Mr. B. G. Jallow,

Many many thanks for this very interesting insgiht into the life of Malcom X. Advancing the comparison with Dr. King is without doubt very fascinating and revealing. Besides, that comparison and Malcolm's relations with radical African leaders of the Independence era fuels the temptation to look at Black America as an enclosed colonial entity in the United States.

Cheers,
Momodou S Sidibeh 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Baba Galleh Jallow 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 3:00 AM
  Subject: Understanding Malcolm X - Part One


  Understanding Malcolm X - Part One

  What he was and what he could have been 

  By Baba Galleh Jallow

  Every year, January 17 is marked as a national holiday in the U.S. in honor of the great civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The question many people ask on this day is: If there is a Martin Luther King Day, why is there no Malcolm X Day? Of course, for one thing, marking a day for all the great American leaders is not feasible. And Malcolm has been honored by having streets and avenues named after him and his face on a commemorative stamp, among other things. 

  But as we observe Martin Luther King Day, we would do well to remember Malcolm X and try to understand his significance for history, for the present and for the future. We put Malcolm beside Martin not for reasons of competition or rivalry, but because the two leaders were two sides of the same coin. They were complementary in more ways than we perhaps can fully appreciate. Which is why we feel the need to revisit Malcolm and seek in order to better understand his significance.

  When Malcolm X died, many of his opponents tried to trivialize his significance. Some, like Bayard Rustin tried to write him off as just some small ghetto upstart who must not be idealized or elevated to greatness. George Breitman in his book, "The Last Year of Malcolm X" quotes Rustin as describing Malcolm simply as "a tragic victim of the ghetto," "a conservative force in the Negro community," who, having described the evil plaguing the black community in the United States, "had no program for attacking it." Rustin's attempts to disparage Malcolm were replicated by many others, black and white, while the mainstream media was quick to almost throw back at his face his "chickens coming home to roost" statement about J.F. Kennedy's assassination, claiming that Malcolm was simply a victim of the violence he advocated. The truth is, Malcolm never advocated unprovoked violence.

  Of course, Rustin and all the other insincere critics and media failed in their attempts to write Malcolm X off as some little insignificant demagogue deserving of little or no attention and respect. Malcolm X was too big, too phenomenal, too truthful, too ingrained in the American consciousness to be easily written off. He had touched too many hearts, had uttered too many truths, was too rare a historic figure to be wiped off the consciousness of not only Americans, but people everywhere around the world. Indeed, as Breitman suggests, Malcolm X came to be seen and understood much better after his death. The truth and clarity of his vision fully hit the American consciousness, particularly the consciousness of the black community for whom he lived and died, only after his death. As James Boggs writes in a chapter in a collection of essays edited by John Henrik Clarke, three and a half years after his death, Malcolm X had become a living legend among young African Americans. They read his autobiography, listened to his speeches and considered every word he uttered after his break with the Nation of Islam as the Gospel truth. His teachings had revolutionized the thinking of the black youth and African Americans in general have begun realizing the truth of Malcolm's teachings, particularly the fact that if they must be free, then they must be prepared to fight for their freedom by any means necessary. It is interesting to note that even Martin Luther King Jr., while sticking on to his philosophy of nonviolence, came to realize the truth of Malcolm's statement that the white man could never become the black man's sincere friend and helper in America. King's Southern Christian Leadership Council almost split between those who would rather carry on Malcolm's struggle the Malcolm way, and those who stayed with Dr. King's original philosophy.

  In her seminal work, "Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman," Michele Wallace argues that "if Malcolm had lived . the years that followed 1965 might have been very different and perhaps more constructive." No one who has studied Malcolm with any degree of interest can fail to see the validity of this statement. If America ever suffered a tragic loss, it was the loss of Malcolm X. It could safely be argued that Malcolm X understood the problem with America - not only black America - more than any other man before or after him. He had a razor sharp mind that saw exactly what was wrong with these United States, and contrary to the claims of the likes of Rustin, he did have a program, albeit in the making, of helping America heal herself. His uncanny ability to see the truth and his courage to express that truth in all its ugly reality was and remains the bitter medicine America needs to cure the festering cancer of racism and injustice that continues to plague the hearts and minds of this nation. If Malcolm X had lived, America would certainly have been a much better place to live in today. And African Americans and other oppressed minorities - even whites - would have been far better off today. Whoever killed Malcolm X killed much more than a single black man. Whoever killed Malcolm X probably killed the American dream. They certainly killed the African American dream. 

  Those who claimed that Malcolm X had no program for dealing with the problems of black people were either blinded by pure hatred or jealousy, or were utterly ignorant of his plans and programs for the upliftment of black people as outlined in the Statement of Basic Aims and Objectives of the Organization for Afro-American Unity or the OAAU's Basic Unity Program. These two documents clearly outlined realistic plans for the upliftment of black people in the United States. They contained ideas on self-defense, which would have kept the white monkey off the back of black people; ideas on how black people could take control or actively participate in the proper education of themselves and their children; social plans; cultural plans; plans for black unity irrespective of political or religious orientation; plans for the reorientation of the black community; plans for the attainment of economic security for blacks; and finally, plans for the identification and unification of black peoples' struggle against racism, oppression and exploitation in the United States with black peoples' struggle everywhere in the world, particularly in Africa. Malcolm X was not an unrealistic dreamer who would try to build castles in the air. He was a practical realist who knew exactly what the problems were, and who had very good and realistic plans and ideas as to what the possible solutions were.

  Michelle Wallace, in Black Macho, shows how prior to the 1950s and the civil rights and black nationalist/power movements, black people were virtually non-existent for the average white person in America, thanks to their blinding invisibility. Blacks, she writes, "had become accustomed to not existing. The unruly ones learned to vent their anger on other blacks and on themselves. More 'mature' types contented themselves with being (white) man's best friend, next to the dog." It was out of this mass of angry, invisible, non-existent blacks that Malcolm X emerged to become, as Ossie Davis puts it, black people's "own shining black prince" and their "very manhood." He was born in the ghetto, saw his father murdered in the ghetto, his mother driven mad in the ghetto and his family shattered by the white racist power structure - the creator of the ghetto. He grew up in the ghetto, knew the depravation of the ghetto, fed on the blood and poison of the ghetto, was reduced, like millions of other ghetto dwellers to the level of a wild beast in the ghetto and eventually ended up where the creators of the ghetto wanted him to end up - as a criminal in jail. But Malcolm was not destined to be, as Rustin would charge, a victim of the ghetto. He was destined to be the potential liberator of the ghetto; the potential killer of the minotaur that lurked in the deep labyrinth of the ghetto and fed on the blood and flesh of the cream of America's black community. Wallace writes that "the really entrenched ghetto dweller is one who is brutalized, so brutalized in fact, that his every action, thought, word, emanates from a sense of his own affliction, from the consciousness of having been deeply and irreparably wounded." Malcolm X was such a man. He knew what the ghetto was, and why it was. And he knew what the ghetto and the creators and perpetrators of the ghetto wanted him and all black people to be. And he refused to fit in the box they tried to construct around him. And being liberated, he was on the verge of setting in full motion the eventual redemption and liberation of the ghetto.

  Which was probably all the more reason Malcolm had to die. He had to die because he understood, more than any other black leader of his day, just what was wrong with the American black man. He had to die because he was one man who could start a race war in America with as little as a single sentence. If Malcolm had ordered the oppressed and destitute blacks of America's festering and angry ghettos to rise up against the government, there is little doubt they would have risen. He had to die because he was the one man who saw right through the racist mentality of white America. He had to die because his ideas and plans had the potential to literally transform the socio-political landscape of the United States. Not that this would have been a necessarily bad thing. In fact, it would have been for the best. But entrenched authority and status and privilege have a way of dreading change, thanks to man's greedy impulse to control and dominate and exploit, and his dread of the unknown. Malcolm had to die because he represented a fearsome threat not only to white domination in America, but also to America's dominant position in the community of nations. If he had lived and succeeded in enlisting the cooperation of the emergent African nations and other newly independent countries of the world, the new bloc he would have welded would pose a formidable threat and obstacle to America's voice in the community of nations. James Boggs argues in the essay mentioned above that "among black revolutionaries . there is no doubt that whatsoever that the CIA engineered his murder because they recognized the grave threat to American Masternationship which this linkup involved." Was he a victim of Cold War intrigues and the communist bogey that was driving America nuts? Maybe, because while he rejected any meaningful unity with the so-called white working class, Malcolm X did express some degree of admiration for socialism as an alternative to capitalism. And he could very well have been misinterpreted and misrepresented by those who would have him dead. He had almost literally identified capitalism as racism and had argued strongly that the black man could never be free under a capitalist system. But that certainly did not mean that Malcolm was a communist or socialist or that he advocated a communist-style revolution in America. Moreover, Malcolm made these remarks at a time when he was still trying to find his feet as an independent leader of a new black nationalist organization. His mind was still in transition. In any case, many scholars believe that Malcolm X was killed because of his increasing involvement in the international freedom movement. Some even believe that Martin Luther King Jr. was also killed because of his increasing obsession with America's brutal execution of the war in Vietnam. 

  Understanding Malcolm X - Part Two

  What he was and what he could have been

  By Baba Galleh Jallow

  Whatever the true reasons for his brutal murder, there is no doubt that members of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam fired the shots that killed Malcolm X. Of course, Elijah Muhammad had his own personal reasons for wanting Malcolm dead. Vindictive, subtly vicious, possessive and exceedingly jealous and paranoid, Elijah Muhammad must have been persistently haunted by thoughts of what Malcolm could do and what he would do. He was afraid of losing more and more black Muslims to Malcolm and recognized the possibility that his Nation of Islam could collapse and die out if Malcolm had a chance to develop his new organization. These, to be sure, were well-founded fears. 

  But many writers on the subject of Malcolm's break with Elijah Muhammad and his eventual murder seem to have overlooked what seems rather apparent. Is it not plausible that Elijah Muhammad was actually working hand in hand with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI or the CIA? Is it not plausible that Elijah Muhammad, being the hypocritical demagogue and double dealer he was, was actually on the FBI or CIA payroll? That so long as Malcolm was under his control, he assured the FBI and CIA that they had nothing to fear? That in fact, he might have promised the FBI and CIA that he would have Malcolm X effectively neutralized whenever he tried to get out of hand? Why did he forbid any member of his organization from commenting on Kennedy's assassination? Why did he find Malcolm's undeniable truth about Kennedy's assassination so offensive as to "silence" him? Is it not somehow strange that Malcolm X, in spite of all his white bashing during his time with the Nation, had never been arrested by the FBI or the police, even though the nonviolent and accommodating Martin Luther King was? It is evident that as long as Malcolm X was under the control of Elijah Muhammad, he was not considered much of a menace to the White establishment. As soon as he broke free of the Nation's straitjacket, however, he was considered too dangerous to live. Was his killing a fulfillment of a promise, an obligation of sorts Elijah Muhammad owed the FBI, the CIA? Clearly, Malcolm knew that Elijah Muhammad wanted him dead; that the Muslims he himself trained were trying to kill him. Towards the end of his life, however, he was aware that if they were trying to kill him, they were not doing it alone. He confided as much to Alex Haley. In an article in the November 8, 1965 issue of The Nation, quoted in Breitman, Truman Nelson quotes Malcolm X as saying: ".when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure . where the ground rules are not laid down by the society which you live in and which you're struggling against - you can't identify with that, you step back." Also: "You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all the other kinds of isms, but it's hard for you to cuss out that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes." On the surface, Malcolm might have been referring to his opponents and others in the civil rights movement. At a deeper level, however, in his trademark succinct manner, he might have been saying that Elijah Muhammad was on the payroll of the white power structure. He had long resented the Nation's opposition to action, and he had said so several times. But it is clear that Malcolm X knew much more about Elijah Muhammad than he revealed to Alex Haley or anybody else, probably because he felt too decent to do so considering the role Muhammad played in his life. Could Muhammad's fear of eventual exposure have been yet another motivating factor for his murder? It certainly is within the bounds of reasonable possibility.

  Much of the literature on the life of Malcolm X make references to his increasing involvement with African leaders, and in particular, the newly formed organization of African Unity on which his own Organization of Afro-American Unity was modeled. His visits to the continent, his meetings and close ties with some of Africa's most prominent leaders like Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, Guinea's Sekou Touray and Tanzania's Julius Nyerere are well documented. And so are his speeches to the Organization of African Unity summit in Cairo, Egypt in July 1964 and his press statement at the end of that summit in August of the same year. Thus, that Malcolm X was interested and deeply convinced of the feasibility of pooling resources with his black brethren in Africa has been well documented. What seems to be lacking in all this literature is an indepth examination not of what Malcolm wanted Africa to do for African Americans, but what he could have done for the continent.

  Malcolm's exposure to Africa came at a time when the continent was just emerging from colonial rule; when all her leaders were fired with a strong spirit of nationalism and a determination to unite the continent and become a formidable force on the international political arena. Thanks to his reputation as a champion of the black struggle in the United States, among other things, Malcolm X was highly respected by virtually all the leaders of the newly independent African countries. It is reasonable to believe that had Malcolm X lived, the Organization of African Unity would not have lost its initial momentum the way it did. Malcolm X would have done everything in his power to educate the new African leaders about the wily tricks of the white man. He would have shown them the dangers of the endless bickering and selfish hunger for power that eventually made it impossible for Africa to unite as initially envisaged under the aegis of the Organization of African Unity and turned the continent into a cluster of petty dictatorships and welfare states surviving from the crumbs dropping off the white man's table. Malcolm X was intelligent enough to clearly see and point out the advantages of unity and the dangers of disunity and selfishness; and he was respected enough to be listened to. It is clear that Malcolm X could have been an active player in the politics of African unity. If he had been alive when Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966, he would have known that America was directly involved in his removal by the military, just as she had been directly involved in the gruesome murder of Congo's Patrice Lumumba. And he would have worked tirelessly, diligently to prevent the continent from being the Cold War theatre that it unfortunately became. Malcolm could have served as a moderator of talks among Africa's leaders, a mediator in the petty disputes fueled by Cold War interests, and as envisaged in the OAAU's basic aims and objectives, Malcolm would have made it possible for thousands of trained black American technicians to offer their services, at affordable cost, to their African brethren. If Malcolm had lived, America's black people would have gained enough power at all structures and levels of society to become a formidable and effective voice for Africa in the United States. The possibilities for mutual benefit, in short, could have been endless.

  No study of the significance of Malcolm X, however brief, would be complete without considering his relations with Martin Luther King Jr. Like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois before them, Martin and Malcolm were two sides of the same coin. In "Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare", James H. Cone highlights the striking similarities and differences between the two most important black leaders of the 1950s and '60s. One a product of America's southern black middle class, a proponent of nonviolence, advocate of integration for blacks, who had a dream of white children and black children holding hands and playing together as brothers and sisters, oblivious to the skin color problem that plagued America. The other, a product of America's northern ghetto, a proponent of a tooth for a tooth and self-defense, advocate of total separation for blacks, for whom America was a nightmare in which black people - children or elders -could never be accepted as equals by their white peers. Two great African American leaders who met only once in their lives, who had similar goals but totally different approaches for the attainment of those goals and who, despite their radical differences, had the utmost reverence for one another. There is no doubt that while Malcolm frequently lashed out at Martin before his break with the Nation of Islam and his fateful pilgrimage to Mecca, he still had great respect for Dr. King. It is to King's credit that he hardly, if ever, traded unpleasantries with Malcolm. It probably was out of respect for Malcolm that King persistently refused to engage in a debate with him. It is ironic, as Cone points out, that Martin the advocator of peace, brotherly love, integration and nonviolent civil disobedience was the man of action who got attacked by police dogs, subjected to humiliating violence, arrested and thrown in jail while Malcolm, the advocator of a tooth for a tooth (never unprovoked violence as claimed by his opponents and critics), separation, the white blue-eyed devil basher and self-defense proponent was never engaged in any major demonstration and never a victim of physical police brutality. 

  What is intriguing about these two radically different personalities was that toward the end of their lives, they were drawing increasingly toward each other. In the last two years of their lives, each was moving closer to the philosophy of the other. Malcolm after his pilgrimage ceased calling all white people blue-eyed devils and while still rejecting integration, declared his readiness to work with all black people to further the cause of the black man in America. So ardent was his desire for black unity that he publicly apologized for his former harsh remarks and declared his forgiveness of all who had ever said anything bad about him. Martin, after the Watts ghetto riots in Los Angeles on August 11, 1965 and his exposure to the realities of ghetto life after he moved into a slum apartment in South Side Chicago in January 1966, grew increasingly cognizant of the truth of Malcolm's philosophy and position that whites would never willingly accept blacks as equals or treat them with respect. In the last few years of his life, Martin repeatedly expressed his disappointment with white America, his disgust at white people's lack of respect for black people and America's brutal killing of innocent men, women and children in Vietnam. He grew increasingly outspoken over Vietnam and, casting all care to the winds, declared that if he must die, he must die thrusting America's wickedness in her face, a position very similar to Malcolm's. It is reasonable to argue that had they lived into the late sixties or early seventies, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. would have found a way of identifying common ground they could work on. The mere idea of Martin and Malcolm on the same platform must have been exceedingly terrifying to racist America.



















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