COURAGE TO RESIST: SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO MALCOLM X ON THE 61ST ANNIVERSARY OF HIS ASSASSINATION:

“We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.” – Malcolm X

The 21st of February this year marks one of the darkest moments in black resistance history in the last 50 years- the 61st anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X.

WHO WAS MALCOLM X?

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. This makes him a direct peer of two other great black revolutionaries, Patrice Lumumba and Frantz Fanon.

His mother, Gogo Louise Norton Little, was a homemaker occupied with the family’s eight children. His father, Mkhulu James Earl Little, was an outspoken Baptist minister. Both his parents were leaders of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

His father’s activism resulted in him receiving death threats from an anti-black group called Black Legion. The threats forced Malcolm’s family to relocate twice. Even though Malcolm’s father tried his best to protect his family, in 1929 their home in Michigan was burned to the ground. Two years later, his father’s body was found lying across the town’s trolley tracks.

The police ruled out both incidents as accidents, but the Little’s were certain that members of the Black Legion were responsible. As a result of all this, his mother suffered an emotional breakdown and was committed to a mental institution.

Consequently, Malcolm and his siblings had to be split up among various foster homes and orphanages. Later, he and his friend, Malcolm “Shorty” Jarvis, moved back to Boston. In 1946 they were arrested and convicted on burglary charges. Malcolm was sentenced to 10 years but was paroled after serving only 7.

HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE BLACK LIBERATION PROJECT

While in prison, his brother Reginald would visit and discuss his recent conversion to Islam. Reginald belonged to the Nation of Islam (NOI). Fascinated by what his brother shared with him, Malcolm began to study the teachings of Mkhulu Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. His teachings on Black self-pride and self-reliance, captivated him so much that he decided to give his life to the Nation of Islam. He also changed his surname to “X.” He regarded “Little” as a slave name and chose the “X” to signify his lost Afrikan name. In no time, Malcolm had risen in stature within the Nation of Islam and was appointed as a minister and national spokesman.

Muhammad gave him the responsibility to establish new mosques in such places as Detroit, Michigan, and Harlem, New York. Malcolm was a mesmerising public speaker. He used the media, public rallies, and lectures to promote the name of Muhammad and the work of the Nation of Islam. He was later credited with increasing the membership in the Nation of Islam from 500 in 1952 to 30,000 in 1963. All of this catapulted him to national prominence, and he began to enjoy more national attention than Muhammad.

Louis Farrakhan states that there was also growing envy of him. His rise also attracted the attention of the AmeriKKKan security apparatus, and in particular the notoriously anti-black Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At this stage, not only was Malcolm now under full FBI surveillance, but they had also infiltrated the Nation of Islam and had one of their agents act as his bodyguard.

PROBLEMS WITHIN THE NATION OF ISLAM

In the midst of this harassment by the FBI, Malcolm discovered something that would rattle his faith in the Nation of Islam and its leader (Elijah Muhammad), immeasurably. He learned that the leader he had revered so much had been secretly engaging in relationships (of a sexual nature), with some of the young sisters of the Nation of Islam and that, many of them had children by him. Malcolm was deeply troubled by this and found a polite way of confronting Muhammad on this. It is said Muhammed asked him to keep these revelations a secret, but he refused.

He felt betrayed and felt bad that he may have misled hundreds of people (especially young women), who he had recruited into the Nation of Islam. All this plunged him into a deep state of depression and disillusionment. He began to ask himself all manner of questions about the man he regarded as his spiritual father. During this period, he also began to notice a change in the attitude and growing hostility towards him among some within the leadership of the Nation of Islam.

Not so long after coming across these disturbing allegations about Muhammad, the AmeriKKKan president, John F. Kennedy got shot and died. In reaction, Malcolm made a public statement that Kennedy’s death was a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.”

Muhammad ordered that he be silenced for 90 days. He was convinced that this silencing had little to do with his remarks about Kennedy’s assassination, but that he was being punished for how he reacted to the allegations about Muhammad. After this, the relationship between Malcolm and Muhammad deteriorated irreversibly. He formally disassociated from the Nation of Islam in 1964. He publicly denounced the Nation of Islam and was critical of the conduct of Elijah Muhammad (something that was tantamount to blasphemy among the faithful of the Nation of Islam).

HIS ASSASSINATION

After the break down in the relationship between Malcolm and Muhammad, he learned of plots to cause him harm from within the organisation, including a plan to have an undercover officer help plant a bomb in his car.

After repeated attempts on his life, Malcolm rarely travelled anywhere without bodyguards. On February 14, 1965, his home (where his wife Mama Betty and their four daughters lived in East Elmhurst), was firebombed. Fortunately, his family escaped physical injury. He was fuming when he addressed the media after this dastardly act and vowed to do whatever is necessary to protect his family and in particularly his children.

However, a week later, his enemies were successful. He was scheduled to speak at Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965. As he was still speaking, three gunmen rushed on stage. He was shot 15 times at close range. He was pronounced dead on arrival at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

Over 400 people were present, including his pregnant wife, Mama Betty Shabazz, and their four daughters. His funeral was held on 27 February 1965 at Harlem’s Faith Temple Church of God in Christ (now Child’s Memorial Temple Church of God in Christ). After the ceremony, friends took the shovels away from the waiting gravediggers and buried Malcolm themselves.

In 1966, Nation of Islam (NOI) members Thomas Hagan, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (Norman 3X Butler), and Khalil Islam (Thomas 15X Johnson) were convicted of the murder.

Hagan confessed yet consistently testified that Aziz and Islam were innocent and not present during the shooting. In a 2021 review, Aziz and Islam (posthumously) were exonerated after evidence surfaced that the FBI and NYPD withheld information that would have likely led to their acquittal.

In November 2024, the family of Malcolm filed a $100 million lawsuit in Manhattan federal court. The suit alleges that the NYPD, CIA, and FBI conspired to orchestrate the assassination by purposefully removing security.

SOME OF THE FACTORS THAT PRECIPITATED HIS ASSASSINATION

Malcolm’s assassination was precipitated by a combination of internal (National of Islam) and external factors (FBI/CIA). Both the Nation of Islam and FBI/CIA had a motive(s) to want him dead. As part of the internal factors, his fall out with his spiritual teacher and supreme leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Mohammed and his subsequent disassociation, led to the Nation of Islam attacking him publicly.

In the national newspaper of the Nation of Islam, Muhammad Speaks, Louis Farrakhan (then Louis X), called Malcolm X a “traitor.” He wrote “The die is set,” and “Malcolm shall not escape. … Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death.” In a television interview on 60 Minutes, Farrakhan was a guest with Malcolm’s oldest daughter, Attallah Shabazz. In reaction to her questions on his role in her father’s murder, he said “As I may have been complicit in words that I spoke leading up to February 21, I acknowledge that and regret that any word that I have said caused the loss of life of a human being.”

In 1963 British political activist and writer, Tariq Ali met Malcolm at Oxford University. He was invited to speak at the Oxford Union. After the debate, as they parted ways, Ali says Malcolm said to him “they’re going to kill me soon.” Ali further states that “He was in no doubt that it would be either the Nation of Islam or the FBI or both.”

On another occasion, Malcolm was asked by a reporter if he fears death, or if he worries, he replied “No, I don’t worry. I tell you, I’m a man who believes that I died 20 years ago and I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.” Malcolm knew when he was part of the Nation of Islam and after he had left that death was his shadow.

As part of the external factors, the FBI opened a file on Malcolm X in 1953 and continued surveillance until his assassination in 1965. This file, encompassing 2,300 pages, gives insight into the various factions and leaders of the black militant movement during the 1950s and ’60s, as well as details on the FBI’s attempts to neutralize it. There are at least two FBI memos that help us to understand why the AmeriKKKan government dedicated so many resources to placing Malcolm under surveillance. The FBI’s racist director, J Edgar Hoover, states in one memo that:

“The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavour is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralise the activities of black-nationalist, hate-type organisations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters. hate-type organisations…such groups as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Southern Christian Leadership Conference … the Congress of Racial Equality and the Nation of Islam”.

In another memo, Hoover says:

“Prevent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a ‘messiah’…. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position …. King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his ‘obedience’ to ‘white, liberal doctrines’ (nonviolence).”

So, it is quite clear that the United States of AmeriKKKa regarded Malcolm as a serious domestic threat. However, they did not just regard him as a domestic threat. Malcolm was also a threat to AmeriKKKa’s global imperialist agenda.

The 60’s were the height of the so-called Cold War – with the US and the Soviet Union as its two main protagonists. One of the key characteristics of the Cold War was proxy imperialist wars. One such war was the Vietnam War (1955-1975). Malcolm was one of the first black leaders to openly and vehemently oppose this imperialist war. Unsurprisingly, the AmeriKKKan government did not take kindly to his public denouncing of this imperialist war. But even more interesting was the FBI’s perception of Malcolm’s connection with Afrikan leaders.

Malcolm visited Afrika between 1959 and 1964. He gave speeches and interviews in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanganyika (a sovereign state that existed for a brief period in the early 1960s before becoming the mainland part of modern-day Tanzania), Morocco, Ghana, Guinea, Sudan, Senegal, Liberia, Algeria, and Nigeria.

During his visit to Nigeria, he was honoured with the Yoruba name ‘Omowale‘, after he spoke at the University of Ibadan. ‘Omowale’ means ‘the son who has come home.’ He also addressed the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Cairo on July 17, 1964. After meeting with among others, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, Malcolm’s pan-afrikanist perspective was sharpened.

As a result, when he returned to AmeriKKKa, he started working on the formation of a new political movement – the Organisation of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). One of the people who helped him draft the concept for the OAAU is Dr John Henrik Clarke.

The OAAU was inspired by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and was based on the principles of ‘Restoration,’ ‘Reorientation,’ ‘Education’ and ‘Economic Security’ of Black people. Furthermore, the Afrikan leaders he met, urged him to return to AmeriKKKa to get going with the task of building the OAAU and uniting Black people, globally. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to see the formation of the OAAU.

“Ahead of his trip to Africa, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote in a memo dated July 2, 1964, that the OAAU was a threat to the national security of the United States.”

There is however another part of Malcolm’s visit to Afrika that did not grab much attention. When he was in Kenya in 1959, he met with a political activist called Pio Gama Pinto. He and Pinto connected instantly because they realised, they had a number of similar ideas. They developed a common strategy to deal with the daily humiliation and indignities suffered by both Afrikans on the continent and in AmeriKKKa. Part of their plan was to take the United States of AmeriKKKa to the United Nations and charge it with war crimes against Black people.

Strangely, Pinto was assassinated on the 24 February 1965, exactly three days after the assassination of Malcolm.

WHAT IS HIS LEGACY?

Given his immeasurable meaning, I think it would be difficult to quantify Malcolm’s legacy in a paragraph, a page or even in a single discussion. In AmeriKKKa, he inspired the emergence of the Black Power movement. The cofounders of the Black Panther party, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton openly stated that the assassination of Malcolm served as a catalyst for the creation of the Black Panther Party.

Similarly, his emergence also inspired the formation of Black revolutionary movements across the globe. He emerged at a time when black political expression (not just in AmeriKKKa, but in much of the Black world), was firmly under the deceptive grip of Christian-inspired white liberalism. Malcolm intentionally and fearlessly broke this deceptive grip of white liberalism on black political expression. He disrupted not only our thinking on black liberation, but also on how it must be attained.

Malcolm empowered us with a language, grammar, metaphor, idiom, vocabulary, and lexicon for every one of our existential conundrums. He said the kinds of things that many of the more celebrated black leaders were terribly afraid to say and when he did so, he was truthful and sincere.

Malcolm X was loyal to his race and unlike others, he made no apologies for his race-consciousness and race-loyalty. This is perhaps the cardinal difference between him and others who project themselves as the leaders of the black world. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the sum of his life is the very embodiment of Black revolution. Malcolm’s greatest contribution is in his demonstration of the power of black agency.

From a life of drugs, criminality, incarceration, and virtually no ‘academic’ certification, he was able to pull himself up by his own bootstraps, working diligently and purposefully, on all aspects of his development (in particular ethical and intellectual growth). And after all this, being able to become one of the most enduring Black symbols of modern history and achieving all this at only 39 years of age. For me, this is the ultimate genius and beauty of Omowale.

There is no greater description of Malcolm’s genius and beauty than in the poignant words of Ossie Davis, who at his funeral, on 27 February 1965, said:

“…Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man – but a seed – which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will know him then for what he was and is – a Prince – our own black shining Prince! – who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.”