I. CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska in May 1925. His father, Earl Little, had been born in Georgia and was a Baptist preacher as well as an organizer for Marcus Garvey. Malcolm's mother, Louise, was from Grenada, in the Caribbean. Her mother had been raped by a white man, and Louise was a light-complected biracial woman. In 1926 the family moved to Milwaukee, WI, and in 1929 bought a home in Lansing, MI. However the home was set on fire by hostile whites and destroyed. Earl Little built a new home in East Lansing. In 1931, when Malcolm was 6, his father was run over by a street car and killed. However his father had been attacked by a white supremacist group called the Black Legion, and it seems, deliberately left on the tracks to be run over. Literally speaking, the street car was the final cause of death, but we must ask how he came to be there on the tracks in the first place. One of the insurance companies refused to honor the life insurance policy, which left the family almost penniless. Malcolm came from a family of activists, and 3 of his uncles were murdered in the South.

Without the father to support them the family came upon hard times, and was on welfare. In 1939 Malcolm's mother was declared insane and committed to an institution for 26 years in Kalamazoo, MI. The children were split up, and Malcolm was placed in a foster home. Malcolm felt that the social workers harassed his mother and contributed to her breakdown. But as an adolescent, Malcolm felt that "white people" had taken from him the two most important people in his life, his father and his mother. Malcolm did not have two parents who could nurture him and teach him how to cope with white supremacy.

Initially did well in school, and had even been elected as president of his mostly white class. He wanted to be a lawyer. But a teacher in junior high school told him he should be more practical. Negroes couldn't be lawyers. Perhaps he could be a mechanic or carpenter. Malcolm was discouraged by this, and it "turned him off" from the path of achievement and trying to do well in school. What is the point of trying to achieve if you are taught that nothing that you do will ever matter; that you will not be permitted to acheive no matter how hard you try? Malcolm became a drop out and juvenile delinquent. In 1939 he was placed in a detention home. In 1941 he went to Boston to stay with his half-sister Ella. From 1941-44 Malcolm worked for the New Haven railroad and also became involved in the Boston underworld. During this period he also moved to New York. He became involved in hustling, bootlegging, drugs and pimping.

In December 1945 he was involved in some thefts in Boston, and in January 1946 was arrested in Boston on charges of breaking and entering, larceny and possession of firearms. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He began educating himself and in 1947 converted to the Nation of Islam. In 1952 he was paroled, and took the name X rather than Little. In 1953 he was appointed assistant minister at a Detroit temple, and in 1954 minister of Temple Number 7 in New York. In 1957 he founded Muhammad Speaks, the newspaper of the Nation of Islam. This publicity helped spread the message of the Nation and attracted many new followers.

In 1958 he married Betty X (Sanders), and in 1959 he traveled to Egypt, Iran, Syria and Sudan for 3 weeks as the ambassador of Elijah Muhammad.

In July 1959 Mike Wallace aired "The Hate That Hate Produced." This was the beginning of televised publicity and media attention for Malcolm X. Prior to this the Nation was unknown to the mainstream media. The title "hate that hate produced" implied that white hatred of blacks had produced an equal-and-opposite hatred of whites on the part of some blacks.

It was in December 1962 that Malcolm X learned of the rumors that Elijah Muhammad had 6 illegitimate children by 4 young women who had served as secretaries to Mr. Muhammad. Malcolm went to Chicago and personally talked with 3 of the women. In spring 1963 Malcolm led a march in New York to protest police brutality, and another to protest violence against blacks in the South. In July 1963 the newspapers began reporting on Elijah Muhammad's alleged infidelities.

On December 1, 1963 Malcolm made his famous statement about "chickens coming home to roost" in reference to the climate of violence in America that now had reached even the presidency. Essentially Malcolm was saying that you could not allow violence to run amok, as in Little Rock, as at the U. of Mississippi, as in the attacks on the Freedom Riders and the participants of the lunch counter sit-ins, as in Birmingham and as in cases of police brutality, and then be surprised when that violence extended right up to the presidency. If there is a storm, it is going to rain everywhere. On December 4 he was suspended as a minister by the Nation for 90 days, and officially silenced.

On March 8, 1964 Malcolm X announced his break with the Nation of Islam. On March 26 he met Martin Luther King on the steps of the capitol. It was their only meeting (photo, Thulani Davis, p. 122).

In April, 13-21, 1964 Malcolm traveled to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This trip changed his life, and he embraced orthodox Islam and took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Later I will return to this point of how the trip changed Malcolm's views. (Photos of Malcolm in Egypt, Davis, pp. 124-129).

On April 20 he wrote a letter describing his change of view about blacks and whites. From April 21-30 he was the guest of Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and in May he traveled in Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana and other countries in West Africa. On June 9, on the "Mike Wallace News Program," he publicly discussed his changed view about whites. In June he also began to receive phone threats. And also in June 1964 he announced the formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. From July to October he was in Africa, and under surveillance by intelligence agencies. On November 30 he was at Oxford, in England.

On Feb 4, 1965 Malcolm spoke at Brown's Chapel in Selma, at the invitation of SNCC. There he expressed his support for the goals of Martin Luther King. Malcolm said that what Dr. King was asking for was right, and they should give him what he's asking for, because if Dr. King's way didn't work there were other people who had a different way. King was not present because he was in jail. Malcolm sat on the dais next to Coretta Scott King.

On Feb. 14, 1965 Malcolm's home was firebombed, and on Feb. 21 he was assassinated. On March 11 a grand jury indicted three men for the murder. They were Talmadge Hayer (a.k.a. Thomas Hagan), Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. They were subsequently sentenced to life in prison. (Photo, T. Davis, last photo of Malcolm, p. 141).

II. THE FBI AND THE ASSASSINATION

Today we know that Malcolm was under intensive surveillance by the FBI. Undercover agents attended his meetings and speeches, and their reports fill an entire book. The police were informed of a plot against Malcolm's life. On the fateful day no police or FBI agents attended Malcolm's speech. It was not necessary for the FBI to pull the trigger itself. It had only to stand by and do nothing while Malcolm's enemies killed him. The FBI did not have to kill Malcolm itself. All they had to do was NOT PREVENT WHAT THEY KNEW WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. This was an act of omission.

III. THE IDEOLOGY OF MALCOLM X

Under the influence of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm had been taught that the white man was the devil. His evil was innate.

Recall, that in contrast, Martin Luther King had said we do not hate individuals who happen to be white. The issue is not personal. Rather, we struggle against an impersonal system of oppression. We struggle against segregation and disenfranchisement and racism, not people who are white. In other words, the message is anti-racism, or anti-racist, not anti-white (as in anti white people).

While a member of the Nation of the Islam, Malcolm believed that all white people were racists, and the ones who weren't actively turning dogs and hoses and cattle prods on black people nevertheless believed in white superiority and stood by silent and indifferent while other white people brutalized and discriminated against blacks.

So there was the active commission of evil and the complicity of those who stood by and were indifferent and did nothing to stop their evil.

But Malcolm X was a moving target. His ideas evolved and changed over time.

In his youth Malcolm had been a petty criminal. Then he became a Muslim. But in 1964 he broke with the Nation, and went to Mecca, and his ideas were transformed.

THE TRIP TO MECCA

In Mecca Malcolm met people who were light, or fair. He met Pakistanis, Arabs, Turks. They looked white. But they embraced him as a fellow Muslim and displayed no race prejudice whatsoever. Malcolm was amazed. Here were people who were light, though not European, who were not racist. He had never believed such a thing was possible. And Malcolm realized that Elijah Muhammad had been wrong. Just because a person's skin color is light, just because a person is "white," does not mean that he must necessarily be prejudiced against dark complected people, or be prejudiced, or be racist. This was a tremendous discovery for Malcolm. He slept on the same rug with these Arab and Eurasian and North African "whites," shared food from the same platter and drank from the same goblet. They treated him and respected him as a fellow human being, and did not hold him in contempt or condescend to him as inferior because of the color of his skin. There was no superiority complex or inferiority complex involved. Never in his life had Malcolm been treated this way by people who were white in color. He was stunned. The white people what Malcolm had encountered in America were hostile to blacks, or expressed contempt, or merely tolerated them, or were indifferent to them, or at best felt sorry for them (pity). They did not seem to RESPECT the dignity and worth of the lives of Afro-Americans as human beings.

IDEOLOGY: TWELVE ITEMS

1. The first element of Malcolm's ideology was the condemnation of racism. Indeed, Malcolm was unsparing in his condemnation of racism. For Malcolm, looking at the history of America, racism was white racism. It was the doctrine of white supremacy and white superiority. And it was the mistreatment of black people which flowed from that doctrine. Black people had not gone to Europe and kidnapped Europeans and enslaved them in America. That was what Europeans had done to Africans. Black people had not held whites in slavery in America from 1640-1865. That was what whites had done to blacks. Black people had not ensnared white people in another 75 years of sharecropping and debt peonage from 1865-1940. White people had done this to black people. Black people had not lynched 3000 whites during the nadir. Black people had not imposed segregation and disenfranchisement on white people. For Malcolm, these things were the crimes of the white race against the black race.

For Malcolm, to speak of reverse racism by black people was a sick joke. Black people did not have the power to dominate or oppress anybody.

Malcolm condemned white America for its hypocrisy, as did Martin Luther King. Malcolm said that the white man talks about freedom and equality and democracy, but practices segregation and disenfranchisement and discrimination. The practice of racism made "freedom and democracy and equality" a lie.

It was all the more appalling because America for two centuries had insisted upon its superior moral virtue, and the superiority of its institutions and its democracy, relative to the class-bound feudalism and the monarchies and the autocracy of Europe.

And in the post World War II era, America proclaimed itself the leader of the Free World against the evil menace of Soviet and Chinese communism. But, Malcolm asked, how could racist Americans criticize anyone? How could they claim to be so righteous? Why was communism so much worse than racism? How could the pot call the kettle black?

For Malcolm, what was impossible to stand was the hypocrisy. If you want to be a racist, fine, be a racist. But be honest about it. Admit it. Don't run around the world, preaching freedom and democracy and equality, and the perfection and superiority of the American system, when you practice racism.

It is one thing to be a sinner. It is another thing to be sanctimonious, and claim to be so much holier than everybody else, and then be a sinner, and then on top of that deny your sins and dismiss them as insignificant and be blind to your them.

Racism in a supposedly free and equal and democratic society was a glaring contradiction. And Malcolm was determined to expose and denounce the contradiction between what white America preached, and what it practiced. Like King, Malcolm X accused white America of betraying her own professed ideals.

2. After Mecca, Malcolm came to see the issue of race differently. He realized that the issue was not color per se, or biology, or the fact that some people are "white". Rather the issue was racism.

After Mecca, Malcolm was not against white people. He was against racism. And while there can be an overlap between the two, they are not always identical, not always the same thing.

3. Malcolm came to see that a crucial part of the problem was the ideology of racism. It was a set of values, attitudes and beliefs. The problem was a mindset, a mentality, a way of thinking. And after April 1964, when Malcolm used the term "the white man," he meant a racist mindset, not literally all white people. King had used the term the "power structure."

4. At the end of his life Malcolm was saying that white people need to be re-educated in order to unlearn their racism. It was not innate or inborn or biological or genetic (which is what Elijah Muhammad had taught). He saw that racism is a matter of learning, of conditioning, of socialization. It is a matter of indoctrination and brainwashing. But just as racism is a matter of programming, the program can be changed. Just as racism is taught, and is learned, it can be unlearned.

Indeed Malcolm gave the example of how the government and media during World War II had gotten the American people to hate Germany and Japan, and like Russia and China. Then after the war it did a complete 180 degree reversal and vilified Russia and China as communist and embraced Germany and Japan. He said we should do same thing about racism.

5. Malcolm also said black people need to overcome the psychology of dependency, that we need to believe in ourselves and have confidence in our own abilities. We must learn to be more self-reliant and self-sufficient and do things for ourselves.

6. Malcolm also advocated the right to self-defense. Martin Luther' King's position was unconditional non-violence. "We will be non-violent no matter what." But Malcolm said, we will be non-violent with people who are non-violent with us. But if someone is not non-violent with us, we will not be non-violent with them. Malcolm said if someone puts their hands on you, do your best to make sure that they never put their hands on anybody else. Malcolm said defend yourself, if you are attacked. He said you should not be the aggressor. But if attacked, you should defend yourself.
 

7. Malcolm said our goal is justice. We will use peaceful means first. But if that doesn't work, we will have justice "by any means necessary." In other words, by whatever means it takes.

8. At the end of his life, Malcolm advocated black pride, and identification with Africa. He said, you cannot hate the root of a tree and not hate the tree. In other words, we cannot hate our African roots without hating ourselves.

We cannot be ashamed of our African ancestry and origins, without being ashamed of ourselves, too. If whites must unlearn racism, blacks need to unlearn shame and self-hatred.

9. Malcolm described his philosophy as black nationalism. He said that black people should control their own communities. Black people should control the politics and businesses and economics of the ghetto, of their own neighborhoods.

10. Malcolm also criticized the Nation of Islam for not participating in electoral politics and in the civil rights movement. Instead, Elijah Muhammad urged his followers to separate themselves from the white man and American society, and withdraw from the white man's society. Elijah Muhammad opposed integration and involvement with the dominant society.

Instead, Malcolm wanted to participate in the society, to include black people in the society, to change and transform the society, to make it more just and equitable.

After 1964 Malcolm was like a general without an army. Previously he had been like a lieutenant in the Nation of Islam, in Elijah Muhammad's organization, in his army. And King had his own organization, his own followers, his own army, in SCLC.

But Malcolm's organization was in its infancy. This frustrated him. He wanted to jump in on the civil rights movement, the black struggle, in his own right, but his own organization was quite small.

11. Malcolm said that the issue is not civil or constitutional rights, but human rights. He insisted that people have basic rights as human beings, whether the government or the constitution recognizes them or not.

A racist constitution, and laws made by racists, for racists, will not necessarily protect black people. Therefore we must stand on the broad and universal ground of human rights, not the narrow ground of civil or constitutional rights.

12. Malcolm also articulated a new vision of what racism is. He said it is not just segregation and disenfranchisement. And it is not just in the South. It is not just Jim Crow sheriffs or Bull Connor. It is not just bigoted mobs or authoritarian personalities.

Instead, Malcolm said, America is a racist nation. The entire system is racist. The problem is not just individual, it is systemic. In the North, for decades, blacks had been excluded from some unions, especially in the construction trades. Nationwide, many businesses and companies didn't hire blacks at all, regardless of how qualified they were. "Merit" was defined as having a white skin.

Alternatively, in many instances, blacks were accepted only in the lowest, most menial, or entry level positions, and were not promoted beyond that level. This was racial discrimination in employment. And throughout the North and West, as well as the South, blacks, and Hispanics, and women received a lower wage than white men, even when both performed the same tasks. And of course, blacks could not live in certain neighborhoods. This was the problem of discrimination in housing and employment, in hiring and promotions. This was institutional racism.

Malcolm also criticized racism in American foreign policy, such as support for European colonialism and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Malcolm condemned American imperialism.

IV. EVALUATION

Tragically, Malcolm was killed when he revealed his greatest promise, when he was at his best. He had moved beyond the biological determinism and racialism of Elijah Muhammad. He saw the possibilities for change in our society by attacking the ideology of racism.

He even saw hope in American whites, and was impressed by the younger generation of white people. In them he saw the possibility of change. Malcolm had always encountered whites who denied what he said. But the younger generation was more honest. When Malcolm spoke at the universities the younger generation of whites admitted that there was much truth in what he said, that American racism was wrong, that America was racist, and America must change. This was especially true of the white liberals in CORE and SNCC, in Students for a Democratic Society, and those who would go on in 1965 to begin the anti-war movement. SDS almost always supported the position of SNCC and CORE, and the white New Left of the 1960s supported and allied itself with the Black Panthers. These groups and the anti-war movement also echoed Malcolm's condemnation of imperialism. Of course this terrified people like Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover.

But Malcolm's voice was too dangerous. He was too threatening to the status quo which existed at that time. And so he had to be silenced.

But Malcolm had a profound influence on the younger generation, and much of what we will see in Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers comes straight out of Malcolm. In a sense they were the children of Malcolm.

Without question, Malcolm X was one of the most significant black activists of the twentieth century. And he certainly ranks with giants like King, and WEB Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey. Malcolm X was assassinated. But his ideas lived on. And he became even greater in death than he had been in life.

EULOGY

People sometimes wonder how and why black people can admire and revere a man who was a delinquent, a convict, a so-called "hate monger who preached violence." But no matter what others may think of him, to black people he is our champion, our hero, our advocate. He was fearless in standing up, and speaking out, and denouncing the hypocrisy of racism. Malcolm expressed the anger and pain that Afro-Americans lived and felt. He said openly and publicly, without shame or apology, what many other people felt but were afraid to say. Malcolm gave black people permission to be angry in public. He said that given what black people are going through, they have a right to be angry. So he legitimized the expression of anger, which for so long had been pent-up. Malcolm was a freedom fighter, a hero of the black liberation struggle. For Malcolm, this was his highest cause or calling. And as sappy as it may sound, black people carry him in their hearts forever.

ADDENDUM

In addition to all that I have said, we should also remember that Martin Luther King was a Southern middle class Christian. His father was the pastor at one of the elite black churches in Atlanta. His father was part of the black Establishment. He had attended Morehouse College and received a college education. Even today, only 1 in 10 black people has a college degree, versus 1 in 4 for whites. He went to the Crozier Theological Seminary and took classes at the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University. He had a doctorate in theology. He was a highly educated man. In fact, Martin was better educated than most whites were.

Elijah Muhammad was not well educated, and certainly had no college degree. Elijah Muhammad was from a poor, rural, agarian background, like the sharecroppers who comprised the masses of black people from 1865-1940.

And Malcolm X was a high school drop-out. He had no college education. He educated himself in prison. Malcolm was "from the streets." He had been a juvenile delinquent and a petty criminal. His experience was the experience of perhaps 1 in 3 black males, aged 20-29, in the United States today. Malcolm is a symbol of the blacks of the Northern ghetto in the World War II era. And these were the people who were drawn to Malcolm and his message.

At the time, the educated black middle class and the older generation were drawn to Martin. The younger generation, those who had never been able to afford a college education, were drawn to Malcolm. He was one of their own. His life experiences and his socio-economic background were like their own.

And even today, if we ask who are the masses of followers of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, the answer is the same: disproportionately from the non-college educated working class. We cannot ignore the different social class background of the followers of groups such as the NAACP, the Urban League, SCLC and the Nation of Islam.