Finding Malcolm X

Number one, we want to know what are we? 

How did we get to be what we are?  Where did we

come from?  How did we come from there?  Who

did we leave behind, and what are they doing over

there where we used to be?  This is something

that we have not been told.  We have been brought

over here and isolated.

--Malcolm X

The passage quoted above is an excerpt taken from an address Malcolm X delivered on December 20, 1964, to a regular meeting of the then fledgling Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).  It is no small irony black people may be more disconnected from our past and cultural heritage today than at any other time during this odyssey as New World Africans living in forced exile.  In a time when more authentic knowledge about that heritage is available in mass circulation than ever before, our isolation is no longer just physical.

Our condition is more psychological and spiritual today.  Too many of us think the past has no relevance in the present. The grand illusion of upward mobility for a few has muted our response to the tragic reality African American communities essentially exist in varying states of decline and dysfunction; the ‘hood’ is no more than a South African-style urban “Bantustan.”  We have become a deadly danger to ourselves in far too many of those communities.  The election of Barack Obama as President or Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s Vice-President did not change this fact. 

I was twelve years old when Malcolm X was gunned down on February 21, 1965.  Little League baseball and model cars, not social movements, were at the center of my world in those days.  My father was one of the few people on our modest, black blue-collar-middle-class street to speak with the stern looking men who sold the Muhammad Speaks newspaper.  My personal connection to Malcolm’s legacy was forged in the awesome silence of my father’s private hurt when news of his assassination flashed across the TV screen.  I had no way of knowing, then, that I would inherit much more than just a “slave name” from my father.

Ossie Davis was correct.  Malcolm had been “our living black manhood.”  He boldly said those things hard working black family men like my father knew needed to be said but could not say out in the open themselves.  Malcolm was their voice.  Men like my father did not join the Nation of Islam.  They did not go to church.  They went to work.  They gathered together in bars and barber shops.  They respected Martin King, but Malcolm X was their man.  Like Rev. King, Malcolm X has also become something in death he never could have achieved in life.

Given my age, it is hard for me to speak of one without mentioning the other.  I was fifteen when Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered on April 4, 1968.  I grew to maturity during a time, and, as part of a generation that intimately felt the enormity of their loss. We felt the emptiness of their absence.  We grew up missing them.  We grew up knowing just what had been taken from us. We knew why they were taken and that knowing fueled a brooding anger.  We knew we were the generation they saw coming. Too many of us now find ourselves incarcerated inside cynical, often bitter talk of what might have been. 

We speak of “the 60s” as if that time could happen once again.  We wonder if that time ever really happened at all.  We represent an “old school” that too often appears alien and disconnected from the current generation of young people.  To them, the old school closed before they could attend, and the real Malcolm has been suffocated under the weight of a warped pop culture.  Spike Lee’s big screen feature film made surface talk of Malcolm fashionable for a while.  Today, the platform Elon Musk bought as “Twitter” has been rebranded, “X.”

The ubiquitous X factor, in all of its manifestations, is nothing more than the spiraling forward motion of history passing by those of us that mistakenly believe history can repeat itself.  Our young people stand before us as strangers today in the same way we once appeared as strangers to our elders.  Malcolm has been reduced to Black History Month presentations, Hip Hop lyrics, and a neutralizing fashion statement.  We wonder how such a sad state of affairs came to be; and the same pain that echoed in my father’s silences so many years ago now haunts my own.

The Black Lives Matter generation is reclaiming Malcolm X today.   They are doing it on their own terms, too often in spite of those of us who could have guided their search but did not.  We could have told them the truth.  We did not.  As a consequence, dangerous Malcolm myths now sweep the landscape taking on lives of their own.  If young people do not know anything about Malcolm X today, how can we blame them?  Those of us who should know better have failed them.  If our young people are at risk today, it only reflects the larger predicament threatening black people globally.

I have encountered young Africans who are just as ignorant of their own history and heritage.  On campuses in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal, I saw students that looked more African American than we do.  Black people are at risk the world over.  The acute state of crisis shattering black community after black community is symptomatic of the moral bankruptcy that is crippling western society’s very existence.  I have no doubt that Malcolm’s message would be just as urgent today.  He would see that many of his predictions came true.  Although we do have allies, ultimately, we are the only ones who can really bring solutions to the problems that continue to incapacitate black people. 

The more things have changed, the more things have not remained the same.  In the face of some progress, more people suffer today.  More than three decades later, the real tragedy of the 1992 rebellion in South Central Los Angeles can be measured by the reality so few people expressed genuine shock or surprise.  The explosion was too predictable.  Unlike Watts in 1965, South Central erupted into “rainbow” violence.  It foreshadowed the current black led, multi-racial Black Lives Matter movement spawned by the too predictable police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tyre Nichols.

The commercialization of Malcolm X illustrates the alarming degree to which African American popular culture can be used as a primary weapon in the continuing “psycho-spiritual” assault on a global African community.  This was never more evident than during those tense televised scenes from South Central, when we witnessed young black men dressed in oversized t-shirts and baseball caps beat a defenseless white truck driver.  Such raw news clips allowed mainstream America to reconfirm the image of Malcolm X it had always conjured; a distorted image that still persists.

61 years have passed since Malcolm’s assassination.  The cooptation of both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. demands that we give their legacies even closer scrutiny today.  Protecting African American icons requires serious attention.  King did not wish to have a holiday in his name.  He was more than just a dreamer.  Malcolm did not aspire to be remembered on a USPS postage stamp.  He was not a Civil Rights leader.  Their legacies cannot be left to tired speeches, rap songs, Hollywood movies, TV and radio talk show hosts or social media distortion.  We need a clear understanding of Al Hajj Malik Al Shabazz and Martin Luther King, Jr. today.

Because we have failed to take control of the telling of our own story, we have unwittingly thrown black youth into the “bloody jaws” of the multinational corporate marketplace wolves.  Malcolm’s message that December day in 1964 now rings with even greater urgency.  He also pointed out, “… now we don’t even know that there is somebody else that looks like we do…. (it’s) a shame … I mean our own people—we see our people come here who look exactly like we do, our twins, can’t tell them apart, and we say, ‘those foreigners.’” 

It is not hard to imagine what he might be saying to us today.  His words still resonate:

                            …the white public is divided.  Some mean good,

                        and some don’t mean good.  Some are well meaning,

                        and some are not well meaning…. And usually those

                        that are not well meaning outnumber those that are

                        well meaning.  You need a microscope to find those

                        that are well meaning.

His critique of American society is hauntingly accurate given the current Trumpian convulsion.

Now, more than ever, we must revisit Malcolm X in his own words.  He speaks

quite well for himself.  Access is no longer a problem:  

    The young generation of blacks that’s coming up

                        now can see that as long as we wait for the Congress

                        and the Senate and the Supreme Court and the President

                        to solve our problems, you’ll have us waiting on tables

                        for another thousand years….

Both passages are taken from a speech, “Not Just An American Problem, But A World Problem,” delivered five days before his murder on February 16, 1965, at the Corn Hill Methodist Church in Rochester, New York.

May 19, 2025, marked the centennial anniversary of the birth of the former Malcolm Little—aka Detroit Red, Satan, Malcolm X.  He shed his American skin and became the “born again” African, Al Hajj Malik Al Shabazz.  The challenge today is to demystify him.  We must do so by first reclaiming his humanity and by connecting his legacy to the larger, historical African experience in the so-called New World.  He was neither the wild eyed, hate-filled advocate of violence mainstream America continues to portray, nor was he the grossly misrepresented stern faced, “By Any Means Necessary,” rifle-wielding, finger pointing pop culture icon.

One admonition I used to share with my students—in relation to another popular tee shirt, is: “It’s a Black Thang, and even WE don’t understand!”  The mindless hostility being played out daily in urban and some not so urban areas across this nation indicates too many young people—black, white and otherwise—are already primed to act out their ignorance and self-loathing.  In the face of the ongoing battle with our young people over the N-word, they need to hear Malcolm say it loud, “They called me nigger so much, I thought it was my name!”

Malcolm’s life is a testament to the possibilities of personal transformation and the unlimited human potential that we all possess.  His life represents that perilous transition from the worse to the best in us.  In the face of mounting hopelessness, anger and bitter despair, his legacy stands as an uncompromising symbol of redemption, discipline, self-sacrifice and self-restraint.  His legacy is a product of the same history that produced Elijah Muhammad, whose teachings raised  him from the dead level and set the stage for his name to occupy the prominent place it now holds in the roll call of black heroes and sheroes.

Malcolm X’s life touched the lives of men like my father in fundamental ways because the African experience in the New World is ultimately played out in the lives of those people whose names and faces we can never really know save in personal recollections, old photographs, books and documentary film footage.  The study of Malik Al Shabazz cannot be limited to reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X.  The autobiography is historical, but it is not a history book.  It is Malcolm telling his story filtered through Alex Haley.

There are many excellent resources to consult.  Four titles stand out:  MalcolmX: The Man and His Times, Edited by John Henrik Clarke (1991),  From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity by William W. Sales, Jr. (1994), Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (2011), and BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: Malcolm X: Real, Not Reinvented, Edited by Herb Boyd, Ron Daniels, Maulana Karenga, and Haki R. Madhubuti (2012).

We must begin to understand that Malcolm was human like the rest of us.  Although his image has been elevated to the level of cultural icon, we cannot permit that fact to blind us to his essential reality as a man, husband and father.  In Malcolm X: The Man and His Times, Betty Shabazz states, “I suppose people who only knew Malcolm from his public appearances and fiery speeches couldn’t even imagine what he was like as a father…. The gentleness he showed was really so profound.”

In a time when too many black women have been left to raise families on their own, Malcolm’s life stands as a shining example of the collective potential of black men in spite of the very real consequences of what Dr. Joy Degruy-Leary calls, “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”  The Shrine of the Black Madonna’s Rev. Albert Cleage [aka Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman] adds, “I think Brother Malcolm the man is in danger of being lost in a vast tissue of distortions which constitute the Malcolm myth…. I can understand how the life of a man dedicated to his people can so easily become a focal point for the things people want to make that life mean.”

This continuing battle for control of the meaning of black icons will go a long way toward determining how we will evolve in the 21^st century.  I once heard Haki Madhubuti say, “He who controls the image controls the mind.”  Whoever controls the images and the narratives of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the rest of our heroes and sheroes will be in the best position to influence countless future generations of young, black minds.  A people must determine how their history is to be told.  We have the responsibility to develop and to nurture new generations of storytellers.  We must free the Reverend Dr. King from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and consider how his philosophy and approach evolved over the course of his whole career as a leader.  Rescuing Malcolm X’s legacy from all the half-truths and lies is a crucial step if we are to be “On the One” with the driving, relentless forward motion of genuine African historical time.

Returning to Cleage’s, “Myths About Malcolm X,” he offers this searing observation: “We have a great tendency to turn our leaders over to somebody else.  Who is the custodian of Malcolm’s tradition? …If we want to preserve our heroes, we have to become the custodians of that tradition.  Who is the custodian of DuBois?  Black people?  No, we don’t have one thing that he wrote…. We have got to become custodians of our own heroes and save them and interpret them the way we want them interpreted.  And if you don’t do it, then you have to accept what somebody else says they said.”

Speaking to an Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit conference held in Cairo, Egypt, on July 17, 1964, Malcolm stated, “Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved.  You will never be fully respected until and unless we are also respected.  You will never be recognized as free human beings until and unless we are also recognized and treated as human beings.  Our problem is your problem.  It is not a Negro problem, nor an American problem.  This is a world problem, a problem for humanity.  It is not a problem of civil rights, but a problem of human rights.”

Too little attention is paid to Malcolm’s travels in Africa.  In his speech, “There’s A Worldwide Revolution Going On,” delivered at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, February 15, 1965, he pointed out, “I had an opportunity to hold long discussions with President Julius Nyerere in … Tanzania; with Jomo Kenyatta, the President of Kenya … (I had) long discussions with Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda; President Azikiwe of Nigeria; President Nkrumah of Ghana; and President Sekou Toure in Guinea.”  The fact African Heads of State received him as an unofficial ambassador for Americans of African descent speaks to his global influence and stature.

All of this is to say his fundamental message was cultural.  He understood the issue of identity placed history, politics, economics and our social movement in proper perspective.  It is incumbent on us to determine the real value and significance of his legacy.  It is on this level that the X-factor looms as a challenge to acquiring a true sense of our own group self-image.  So long as we remain willing objects of other people’s intentions, we will continue to stumble. Malcolm’s legacy exists as a warning to us.  We must seize the power to define ourselves.

Rev. Cleage continues, “He did not want reverence—he wanted people … who could organize, who believed in action, who were willing to go out and sacrifice; and he didn’t have them…. We didn’t have organization enough to protect him…. We let him die.  The message is the same today, and still we are not organizing, we are not doing the work that has to be done.”  In the final analysis, our historical legacy will remain alive only to the degree we keep it alive.

Does X mark the spot?  Have we allowed our young people to become nothing more than simple minded, unsuspecting, cell phone and social media addicted moving targets?  The X marked the beginning of Malcolm’s personal awakening; his journey toward making the knowledge that was hidden from us knowable.  It signaled his personal Rite of Passage.  He would have us move toward the black light that shines brightly deep inside what appears to be an impenetrable white-tunnel darkness.  He would have us know that our destiny is in the mighty power of our own hands.