Malcolm X at 100: the Forgotten Legacy

Towards the end of his life, he rejected the identitarian, separatist thinking that he is so celebrated for today.

The Hate That Hate Produced shocked Americans of all creeds and colours. Broadcast in July 1959, this five-part documentary brought the Nation of Islam (and, to a lesser extent, the United African Nationalist Movement) to wider public attention for arguably the first time. Few Americans had hitherto been exposed to the black nationalism and even black supremacism of the Nation of Islam – a religious and political organisation that called for black and white Americans to live in separate states. The Hate That Hate Produced achieved something else, too: it catapulted a then little-known Malcolm X to national prominence.

The Hate That Hate Produced featured various Black Muslims, as Nation of Islam followers are sometimes called, finding white people guilty of various crimes. In the dramatic words of Malcolm X himself: The Autobiography of M... Malcolm X Best Price: $2.16 Buy New $10.45 (as of 04:52 UTC - Details)

‘I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on Earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest kidnapper on Earth.‘

Given views being expressed like this, it’s hardly a surprise that The Hate That Hate Produced unnerved a great many. But it also inspired a significant minority of black Americans. Indeed, within weeks of the documentary being broadcast, the number of people attending Nation of Islam meetings increased significantly, and the group’s membership doubled to 60,000. By 1961, there were an estimated 100,000 Black Muslims in the US (1).

Malcolm initially appeared on the The Hate That Hate Produced to introduce the then leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad. He also appeared in a later episode as part of a panel discussion. He had enjoyed a minimal public profile up until then, but that changed almost overnight. From that point on, Malcolm X became a major public figure, not to mention a source of quotes guaranteed to outrage conservative America.

He had been on quite a journey up until then. Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on 19 May 1925. He was the seventh child of his father, Earl Little, and the fourth child of his mother, Louise. His father was a tall, dark-skinned man from Georgia, and his mixed-race mother was from Grenada, in the British West Indies. Both of his parents were strong advocates of Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), the Jamaican-born black separatist who, in the 1920s, led a back-to-Africa movement – that is, a movement calling for the descendants of black slaves to return to Africa.

Shortly after Malcolm’s birth, Earl Little moved his family out of Nebraska, before ultimately settling in Lansing, Michigan. When Malcolm was six years old, his father was killed in what the family deemed suspicious circumstances. Whereas official reports stated that he had been killed in a streetcar accident, the insurance company refused to pay out on what they categorised as a suicide. Malcolm later surmised that his father had been killed by white racists.

In the seventh grade, Malcolm enrolled in a predominantly white junior high school in Mason, Michigan, where he excelled academically and was even elected president of his class. Yet, by the end of the following school year, he had dropped out, aged 15. The reason he gave was a discouraging counselling session with a teacher, who advised him to train as a carpenter instead of a lawyer because carpentry was more appropriate for a ‘nigger’.

At the same time, Malcolm’s family life had been plunged into chaos. In 1938, his mother was committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital after having a breakdown. A then 13-year-old Malcolm and his siblings were housed in various foster homes before he eventually went to live with his half-sister in Boston, Massachusetts. He soon became a street hustler and petty criminal. Having been arrested for robbery in 1944, he was charged, found guilty and eventually given a seven-year prison sentence in 1946, which he served at Boston’s Charlestown Prison.

Prison – or more accurately, the prison library – liberated Malcolm. ‘My alma mater was books, a good library’, he later explained: ‘I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.’ There he changed his name to Malcolm X, on the grounds that ‘Little’ was a ‘slave name’ given to his ancestors.

It was during his time in prison that Malcolm came into contact with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, which was then a small, urban-prophet cult committed to religious and racial segregation, with branches in Detroit, Chicago and New York. At the time it had no more than a few hundred members. Malcolm’s brother was already a Black Muslim, and convinced Malcolm to convert, too. While in prison Malcolm began communicating with Muhammad via mail. After being released on parole in 1952, Malcolm visited him in Chicago, before setting to work recruiting Black Muslims in Detroit.

The Deeper State: Insi... Maginnis, Lt. Col. Robert Best Price: $1.38 Buy New $8.97 (as of 09:01 UTC - Details) At six foot three, Malcolm was an imposing, impressive figure. One historian was moved to describe him as ‘mesmerisingly handsome… and always spotlessly well-groomed’ (2). He was also a talented speaker and soon became the chief spokesman and organiser for the Nation of Islam. His speeches were virtuoso performances of rhythm, improvised cadences, silences and eruptions. Having heard Malcolm X speak at a debate at Oxford University in 1964, British radical Tariq Ali remarked that his ‘speeches were like word-jazz, with gestures but no other accompaniment, except the response of the crowd’.

Malcolm’s rise to political prominence coincided with that of Martin Luther King, the other pivotal African American leader of the era. Though hostile to each other, the two shared many characteristics. Both were hugely talented and intellectually capable. Where they differed was in their vision of America. King’s optimism moved him to embrace the nation’s liberal promise, and push it to extend the same rights and freedoms enjoyed by white Americans to black Americans. Malcolm gave vent to a considerably more pessimistic and cynical view. He thought the US was incapable of ever fulfilling its promises to its most significant minority.

Indeed, for a time, Malcolm was King’s polar opposite. His pessimism and championing of black separatism challenged the optimistic vision King had of a racially integrated United States. Malcolm repeatedly pointed to black Americans’ lack of freedom, particularly in the South – despite it being over 100 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, which pledged to free black Americans from slavery. ‘Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American’, he told an audience in 1964. Or, as he put it more succinctly, referring to the first pilgrims who landed in Massachusetts on the Mayflower: ‘We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on us.’

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