Malcolm X, with a gift for bitter eloquence

Ilyasa Shabazz was two years old when her father died Malcolm X (Malcolm X) killed at the beginning of his speech to a gathering of 400 supporters of the Organization of African-American Unity at Audubon Hall (Audubon Theatre and Ballroom), in the Washington Heights neighborhood in upper Manhattan. It was February 21, 1965.

Almost six decades later, on Friday November 16, 2024, she and other family members filed a lawsuit against the FBI, the CIA and the New York City Police Department (NIPD) seeking $100 million in damages for the pain they suffered. They claim that US law enforcement agencies knew about the plot, that they did not prevent the murder.

“We believe they all conspired to kill Malcolm X. This cover-up has gone on for decades...,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in announcing the lawsuit at the Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center in New York, where the preacher Malcolm X was assassinated. racial pride and black nationalism in the early sixties.

The charismatic Malcolm X expressed the pent-up anger, frustration and bitterness of African Americans from 1955 to 1965. The profile of this critic of American society is reflected in the title of Mike Wallace's 1959 documentary on the Nation of Islam. Hate caused by hate.

THE CHILDHOOD OF MALCOLM STEWART THE LITTLE

99 years ago, on May 19, 1925, in Nebraska, America, Malcolm Stewart Little was born as the fourth of eight children of a black family whose members were followers of the early black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey and were targeted by the racist group Ku Klux Klan. Their home burned down in 1929. Two years later, when Malcolm Little was six, his father Earl Little, a Baptist minister, died after being hit by a streetcar under unclear circumstances.

After his father was killed, Malcolm moved to Lansing, Michigan. The family was so poor that Malcolm's mother, Louise Little, cooked dandelion greens off the street to feed the children. The burden proved too great. In 1938, Louise Little was committed to a state mental hospital, and his siblings were sent to live with extended family members. And Malcolm was placed in a home for juveniles in Mason, Michigan until 1941. As a 15-year-old, he moved from there to the Roxbury section of Boston to live with Ella, his older half-sister from his father's first marriage.

Malcolm excelled in school, but after a white teacher told him he should become a carpenter and not a lawyer, he lost interest and soon ended his formal education.

During his teenage years, he survived on the streets, selling stolen goods and dealing drugs. He wore a flashy suit and, because of the reddish tint in his hair, became known as "Detroit Red", a gang leader in Roxbury and Harlem, New York.

He was arrested at the beginning of 1946 and charged with grand larceny, i.e. possession of stolen goods. He was sentenced to eight to ten years in prison.

CONVERSION IN PRISON

While in prison from 1946 to 1952, under the influence of his brother Reginald, who was also incarcerated in Norfolk Colony, Massachusetts, Malcolm turned to the teachings of imprisoned Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. He began a correspondence with him and spent long hours reading books in the prison library…

He joined the Nation of Islam, which since the 1930s combined elements of traditional Islam with ideas of racial unity in its teachings and maintained a strict code of discipline among its members.

Islam, brought to the United States by enslaved African Muslims, spread in the early 20th century under the influence of the unorthodox Ahmadiyya sect, founded by the Indian religious leader Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (ca. 1839–1908) and Sheikh Ahmed Faisal (1891–1980), the leader of the movement black muslims born in morocco.

In Newark, New Jersey, there had been a Maori Science Temple since 1913 associated with the merchant Wallace D. Fard (or Wali Fard Muhammad), who appeared in the black ghetto of Detroit, Michigan on July 4, 1930, and a year later founded the Nation of Islam temple there. When that temple was closed in 1934, the leadership was established by Elijah Poole, whose religious name was Elijah Muhammad (Elijah Muhammad). He was born in 1897 in rural Georgia, which, like Malcolm's father Earl, he left to flee southern racism and head north. He preached for eighteen hours a day, attracting blacks with the message that Islam gave them the opportunity to feel proud.

His teachings linked the basic tenets of Islam - submission to Allah, family life, and he linked traditional Islamic behavioral practices with the myth that Allah had allowed the white devil race to retain power for 6.000 years, but that the time of their rule expired in 1914.

According to this myth, the 20th century was supposed to be a time of black affirmation and the creation of a separate black nation that would separate itself from the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Elijah encouraged his followers to drop their "slave" names and use Muslim or - in most cases - "X", which means they don't know their real names because their family names come from white slave owners.

After his release in 1952, Malcolm moved to Detroit and joined the Nation of Islam during its period of greatest growth and influence, replacing his surname "Mali" with "X".

Suppressed during World War II because its followers refused military service, the Nation of Islam had four temples and only 1952 members in 400, much to the chagrin of the charismatic Malcolm. With enormous energy (he usually slept only four hours a night), he traveled 30.000 miles along the East Coast in a car in six months as a preacher. He preached on the streets of Harlem and spoke at the great universities of Harvard and Oxford. He protested police brutality in Harlem and Los Angeles. He helped organize Nation of Islam temples in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and cities in the South. He founded the newspaper "Muhammad Speaks", which he printed in the basement of his house and required each male member of the Nation of Islam to sell a certain number of newspapers on the street in order to recruit new members and raise funds.

IF HE RAISES A HAND ON YOU, SEND HIM TO THE CEMETERY

Malcolm X acted at a time when, after the boycott in Alabama in 1955, the issue of racial equality and segregation was decisively raised in America. Although slavery was abolished (or ended) in England in 1833, and in America in 1865, under segregation laws introduced by the Democratic Party in 1877, housing, hospitals, schools, transportation, and workplaces were segregated based on the color of one's skin. Black children were not allowed to go to the same schools as white children, blacks had to sit separately on buses. Black people were not even allowed to drink from the same cups as white people.

In contrast to the strategy of nonviolence, civil disobedience and redemptive suffering and integration as a response to segregation, preached by the Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X encouraged his followers to defend themselves by any means necessary.

"There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be calm, be kind, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone raises a hand against you, send him to the cemetery", he said in November 1963 in Detroit.

He did not agree with Martin Luther King Jr.'s idea of ​​an America where blacks and whites would live together. He argued that it was more than the civil right to sit in a restaurant or even to vote - the most important issues in his opinion were: black identity, integrity and independence, a separate black nation.

MALCOLM X AND CASSIUS CLAY

Malcolm X demanded that the Nation of Islam become more active in widespread civil rights protests instead of being a mere critic on the sidelines, which led to a rift between him and Elijah Muhammad in 1963, and was one of the reasons for his departure from the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X called the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 "a case of chickens coming home to roost", Elijah Muhammad ordered him to observe a period of silence from 90 days.

During the period of enforced silence, Malcolm X stayed at the farm of boxer Cassius Clay, an Olympic champion, with whom he was friends. At the time, Cassius Clay was preparing for a historic match with heavyweight Sonny Liston in 1964, whom he defeated by knockout in the sixth round to become world champion. In the meantime, he converted to Islam, changed his name to Muhammad Ali, refused to go to war in Vietnam, because of which he was stripped of his title, which he would later win again in epic matches...

At the time, Malcolm X was further disappointed to learn that of Elijah Muhammad's six personal secretaries who gave birth, two filed paternity suits against him. He left the Nation of Islam in March 1964.

During his pilgrimage to Mecca that year, he underwent a second conversion and embraced Sunni Islam, adopting the Muslim name al-Hajj Malik al-Shabaz.

After several trips to the Middle East and Africa, he continued to denounce racism in America, but saw the possibility of unity with the white Muslims he met abroad.

During the next two visits to Africa in 1964, he addressed the "Organization of African Unity" (African Union since 2002), which promoted international cooperation and economic development.

In 1965, he founded the secular "Organization of Afro-American Unity" to internationalize the plight of black Americans.

"We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as people," he said in an interview in August 1964, at a time when he renounced his separatist beliefs and the Nation of Islam.

Then he reconciled with Martin Luther King Jr., whom he had previously attacked.

During those turbulent years in the US, however, someone's long arm reached out to activists and tribunes on both the radical and pacifist sides of the human rights movement. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, at 18.01:306 p.m., while standing on the balcony of room XNUMX on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the preacher of the nonviolent struggle for racial integration, Martin Luther King, was shot and killed by a white man with multiple convictions who wanted to move to racist Rhodesia James Earl Ray.

According to Reverend Jesse Jackson's testimony, it happened when Martin Luther told musician Ben Branch to make sure he played well at the next march. Take my hand, Precision lord.

photo: herman hiller

PANDEMONIUM IN THE AUDUBON DANCE HALL

Malcolm X was assassinated three years before Martin Luther King Jr.

When he addressed a crowd of 21 at the Audubon Ballroom in upper Manhattan's Washington Heights on February 1965, 400, the last few rows heard a shout: "Get your hand out of my pocket, nigger!"

"Calm down, brothers," were Malcolm's last words.

According to the report of the "New York Times", dated February 22, 1965, "the bearded extremist said only a few words of greeting when the shooting rang out around three in the afternoon. Pandemonium broke out in the Audubon Hall”. Men, women and children ducked under tables and lay on the floor, and the pregnant wife of 39-year-old Malcolm X and her four daughters found shelter under chairs in the front row.

Police Capt. Paul Glazer told the New York Times that Malcolm was killed by 22-year-old Thomas Hagan using a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun with a shortened barrel and stock.

As Hagan fired at Malcolm, Reuben Francis of Brioinks, a follower of Malcolm, pulled out a .45 caliber automatic pistol and shot Hagan in the left thigh. He was charged with felonious assault and violating the Sullivan Act, which prohibits the unlicensed carrying of small, concealable weapons in New York.

The police rescued the wounded and beaten Hagan, whose leg someone had broken with a strong blow with the sole of his foot, and took him to the prison ward of Bevi Hospital, where he was guarded by a dozen policemen.

A little before midnight that day, he was accused of murder, according to a New York Times report at the time. FBI records show that Hagan, whose real name is Talmadge Heyer, was arrested on Nov. 7, 1963, for possession of stolen property.

According to other reports, at the moment when Malcolm fell backwards after being hit by a shotgun, two black men who had started the commotion came up and shot him - one with a .045 revolver and the other with a semi-automatic luger. Throwing down their weapons, they fled through the panicked crowd.

A preliminary autopsy revealed that Malcolm died of "multiple gunshot wounds." Bullets of two different calibers, as well as shotgun shells, were taken from his body.

For the murder of Malcolm X, three members of the Nation of Islam were arrested: the aforementioned Thomas Hagan (also called Talmadge Heyer, later known as Mujahid Abdul Halim), Norman 3 X Butler (Muhammad Aziz) and Thomas 15 X Johnson (Khalil Islam).

During the 1966 trial, Hagan confessed to the crime and testified under oath that Islam and Aziz were innocent, but did not name the other accomplices. Hagan was sentenced to life imprisonment, and the other two to 20 years in prison.

Doubts have followed the case for years. On November 18, 2021, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. dropped the indictment against Muhammad Aziz, who had since been paroled in 1985 at the age of 83. Cyrus Vance also dropped the prosecution of Khalil Islam, who was acquitted in 1987. Until his death in August 2009, he maintained his innocence.

Also released on parole in 2010 was Hagan (alias Hayer) who, like Aziz, rejected the teachings of the Nation of Islam while in prison, converted to Sunni Islam and took the name Mujahid Halim.

SETTLEMENT OR SETTLEMENT

Less than two hours after the murder of Malcolm on February 21, 1965, at five in the afternoon, Sanford Garelick, assistant inspector general of the New York police, said that "this appears to be the result of a long-standing feud between the followers of Elijah Muhammad and the people who broke away from him, headed by Malcolm X”.

The New York Times reported at the time that "the slim, red-haired, six-foot-tall Malcolm, with a gift for bitter eloquence against what he saw as white exploitation of blacks, broke in March 1964 with a black Muslim movement called the Nation of Islam, which Elijah Muhammed was at the head".

Before the murder, Malcolm received death threats. In February 1965, a bomb was thrown at his small brick house in East Elmhurst, Queens. A certain James X, however, suggested to the "New York Times" that Malcolm threw the firebombs himself to get publicity.

Percy Sutton, Malcolm's lawyer, said that Malcolm X started carrying a gun because he feared for his life and that he told police on the phone that he was doing so even though he did not have a permit.

Assistant Chief Inspector Taylor, however, said Malcolm was not armed when he was killed. And police Capt. Glaser claimed that Malcolm had been offered police protection on seven different occasions since January 27, but had refused the guards each time.

Later, many details were also mentioned about Malcolm X being bugged; that two of his bodyguards were arrested; that there were only two security guards in the hall – and one undercover FBI agent who did not help prevent the murder; that the FBI recorded a conversation in which Elijah Muhammad tells someone to rip Malcolm X's head off when he meets him, etc. etc.

In the last decade of Elijah Muhammad's life, there was more violence in the Nation of Islam movement. In 1973, for example, members of the Nation attacked the Hanafi Muslim Center in Washington, D.C., founded by Hamas Abdul Khalis, a former leader of the Nation, and killed his children, leaving his wife paralyzed.

After the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975, control of the Nation of Islam was assumed by his son Wallis (later to take the name Warit Din Muhammad). He gradually rejected the earlier racial and nationalist doctrine and renamed the Nation of Islam to the World Community of Islam in the West, and in 1978 to the American Muslim Mission, which was dissolved in 1985 with his formal resignation.

LONG ECHOES

Malcolm X's powerful speeches, which frightened much of white America and excited many black Americans, impressed friends and foes alike and reverberated long after his death. Listening to tapes of his speeches inspired the formation of the organization of black soldiers United Against the War in Vietnam in 1969.

Speaking about the fact that blacks should focus on the improvement of their own communities, and not strive for integration, he also contributed to the profiling of the black movement "Black Power", whose activists in the 1960s and 1970s focused them on the struggle against centuries of humiliation, demonstrated racial pride and black self-reliance, celebrated black history and culture, rejected racism and imperialism worldwide, and later emphasized Pan-Africanism, the unity of all people of African origin...

Writer and human rights activist Julius Lester believes that Malcolm X more than any other person was responsible for the growing consciousness and new militancy of black people.