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!SCIENCE & SOCIETY

"We're not Americans. We're Africanswho happen to be in America. We werekidnapped and brought here against OIUwill from Africa. We didn't land on Ply-mouth Rock - that rock landed on us. "

- MALCOLM X, 1964

The legacy of Malcolm XHe terrified whites and turned Negroes into African Americans

76

Inhis day, Malcolm X was not widelyregarded as an admirable figure. Ex-cept in Harlem, the man who rose

from poverty and prison to the pulpit wasvirtually unknown until CBS's MikeWallace, in a 1959 television documenta-ry entitled "The Hate That Hate Pro-duced," showed him leading an ominous"rise of black racism." Six years later,thousands of mourners attended Mal-colm's Harlem funeral, but outsideAmerica's poorest neighborhoods fewtears were shed. A New York Times edi-torial dismissed the murdered' ministeras "a twisted man" who turned "truegifts to evil purpose." Time termed him"an unashamed demagogue." ColumnistWalter Winchell called him "a pettypunk." Nor was the Negro press, as it wasknown in those days, any kinder. TheWashington Afro-American described theblack nationalist leader as "a profession-al race-baiter." Malcolm X, the MichiganChronicle concluded, "reaped the har-vest of his own philosophy."-Now, 27 years later, the man who

called himself "the angriest Negro inAmerica" is an inner-city icon. MalcolmX's grim visage bedecks sweatshirts,jackets and even the sides of buildings,Caps with a symbolic X are worn by mil-lionaire athletes and the homeless, bythe mayor in New York and by looters inLos Angeles. Malcolm's unusual life-"You wouldn't believe my past," he oncesaid - is the basis of plays, operas andbooks. This week, the craze that onescholar dubbed "Malcolmania" is bring-ing forth Spike Lee's "Malcolm X," along-awaited movie that will do muchmore than usher in a new tide of Mal-colm products, including wristwatches,air fresheners, refrigerator magnets andtrading cards. The epic, which openswith the video of Rodney King's beatingand ends a fast-moving 3 hours and 21

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, NOVEMBER 23, 1!m

•minutes later in a sea of black faces incurrent-day Soweto, also will serve as areminder that, for many, the struggle forcivil rights did not end in the '60s. "Mostof white America and even elements ofmiddle-class black America are not lis-tening to the rumblings from below,"says Manning Marable, a historian at theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder, whois writing a biography of Malcolm X."They aren't listening to the voices of an-guish and alienation. That's what Mal-colm's popularity is about."

The movie is sure toshape and reshape theways in which millions ofpeople view a man who wasone of his generation'splainest speaking butmost-misunderstood per-sonalities. "Malcolm Xwas a far more complicatedfigure than any of us knewin the '60s," says RobertO'Meally, an American-studies professor at NewYork's Barnard College."If you look at the whole Marcher. X-tra priderange of his career, you cansee some pretty good Malcolms in the bar-rel with the bad ones." .

Lamb and chicken. During the early'60s, the media presented one bad Mal-colm after another. "If I had said 'Maryhad a little lamb,' " he once complained,"what probably would have appeared was'Malcolm X Lampoons Mary.'" But thepress did not have to exaggerate Mal-colm's rhetoric to make it frightful. Allwhite people were devils, he declared,the members of an evil race createdthousands of years ago by a mad blackscientist. Hell was not something in the

hereafter, Malcolm preached, but waswhat blacks endured every day on Earth.All of this, he warned, would soon be setstraight by a global revolution of dark-skinned people-a "lake of fire," a "dayof slaughter ... for this sinful whiteworld." When John F. Kennedy was as-sassinated, Malcolm talked cheerfullyabout "the chickens coming home toroost." He hailed as "a very beautifulthing" the crash of an airliner full ofwhite people-a case in which God got"rid of 120 of them at one whop." .

MARKPETERSON-JBP1CTURES Those headline-makingutterances came from"the pre-Mecca Mal-colm," the messenger whoblindly followed theteachings of Nation of Is-lam founder Elijah Mu-hammad and thus, in onehistorian's words, "scaredthe bejesus out of whitepeople." Less noticed waswhat occurred in Mal-colm's final year. Break-ing with Muhammad,Malcolm traveled to Mec-ca and discovered Mus-

lims "of all colors, from blue-eyed blondsto black-skinned Africans." He returnedto America preaching brotherhood and ahostility to bias in any form. "In the past,

. I have permitted myself to be used tomake sweeping indictments of all whitepeople," he said. "I no longer subscribe tosweeping indictments of one race."

James Farmer, the civil-rights leaderwho headed the Congress of RacialEquality in the '60s, remembers a reveal-ing conversation shortly after Malcolm'sreturn from Mecca. Malcolm vowed todevote the rest of his life, Farmer says, to

Fashionshow.Practicing Malcolmania along the sidewalks of New York City

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, NOVEMBER 23, 1992 FROM BRUCE PERRY'S BOOK, "MALCOLM" (STATION HIll PRESS) 77

repamng the damage done by narrow-mindedness. "Anyone who will work alongwith us is my brother," Malcolm told theCORE leader, "and that goes for yourthree guys, too" - a reference to JamesChaney, Michael Schwerner and AndrewGoodman, three CORE workers who hadbeen murdered in Mississippi. "Malcolmknew that Schwerner and Goodman werewhite and Jewish," Farmer recalls. "For ablack nationalist and a Muslim to say thatthose two white Jewswere his brothers was areal confession and realchange. I asked him whyhe had not expressedthat view in his rallies inHarlem. He said, 'If aleader makes a suddenright-angle turn, heturns alone.' " .

When Malcolm beganpreaching in the '50s,black Americans wererepresented on radio Hard hat. Rodney King protestand television mainly byservants like Jack Benny's Rochester andbumbling connivers like Amos and Andy'sKingfish. The only African hero mostblack moviegoers saw was a white Tarzan."You know yourself that we have been apeople who hated our African characteris-tics," Malcolm told a Detroit audience."We hated our heads, we hated the shapeof our nose ... we hated the color of ourskin, hated the blood of Africa that was inour veins . . . Our color became to us achain." What Malcolm started - "a cultur-al revolution to unbrainwash an entirepeople," he called it - bears fruit today inmusic, dress, art and literature, all brim-

ming with self-respect and pride in an Af-rican heritage. It was Malcolm's influence,many scholars say, that turned "Negroes"into "black people." He fathered theblack-power.movement that started withina year. of his death. Long before the move-ment faded in the '70s, its disciples werehailing "St. MalColm."

Many young Americans caught up inMalcolmania are familiar with the high"lights of his life. They devour Pathfinder

Press's collections of hisspeeches and are largelyresponsible for the 300percent jump that's oc-curred since 1989 insales of "The Autobiog-raphy of Malcolm X," astold to Alex Haley. Butmany other Malcolmfans know little abouthim. Until a year agosome black studentswere asking their historyprofessors, "Who is thisMalcolm the Tenth?"

Whites often know even less about the ci -il-rights era. Alan Stone, president ofMichigan's Alma College, says his stu-dents "are surprised to learn that separatedrinking fountains existed barely 25 yearsago. They seem to think these things hap-pened at the turn of the century."

"By any means ... " Much of whatyoung people think they know about Mal-colm comes from rap music. The rapgroup Public Enemy, in its "Shut EmDown" video, shouts, "Screw GeorgeWashington," then knocks the first presi-dent off the dollar bill and replaces himwith Malcolm X. In Prince Akeem and

78 FROM BRUCE PERRY'S BOOK, 'MALCOLM" (STATION HILL PRESS)

Help yourself.A Harlem bookstall invokes Malcolm's memory to preach uplift.

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, NOVEMBER 23, l!m

80 JEFFREY MacMILLAN -USN&WR U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, NOVEMBER 23,1992

Celebrating May 19. Malcolm gets the seat of honor at this 1992 birthday bash.

Chuck D's "Time to Come Correct,"Malcolm is shown speaking and then ly-ing dead in his coffin while the words "by.any means necessary" flash across thescreen. Those four words - now Malcolm-ania's No.1 slogan - are also the title of aBoogie Down Productions album, thecover of which has lead rapper KRS-Onepeering out a window with a semi-automatic rifle, just as Malcolm did in anEbony magazine photo in 1964.

Malcolm's oldest daughter, AttallahShabazz, says too many youths believe that"by any means necessary" means using agun. Shabazz, who at the age of 6 saw herfather shot to death, favors another inter-pretation. "Any means," she says, can in-clude reading books and studying hard.Malcolm himself always used the term am- .biguously in telling how to achieve justiceand equity, and he let friends and foes alikeinterpret as they wished. But his message

about self-improvemenfwas plain. "With-out education," he warned, "you are notgoing anywhere in this world." Spike Leesays he made his movie in hopes of endinga disturbing trend in inner-city schools:Blacks who make good grades, he notes,are assailed by peers as acting white.

The color line. It was not easy to be blackand contented in the 1960s. The SupremeCourt had outlawed school segregation,but nearly every Southern classroom re-mained either all-white or all-black untillate in the decade. Hotels, eating places,theaters, libraries, buses, ballparks, zoos-all were segregated. The typical Southernservice station provided three restrooms:"Ladies," "Gentlemen" and "Colored."In some counties, blacks who tried to voterisked losing their jobs or their lives. Out-side th«'South, local laws banned discrimi-nation and politicians spoke of brother-hood. But millions of blacks lived in

crumbling, rat-infested housingwith no hope of moving to thewhite suburbs, and their childrenattended schools as segregated asany in the old Confederacy. Policefloggings were commonplace inthe North and South alike.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Mal-colm X looked at what black peo-ple were up against and reachedtotally different conclusions onwhat should be done. King, focus-ing initially on the South, believeda campaign of nonviolent protestswould end segregation, changingwhite people's hearts as well astheir laws. "We are simply seekingto bring into full realization the

• SCIENCE & SOCIETY rose up in violence in the South, our oppo-nents would really know what to do, be-cause they know how to operate on thislevel. ... They control all the forces ofviolence." A lot of blacks would get killed,King warned, and whites would have anexcuse to do nothing about oppression.

Ballots and bullets. Black people in thosedays clearly preferred King's course. In a1964New York Times poll, 3 of every 4 NewYork City blacks named King as "doing thebest work for Negroes." Only 6 percentchose Malcolm, who, plainly irked, said toAlex Haley: "Brother, do you realize thatsome of history's greatest leaders neverwere recognized until they were safely inthe ground?" In that year- his final year-Malcolm quit attacking the civil-rightsmovement and offered to help it instead.Once apolitical, he now urged blacks tovote. He traveled to Alabama and spoke insupport of King, who was in jail for leadinga protest. Malcolm continued to say scarythings, calling for black people's rifle clubsand threatening to have the United Na-tions convict the United States of genocide.But he insisted that his fire-eating rhetoricwas making King's job significantly easier."When the Black Muslim movement camealong talking that kind of talk that theytalked, the white man said, 'Thank God forthe NAACP\' " Malcolm explained. "A lotof people who wouldn't act right out oflovebegan to act right out of fear."

After Malcolm died, King began mov-ing toward Malcolm's pessimism. Withthe civil-rights movement's Southerngoals in place, King turned to the cities ofthe North. He soon discovered that many

American dream - a dream yet unful-filled," the Baptist minister explained. Bycontrast, Malcolm X found nothing inAmerica worth saving. "I see Americathrough the eyes of the victim," he said. "Idon't see any American dream. I· see anightmare." The pre-Mecca Malcolm saidKing was a "chump" and an "Uncle Tom"for pursuing integration. The real answer,Malcolm said, was the voluntary but per-manent separation of the races, withwhites in one place and blacks in another.The government, he said, should "give uspart of this country." He grinned thatsomeplace sunny, like Florida or Califor-nia, would do fine.

Malcolm mocked the civil-rights move-ment's nonviolent approach, which Kingpatterned after Mahatma Gandhi's suc-cessful campaign against British colonial-ism in India. "This is no revolution,"Malcolm said. "This is a beg-e-lution.You 'Toms' are asking the white man fora cup of coffee at a lunch counter."Holding hands with white people andsinging "We Shall Overcome," he said, islaughable. "You don't do that in a revo-lution. You don't do any singing, you'retoo ·busy swinging."

King dismissed Malcolm's words as "fi-ery, demagogic oratory" that "can reapnothing but grief." Nonviolence, King toldone audience, disarms the oppressor. "Itweakens his morale" and "exposes his de-fenses. And at the same time, it works on .his conscience. And he just doesn't knowwhat to do. Now I can assure you that if we

In your face. A rare talent for "scaring the bejesus out of white people"

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, NOVEMBER 23, 1992 EVE ARNOLD - MAGNUM 83

Glad rags. Denzel Washington in "Malcolm X; " with Spike Lee playing his pal

of the Northern whites who supported hiscampaign against racism in the distantSouth saw nothing wrong with what washappening in the nearby ghettos. Blacksrioted in the Watts section of Los Ange-les, shouting "Burn, baby, burn!" and"Long live Malcolm X." The war in Viet-nam, which both King and Malcolm bit-terly opposed, was escalating. King quittalking about his dream. "I saw thatdream turn into a nightmare," he said.

Forward, backward. Malcolm and Kingtoday would see both a dream and anightmare. In the generation since theirdeaths, black America has both pro-gressed and regressed. The black middleclass has quadrupled, and the top 20 per-cent of all black households now aver-ages $61,000 'in income. But much of theswelling middle class has' fled the innercities, leaving behind a poor but bloatedunderclass. "Whatever the measure-median income, health care, life expec-tancy - problems in the central citieshave gotten worse," says the Universityof Colorado's Marable, "and a majorityof African-Americans continue to belocked out of the promise of the Ameri-can dream." Nor do they have an effec-tive spokesman, now that Jesse Jackson'sinfluence is on the wane and other blackpoliticians are courting conservativewhites. "Black people need a leader whospeaks the truth even when white peopledon't want to hear it," says Stanford his-torian Clayborne Carson. "Malcolm X isfilling that role."

Many young blacks who admire Mal-colm deem King passe. "Black youth are

DAVID LEE ~ WARNER BROTHERS

more in tune with the street ethic thanthe middle-class ethic," says JamesFarmer. "If any man hits you, hit himback - the big fist wins. When I travel tocolleges, black youth tell me that 'nonvi-olence may have been all right for Dr.King and y'all in the '60s, but this stuffthat's coming down now, we have tofight.' They're referring to the resurgenceof racism, the rise of the Aryan suprema-

et groups, the campus graffiti."If violent rage is all that Americans de-

tect in Spike Lee's movie - and theyshouldn't because the film offers muchmore - the woes of the inner cities willsurely worsen. Already, says James Cone,author of "Martin & Malcolm & Ameri-ca: A Dream or a Nightmare," manyyoung ·\j1acks "with no respect for them-selves or for anybody else are droppingout of school, joining gangs, selling drugs,going to prisons and killing each otherwith a frequency that boggles the humanimagination." Cone, who teaches theolo-gy at New York's Union TheologicalSeminary, hopes fellow blacks will pick upa far more useful message: respect forblack life. "Malcolm's life and teachingson black self-esteem are the medicine theAfrican-American community needs toprevent its self-destruction." Whites alsowill understand Malcolm better, Conesays, if they read his speeches and de-bates. "Malcolm wanted for blacks onlywhat whites wanted for themselves, nomore and no less." •

By LEWIS LORD AND JEANNYE THORNTONWITH ALEJANDRO BODIPO·MEMBA

84 JOHN LAUNOIS - BLACK STAR U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT. NOVEMBER 23, 1992