Malcolm X

Keywords preparation • Malcolm X

– Why did Malcolm X call himself "X"?– Life of Malcolm X

• Elijah Muhammad• Civil rights movement (+ 60s in US)

– Rosa Parks,Montgomery Bus Boycott, MLK, march on Washington:1963, freedom rides, freedom summer,student sit-in (teach-in, laugh-in) black power, KKK, etc.

• The Nation of Islam (Black Muslims)– their beliefs, morals, and customs, etc.

• Black power• Characteristics of black English• Harlem in NYC

Sites for reference• http://www.malcolm-x.org

• http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmalcolmX.htm

• http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcivilrights.htm

• http://encarta.msn.com

• http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/timeline/index.

htm (African American history)

• http://www.brothermalcolm.net/research/webliography.html (Malcolm X Webliography)

• http://americanrhetoric.com/speechbankm-r.htm

Who’s Who

                  

       

                 

       

Who’s Who

Elijah Muhammad

                  

     

           

             

Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.aka Muhammad Ali

Spike Lee

Marcus Garvey

MLK

XAfrican American activist militant views

called for achieving equality “by any means necessary.”

African Americans should reject integration or cooperation with whites

more radical, revolutionary approach to social change

a life of crime, including drug dealing and armed robbery

black nationalist leader “Back to Africa” movement

advocated an independent black state

black segregationist

black racist, hate-teacher

hate-messenger

black supremacist

violence-seeker

black fascist

being anti-white

anti-Christian

possibly Communist-inspired

family

• Garvey, Marcus (1887-1940)– black nationalist leader, “Back to Africa” – the United Negro Improvement Association

• Muhammad, Elijah (1897-1975) – leader of the Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims– the establishment of an autonomous state for Black Muslims

• Nation of Islam, religious movement based on black separatism, founded in approximately 1930 in Detroit, Michigan.

Beating of Rodney King

• March 3, 1991

• LAPD officers

• 34-year-old African American motorist

• videotaped by a bystander

• broadcast over and over on network TV

• In 1992, acquittal sparked riots in LA & elsewhere in US

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lapd/lapd.html

• Police officers Sgt. Stacey Koon, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno were acquitted on all counts. However, the jury failed to reach a verdict on the charge that Officer Laurence Powell had used unnecessary force under colour of authority. For a summary of this trial, and its aftermath, see The Guide to American Law: Supplement 1993 (St. Paul, MN: West, 1993) pp. 291-297.

Joe Louis

• the Brown Bomber

• first became world heavyweight champion in 1937

• successfully defend his title 25 times

• holding the title longer than any other boxer

Ali, Muhammad (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. )

“the greatest of all time”• American boxer

• one of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport

• famous for bragging about himself – “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

– “The Greatest.”

– nicknames: “Louisville Lip” & “Mighty Mouth.”

• first won the world heavyweight championship title in 1964 (v.s. Sonny Liston, )

• In 1964 converted to Islam, joined the Nation of Islam, and assumed the name Muhammad Ali

glossary• Slang

– dig

• Ya ~?

• I don't ~ half the words.

– con• e.g. Don’t con me.

– cat • Everybody conks. All the cats.

• I thought you was smart. But you just another one of them cats strutting down the avenue in your clown suit with all that mess on you. Like a monkey.

– ofay • Ain't you scared talking like that in front of an ~?

– wog

Harriet Tubman Jackie Robinson

Job Afflicted by Satan

Kaaba

Mount Ararat, Turkey

Arnold, Benedict (1741-1801)

Arnold, Benedict (1741-1801), American military leader, who distinguished himself during the first phase of the American Revolution (1775-1783), but later betrayed the American cause.

Quotations used in the movie

Africans in America...• ["I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on

my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate.] Being here in America doesn't make you an American.... No I'm not an American, I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.... I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of a victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.“

• "We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us."

On Martin Luther King, Jr...• "He got the peace prize, we got the problem.... If I'm following a general, and he's leading

me into a battle, and the enemy tends to give him rewards, or awards, I get suspicious of him. Especially if he gets a peace award before the war is over.“

• "I'll say nothing against him. At one time the whites in the United States called him a racialist, and extremist, and a Communist. Then the Black Muslims came along and the whites thanked the Lord for Martin Luther King.“

• "Dr. King wants the same thing I want -- freedom!“• "I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did co

me thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.“

• Dr. King on Malcolm X:"You know, right before he was killed he came down to Selma and said some pretty passionate things against me, and that surprised me because after all it was my territory there. But afterwards he took my wife aside, and said he thought he could help me more by attacking me than praising me. He thought it would make it easier for me in the long run."

• "The goal has always been the same, with the approaches to it as different as mine and Dr. Martin Luther King's non-violent marching, that dramatizes the brutality and the evil of the white man against defenseless blacks. And in the racial climate of this country today, it is anybody's guess which of the "extremes" in approach to the black man's problems might personally meet a fatal catastrophe first -- "non-violent" Dr. King, or so-called "violent" me."

Freedom, Death, and the Oppressed...• "Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and o

ppression.“

• "Truth is on the side of the oppressed.“

• "You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.“

• "You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.“

• "If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.“

• "The price of freedom is death.“

• "Respect me, or put me to death.“

• "When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire...or preserve his freedom."

Miscellaneous...• "My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of

my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. "

• "Anytime you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something you aren't. "

• "History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals. "

• "I believe in human rights for everyone, and none of us is qualified to judge each other and that none of us should therefore have that authority."

• "If you are in a country that is progressive, the woman is progressive. If you're in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it's because the woman is aware of the importance of education. But in every backward country you'll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed it’s because the women don't have education."

He hasn’t been educated, he’s been trained. When a man is educated, he can think for himself and defend himself and speak for himself.

You don’t put the crime in jail, you put the criminal in jail. And kidnapping is a crime. Slavery is a crime. Lynching is a crime. And the presence of 20 million Black people in a America against their will is a living witness, a living testimony of the crime that Uncle Sam committed, your forefathers committed, when our people were brought here in chains.

You’re not doing the Black man any favor. If you stick a knife in my back, if you put it in nine inches and pull it out six inches, you haven’t done me any favor. If you pull it all the way out, you haven’t done me any favor.

Integration in America is hypocrisy in the rawest form.

… old turn-the-other-cheek cowardly philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King

"Who ever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing 'We shall overcome ... Suum Day...' while tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against ? Who ever heard of angry revolutionists swinging their bare feet together with their oppressor in lily-pad park pools, with gospels and guitars and 'I have a dream' speeches? And the black masses in America were--and still are--having a nightmare."

Discussion topics 1. What is your opinion of Malcolm X? Do you think he was

a racist or a true American Hero? How would you define “a hero”?

2. What do you think of his way of getting freedom? Please give your reasons.

3. How does his life inspire you?

4. What do you think of Malcolm X’s way of giving speechs? (What are the characteristics? Are they powerful? )

5. Make a comparison between X and King (their political & religious beliefs, ways of achieving their goals, personalities/ private life, way of speaking, etc.).

1. How would you introduce Malcolm X to someone who does not him?

2. How did his childhood experience influence his later life and thoughts?

3. What are the qualities that made Malcolm X rise from the streets to become one of the most influential African American activist?

4. Malcolm X got his master’s degree in prison. How does his way of educating himself in prison inspire you?

5. Do you think his ideas about race relations (solutions) were right? Why or why not?

6. Do you think he was a racist or a true American Hero? Please give your reasons. And define “hero”.

7. What do you know about the beliefs and rules or habits of conduct of the Muslims in China? Can you compare them with the Black Muslims?

8. What did X think of King? Do you agree or not? Please give your reasons. (or: How did he and MLK think of each other?)

9. Compare X with Martin Luther King / Gandhi in respect of their life experiences, personalities, beliefs and ways of fighting for human rights and freedom.

 

Discussion questions

Whose quotations are the following remarks. In what situation did they say so?

“Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad. They always made me glad.”

“Stay out of my pockets.”

“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty I’m free at last.”

“Houston, we have a problem.” / “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”

“My God! They’re gonna kill us all!”

"As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women." ---- Alice Walker From In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose [1983]

• http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/canadian/canada/justice/hate-motivated-violence/index.html [Hate-Motivated Violence Glenn A. Gilmour 1994 Working Paper)]

•

Further reading

Adoff, Arnold. Malcolm X. HarperCollins, 1999. For readers in grades 4 to 6.

Brown, Kevin. Malcolm X: His Life and Legacy. Millbrook, 1995. A candid portrait and analysis of the political ideology of Malcolm X; for readers in grades 8 to 12.

Myers, Walter Dean. Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly. HarperCollins, 1999, 2000. A picture biography for readers in grades 2 to 5.

Myers, Walter Dean. Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary. Scholastic, 1994, 1997. A biography for readers in grade 5 to 8.

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