By Teresa Jefferson
Staff
An African American hero - misaligned, mis
represented and misunderstood for the better
part of his life and death. Malcom Little, Malcom
X, El Hajj Malik el Shabazz. Even the man’s
names are provocative and cause for debate.
The things ofmyths and legends. So many names,
so many identities and so many messages. With
the resurgence of black nationalism, we have all
seen the t-shirts, the posters and the goateed,
spectacled, blacker than thou look-alikes. But
who was this man who even now inspires pride
and self-realization in a some and terror and gu ilt
in others? Where dki he come from, what did he
want and why was he so angry?
Malcom Little was bom in Omaha, Nebraska,
on May 19,1925, the fourth of eight children. H is
mother, who was bom in the British West Indies,
could easily pass for white. Her mother’s rape by
a white colonist accounted Malcom’s reddish
brown skin and hair color. His father, the Rever
end Earl Little, was a Baptist minister and loyal
Marcus Garveyite. Harassed by local klansman
for his outspokeness Rev. Little packed his fam
ily up including newborn Malcom and moved to
Lansing, Michigan. About six years later the
Reverend was mobbed by a group white su-
premists, called the Black Legion, beaten nearly
lifeless and left to die under the wheels of a
streetcar. After his brutal death, the Little family
slowly began to disintegrate, and Maicom’s
mother, overburdened and overworked caring
for the large family on her own, had to be insti
tutionalized.
An angry and rebellious Malcom wound up in
the foster care of a Lansing white couple. Later
Malcom would angrily proclaim that this was the
beginning of his education in “white folks’ways."
He went to an all-white school where he made
top grades, but felt like the school’s unofficial
mascot. He was even voted class president in the
seventh grade. After a short visit with his half-
sister in Boston, Malcom became restless and
impatient with Lansing’s small town racism. He
dropped out of school as soon as he finished the
eighth grade and ran away to live with his sister
in Roxbury, a black ghetto in Boston. He drifted
through a series of menial jobs and then turned
into the street smart hustler, Detroit Red. At one
point during World War II, he was a steerer for a
Harlem madam specializing in kinky sex. The
clientele came almost entirely from the upper
echelons of white society.
Detroit Red, not even 21 years old yet, was
finally an-ested in 1946 for runninga burglary ring
in the Boston area. He might have gotten off
lightly except that he had involved some upper-
class white women, one of whom was his mis
tress. Malcom was sentenced to 10 years in prison
and served seven. While behind bars, he was so
generally hostile; his fellow inmates nicknamed
him Satan.
During visits his brother first exposed him to
the Nation of Islam and Muhammed’s ideology
that white people were a race of devils created for
the torment of the black son and daughters of
Allah. Malcom’s conversion was associated with
a total intellectual transformation. He became a
voracfous reader, so much so that hg damaged
his eyesight. What he learned about European
colonization reaffirmed, in his mind, Elijah
Muhammed’s teaching that the white man was a
devil CTeated to oppress black people of the
world. When Malcom was paroled in 1952, he
went to Detroit where he became an active
member of the Nation of Islam. Soon he became
a minister, and in 1954 was appointed minister
of Temple No. 7 in Harlem, which he made very
successful. In 1958 he married Betty X, a devout
Muslim and nursing student.
Although the Nation of Islam considered the
white man to be the personification of all evil,
the sect opposed in principle any struggle against
racist oppressfon. They instead opted to build a
business empire valued at one time at $70 mil
lion.
Malcom’s fiery message could not be damp
ened. It soon began to attract not only more
followers, but the attention of the white media.
At his peak, he was a regular on talk shows, a
lecturer on the university circuit and a figure in
the diplomatic lounge of the United Nations. He
praised Elijah Muhammed continuously in his
message second only to Allah for his success.
But there was a growing rift between Muham
med and his most popular dicisiple, probably
fueled by envy and rumor. What had been an
almost father-and-son relationship stretched thin
and finally snapped in 1963. Malcom was si
lenced from the ministry for a lengthy time. The
official reason was because of comments he
made after the assassination of John F. Kennedy
as a case of “the chickens coming home to
roost.” He broke from the Nation of Islam in
March 1964, and weeks later he began to study
orthodox Islam and made a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Malcom would later note that this trip changed
him forever. He was for the first lime exposed to
white Muslims. The pilgrimage broadened his
scope, deepened his faith and reduced the
American white man in his eyes from the devil to
a fallible human enemy.
Malcom was just broadening his message to
include a world view when his life was abruptly
cut short by assassins’ bullets. He was killed at a
rally of his fledging Organization of Afro-Ameri
can Unity in New York in February, 1965. Three
black Muslims were arrested, tried and convicted
of his murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Many believe that the three men were innocent,
and the assassination was planned by the CIA or
the FBI and allowed to happen by the New York
City police. Who ever was responsible for his
death did not complete the task. His message of
black pride and self-realization lives on, perhaps
even more powerful today than it was in the
turbulent 1960s. It grows every day reaching
more and more people and has increasingly
become a part of our popular culture. It is a voice
so strong; it cannot be silenced. His message
goes beyond a dream. It is a reality that must be
reckoned with.
Teresa Jefferson is s senior Journalism
major from Fayetteville, NC
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