Remembering Malcolm X

Get the Point!

59 years ago today, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, known by most across the globe as the Honorable Minister Malcolm X, was gunned down in New York's Audobon Ballroom by assassins while his wife, the late Dr. Betty Shabazz, and daughters watched in horror. 

Malcolm X was 39 years old...

As I contemplated how to tackle another life from history cut down far too soon, unlike some of my posts commemorating Black History Month, I have decided to avoid merely focusing upon the typical linear biographical retrospective that notes when and where a significant person was born, where they were educated, or their significant life's works and death date.

Not that biographical tidbits are unimportant, but in the time from Malcolm X’s death 59 years ago, one in which Time Magazine noted the week after by calling him a "pimp," to today, where legions of Americans of all races have either read Alex Haley's seminal Autobiography of Malcolm X, or watched Spike Lee's classic "Malcolm X," the basics of the minister’s life are well documented and covered. 

But on the off chance that someone reading this blog may be totally unfamiliar, I note herein that the man we knew as Minister X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, and as a child his father, a strong, dark skinned Black pastor, "mysteriously" died after being run over by a train; his father has been a follower of Marcus Garvey, a man who during his generation scared whites—all the way up to the FBI—with his talk of Black pride, Black self help, and ultimately, the need for Blacks to leave America and return to Africa. It is strongly believed that Malcolm's dad was killed by white supremacists, a death that ultimately led his fairer skinned mother to an insane asylum, his family left scattered in the foster system, and for young Malcolm to begin a journey that led him from being a precocious, academically brilliant child, to a hustler and pimp in Boston—a move that eventually landed him in prison.

Malcolm during his younger days as “Detroit Red,” a pimp and hustler who served what would become transformative time in prison.

While incarcerated, Brother Malcolm was introduced to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, (NOI) and once freed from prison, he became a prolific preacher for the organization. Brother Malcolm remained with the NOI until about a year before his death when, upon taking a Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, he chose to shun the Black separatist ideology of the sect and committed to working towards racial harmony in America.

Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X meet for the first and final time in Washington, D.C. circa March of 1964…

Now that the biography is established, to this writer, the crucial issue regarding Malcolm X is that by being killed barely 20 months after Medgar Evers was killed in Mississippi—and a full three years before Dr. Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee—one cannot be misled into avoiding the one very crucial underlying truth in the deaths of all three men—which is that systemic racism was THE culprit!

By systemic I do not mean just the wicked hearts and minds of privately bigoted white citizens, I mean the conscious targeting and harassment of Black leaders by the government to stymie Black progress during the Civil Rights era—a targeting that often led to mass mayhem and deaths.

To be clear, the history books and popular teachings about the events of February 21, 1965 prefer to leave Malcolm's death as an internecine battle between Black Muslims. For years, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, whose ideology that all whites were "devils" had been Malcom's own ideology until his trip to Mecca, was cast as the culprit for the ultimate decision to kill Malcolm. Other historians have focused on another then young (and popular) NOI Minister, Louis X, known today as Min. Louis Farrakhan, as having been the figurative hand that pulled the trigger on Malcolm. 

Malcolm X with his wife, Betty Shabazz, three daughters, and the Heavyweight Champ, Muhammad Ali circa ‘64

But the fact remains that because of the shadowy nature of the federal government's covert operations against ALL Black civil rights groups during this era, that the truth with respect to the government's complicity in Malcom's demise has yet to be fully revealed. I do not mean to go all Oliver Stone/JFK on my readers at this point, but do know that what is fully documented is that on the night before Malcolm's assassination, John Ali, a leading member of the NOI, just "happened" to meet at length with FBI agents in New York.  

We also know that the FBI, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, instituted a Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that was designed to infiltrate Black civil rights groups and to disrupt their aims. Last decade, former FBI Director James Coney all but admitted in the wake of the movie "Selma" that the FBI had Dr. Martin Luther King under surveillance; it is also well documented that the FBI wire tapped King's phones, bugged his hotel rooms, and was complicit in sending a letter to King's wife with tapes of his sexual trysts with other women—along with a letter that implied that King should kill himself to avoid being outed as a "fraud."

The Kings

Now, if the FBI was willing to go that far to destroy King, a pacifist who preached that Blacks, even in the midst of beatings, bombings and murders at the hand of whites for decades, should love racist whites like Jesus Christ encouraged his followers to love their enemies, one can only imagine what lengths the FBI was willing to go to destroy a man like Min. Malcolm X, one who appealed to militant Blacks with his ideology of liberation "by any means necessary," which included violence for violence!

To rectify this, I join the chorus of historians, lawyers, and leaders who seek to have ALL of the government's records with respect to Min. Malcolm X released so that we can ascertain the truth behind his assassination.

Mourners view the remains of Min. Malcolm X the day of his burial—two days after he was killed…

But what we can do even without those records is spread the truth about the impact of Minister X's works—and his death. Simply stated, Brother Malcolm was a strong and proud Black man long before the concept of being Black and proud had caught on among the masses grooving to the tunes of James Brown. And yet, while he was alive, Malcolm was hated by many in America, both Black and white. 

During the bulk of his public ministry, Malcolm lobbed rhetorical bombs at Black Christian leaders like Dr. King, calling most "Uncle Toms" at almost every chance. But far more dangerous for his own life, though, was the fact that to whites, the ones he and other NOI adherents referred to as “devils,” he was introduced nationwide as "the hate that hate produced" on a segment that CBS News' Mike Wallace produced in 1960.

The CBS News piece arguably is one of the early progenitors of Islamic hatred in America. Clearly, most Americans, both then and now, lack the discipline to ascertain the philosophical differences between the NOI, the Shia, and the Sunni sects of Islam. Lacking any fundamental understanding, it is understandable that even when considering that CBS segment's title, "the hate that hate produced," most whites, both then and now, focus more on the latter hate (Black angst), and completely ignore the "original" hate (white supremacy) that led to such enmity.

Even unto this day, there is a sick sophistry written by right wing thinkers and increasingly some on the left that discusses the hate that "some" Islamic adherents across the globe feel toward America, without taking into account the bombings, the invasions, and the CIA covert ops that have destroyed the lives of millions of Muslims under the guise of seeking to find "weapons of mass destruction" or other seemingly lofty but completely untenable modern day Crusades type ends! Contrary to what then President George W. Bush averred, "they" (Muslims) don't "hate us for our freedoms," rather, some of them hate “U.S.” because of America’s covert acts to control their oil rich region as modern day colonial puppet masters!

Malcolm X understood this reality and because he did, he was killed 59 years ago today. Soon thereafter, with bombs dropping in Vietnam under the guise of stopping communism (but under the true aim of feeding the lucrative military industrial complex), Dr. King recognized the same wiles of the Federal government, and he was killed, too!

Lest we forget…