let any airplanes land.
I'm telling you what they said. That was revolution. That was revolution. That
was the black revolution."
No leader had any chance of stopping it:
"It was the grass
roots out there in the street. It scared the white man to death, scared the
white power structure in Washington D.C. to death; I was there. When they found
out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital, they
called in . . . . these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them,
'Call it off.' Kennedy said, 'Look, you all are letting this thing go too far.'
And Old Tom said, 'Boss, I can't stop it because I didn't start it.' I'm
telling you what they said. They said, 'I'm not even in it, much less at the
head of it.' They said, 'These Negroes are doing things on their own. They're
running ahead of us.' And that old shrewd fox, he said, 'If you all aren't in
it, I'll put you in it. I'll put you at the head of it. I'll endorse it. I'll
welcome it. I'll help it. I'll join it.'"
And this co-optation worked like a charm:
"This
is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it . . . became part
of it, took it over. And as they took it over it lost its militancy. It ceased
to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising. Why it even
ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with
clowns and all. . . ."
No dictator could have achieved more thorough control:
"No, it was a sellout, a takeover. They controlled it so tight, they told those Negroes what time to hit town, where to stop, what signs to carry, what to sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn't make, and then told them to get out of town by sundown."[35]
So James Baldwin flew all the way from Paris, but was not allowed to speak. John Lewis’s speech wondering why the government could indict civil rights activists for civil disobedience but couldn’t bring white terrorists to justice or even stop appointing racist judges to the bench was censored by John and Robert Kennedy, a decision with which Dr. King went along. Lewis read a watered-down speech absent his pointed inquiry – “I want to know – which side is the federal government on?” - while two JFK aides stood by ready to pull the plug on his microphone should he fail to follow the script.[36]
Cancel culture wasn’t born yesterday.
Though Malcolm spent the last thirteen years of his life trying to prevent America’s racial powder keg from exploding into irreparable disaster, the capitalist media never ceased to portray him as a violent madman. After his brutal assassination the New York Times heaped scorn on what the editors took to be Malcolm’s “pitifully wasted” life marked by “ruthless and fanatical belief in violence.” The Washington Post bid good riddance to him as “the spokesman of bitter racism.” Newsweek mocked Malcolm for “blazing racist attacks on the ‘white devils’ and his calls for an American Mau Mau.” Walter Winchell dismissed him as a “petty punk,” and the Nation magazine back-handedly complimented him for being the “courageous leader of one segment of the Negro lunatic fringe.”[37]
One of Martin Luther King's associates, Alfred Duckett, provided a far more accurate view, calling Malcolm "our sage and our saint," a prophet who inspired his black brothers and sisters to fight back against racism and persecution. Even Dr. King had to concede that Malcolm's portrayal of the plight of American blacks was accurate and his rage authentic, once reportedly telling a friend that "I just saw Malcolm on television. I can't deny it. When he starts talking about all that's been done to us, I get a twinge of hate, of identification with him."[38]
But it may have been Malcolm himself who was the most reliable source on what his work was about, saying in his autobiography that, “sometimes I have dared to dream . . . that one day, history may even say that my voice – which disturbed the white man’s smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency – that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even fatal catastrophe.”[39]
Sources:
James H. Cone, "Martin & Malcolm & America - A Dream or a Nightmare," (Orbis, 1991)
Les and Tamara Payne, "The Dead Are Arising - The Life of Malcolm X" - (Norton, 2020)
Alex Haley ed., "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," (Grove, 1964)
Howard Zinn, “A People’s History of the United States,” (Vintage, 2003)
Taylor Branch, “At Caanan’s Edge – America in the King Years, 1965-68, (Simon & Schuster, 2006)
Barbara Rogers interview with Attalah Shabazz, "Bay Sunday," November 15, 1992
Michael K. Smith, “Portraits of Empire,” (Common Courage, 2003)
[1]Cone, p. 251
[2] Smith, p. 110
[3] Barbara Rogers, “Bay Sunday,” November 15, 1992
[4] Payne, p. 94
[5] Payne, p. 89. Malcolm thought his father had been murdered by the Klan, but this appears not to have been the case.
[6] Payne, p. 86
[7] Payne, p. 75
[8] Payne, p. 122
[9] Payne, p. 145
[10] Payne, p. 141
[11] Payne, p. 146
[12] Payne, p. 152
[13] Payne, p. 115
[14] Payne, p. 152-3
[15] Payne, p. 155-6
[16] Payne, p. 168, 170, 174
[17] Cone, p. 154
[18] Payne, p. 272, 274
[19] Payne, p. 278
[20] Payne, p. 285
[21] Cone, p. 172
[22] Cone, p. 152
[23] Cone, p. 164
[24]Cone, p. 170. The worst effects and limitations of Elijah Muhammad’s views were altered or eliminated in Malcolm by his frequent interactions with white university students.
[25] Cone, p. 162
[26] Cone, p. 160
[27] Cone, p. 166
[28] Cone, p. 176
[29] Cone, p. 162
[30] Cone, p. 166
[31] Cone, p. 166, 170
[32] Cone, p. 174
[33] Cone, p. 163
[34] Cone, p. 164
[35] Zinn, p. 457-8
[36] Quoted in Cone, p. 181
[37] Branch, p. 11, 373
[38] Cone, p. 251, 256
[39] Cone, p. 181
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