Malcolm X (6 page)

Had Malcolm lived, he might have moderated the destructive ideological conflicts that made black militants so vulnerable to the FBI's “dirty tricks.” During the last year of his life, he abandoned a form of black nationalism that limited itself to criticisms of integrationist leaders while failing to offer serious alternatives to civil rights activism. Rather than standing apart from racial reform movements, he associated himself with the most militant elements in those movements. He began to emphasize those aspects of the black nationalist tradition that were consistent with the objectives of those seeking racial reforms within the American political system. Instead of viewing the development of black-controlled institutions as inconsistent with the insistence on equitable government policies with regard to blacks, he saw each as contributing to the other. Although Malcolm's own emphasis on the need for blacks to defend themselves paved the way for the rhetorical excesses of later Black Power militants, his increasing respect for the activists who used nonviolent tactics aggressively might have encouraged other black nationalists to
appreciate the need for a broad range of tactics in a sustained mass struggle. As a respected black nationalist, he may have been able to prevent the intellectual—and sometimes physical warfare —that broke out between “cultural nationalists” and “revolutionary nationalists” and that divided SNCC, CORE, and the Black Panthers. Rather than encouraging verbal warfare between nationalists and integrationists, by the time of his death Malcolm was already urging black nationalists to see themselves as building upon the civil rights organizing of the early sixties.

Although Malcolm undoubtedly would have exerted a major influence in the transformation of African-American politics during the last half of the 1960s, we can only speculate about the direction black politics might have taken if both Malcolm and King had had the opportunity to discuss and refine their political views. King criticized the Black Power slogan as counterproductive, but he refused to condemn Stokely Carmichael and other former civil rights workers who became Black Power proponents. Deeply rooted in African-American religion and closely connected with African-American institutions, King came to recognize the importance of explicit appeals to racial pride, even as he continued to condemn anti-white rhetoric and to reject separatist ideologies. In his last book,
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community
, King defended Black Power “in its broad and positive meaning” as “a call to black people to amass the political and economic strength to achieve their legitimate goals.” He acknowledged the value of the slogan as “a psychological call to manhood.” He condemned the “tendency to ignore the Negro's contribution to American life and strip him of his personhood.” King argued, “To offset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. Any movement for the Negro's freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried. As long as the mind is enslaved the body can never be free.”
⁵⁷
Coretta Scott King has insisted that “Martin firmly agreed with certain aspects of the program that Malcolm X advocated,” particularly the need for racial pride and black access to power. She surmised that “at some point the two would have come closer together and would have been a very
strong force in the total struggle for liberation and self-determination of black people in our society.”
⁵⁸

African-American politics of the period after King's death would have been strengthened by the ideological convergence hinted in Malcolm's last speeches and King's last writings. As the most respected and well-known advocate of black nationalism, Malcolm might have been a strong voice against forms of black nationalism that lead to cultural atavism, cultism, opportunism, or other forms of regressive politics. Similarly, King would certainly have spoken against civil rights leadership that refrained from using aggressive, nonviolent tactics against racial oppression. Both would have pushed the African-American freedom struggle toward greater attention to the problems of the black poor. Both would have stressed the international dimensions of the struggle for social justice. They would have remained controversial leaders and the targets of the repressive agencies of the American state, but their courage and experience as leaders would have made them valuable sources of advice for the black activists who followed them.

Malcolm X's life provides many useful insights for today. The most useful of these is that all ideologies, even black nationalism, can retard as well as foster black unity and mass militancy. During his life, he had the courage to affiliate with a small group outside the African-American mainstream; he also had the courage to break his ties with that group when he determined that more effective political institutions were needed. He argued against allowing the political skepticism of black nationalists to turn into political apathy or pessimism. The present era of African-American politics requires the wisdom of the nationalist tradition as a necessary corrective to civil rights reform efforts that are overly cautious or fail to appreciate African-American cultural distinctiveness. The development of African-American institutions under black leadership is a necessary component of any effort to achieve significant reforms in the United States, but such institutions are strengthened when African Americans are accorded fair treatment as United States citizens.

For too long, African-American politics has been divided by a false dichotomy. Nationalism and integrationism are inadequate
terms to describe the vast range of political insights that have been outgrowths of past struggles. Debates over the use of violence are unproductive without a recognition that all effective political movements combine elements of persuasion and coercion. Malcolm X's intellectual legacy can be fully appreciated only when it is seen as part of the larger legacy of the African-American freedom struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

1
. Although a definitive biographical of Malcolm has not yet been written, useful biographical information can be found in C. Eric Lincoln,
Black Muslims in America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1961); Louis Lomax,
When the Word Is Given
(Cleveland: World Publishing, 1963); Peter Goldman,
Death and Life of Malcolm X
(Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1979); George Breitman,
Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary
(New York: Merit, 1967). Eugene Wolfenstein,
The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) and Bruce Perry,
Malcolm X: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America
(New York: Station Hill, 1991) provided interesting, though controversial, psychological insights.

2
. See, for example, David J. Garrow,
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(New York: William Morrow, 1966); Taylor Branch,
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988); and Clayborne Carson, “Reconstructing the King Legacy: Scholars and National Myths,” in Peter J. Albert and Ronald Hoffman, eds..
We Shall Overcome: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Freedom Struggle
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1990).

3
. Perry's recent controversial study is exceptional in this regard, but the reliability of this work cannot be determined until its sources —particularly transcripts of interviews with Malcolm's associates —are made available to other researchers.

4
. Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiography of Malcolm X
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1965), pp. 4, 5, 7, 10.

5
. Although my conclusions depart from his, the following discussion has been influenced by James H. Cone's insightful comparative study
Martin & Malcolm & America
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1991).

6
. Quotations from Martin Luther King, Jr., “Autobiography of Religious Development,” unpublished papers written at Crozer Theological Seminar, November 1950.

7
. Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiography
, p. 17.

8
. Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiography
, p. 31. Malcolm asserts that he was elected president of his seventh-grade class, but Perry convincing argues that he must have been in the eighth grade at the time. See
Malcolm
, p. 37.

9
. King, “Autobiography.”

10
. C. Eric Lincoln,
The Black Muslims in America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), p. 75. The Nation of Islam's mythology of racial origins generally saw black identity within the context of a broader African-Asian identity. Malcolm's initial image of the Messiah W. D. Fard was not of a black man but of a “light-brown-skinned” person with “an Asiatic cast of countenance.” See Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiography
, p. 186. Malcolm often expressed an identification with Asian nations, particularly nations such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam that were engaged in wars against the United States.

11
. See, for example, Malcolm's discussion of black nationalism in “The Ballot or the Bullet,” in George Breitman,
Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
(New York: Merit, 1965), pp. 23–44.

12
. See William Brink and Louis Harris,
Black and White: A Study of U. S. Racial Attitudes Today
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), pp. 248, 254, 260.

13
. See Director, FBI, to SAC, Albany, March 4, 1968, reprinted in Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall,
The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent
(Boston: South End Press, 1990), pp. 108–111.

14
. David J. Garrow,
The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From ‘Sob' to Memphis
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), pp. 208–209.

15
. See, for example, Hoover to Frank Burke, August 12, 1919, in Robert A. Hill, ed.,
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers
, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California, 1983), pp. 479–480.

16
. See United States Senate, Hearings before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, vol. 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation, testimony of Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr., November 18, 1975, p. 37–39. In 1960, Walter Yeagley, of the Justice Departments Internal Security Division told Hoover that the Nation of Islam should not be designated as a subversive group because its rhetoric was “more calculated and designed to arouse hatred and antipathy against the white race as a race, rather than against the Government. There is evidence of language which speaks of the destruction of America, but is couched more in terms of prophecy and prediction, often referring to the ‘War of Armageddon,” than in terms of incitement to action.” See Exhibit 27 in Hearings, vol. 6, p. 428. See also David J. Garrow,
FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., p
. 154.

17
. FBI, New York, 105–8999, January 28, 1955.

18
. FBI, New York, 105–8999, January 28, 1955.

19
. Bruce Perry, ed.,
Malcolm X: The Last Speeches
(New York: Pathfinder, 1989), p. 123.

20
. Director, FBI, to SAC, Albany, August 25, 1967. According to David J. Garrow, the FBI “played assorted COINTEL tricks on the [Nation of Islam] as early as the late 1950s.” See
FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr
., p. 154.

21
. Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiogruphy, p
. 76.

22
. FBI, January 28, 1955.

23
. FBI, 04/30/58, Part II, section 3.

24
. See FBI, April 30, 1958, in part II, section 2.

25
. Lewis V. Baldwin, “A Reassessment of the Relationship between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.,”
Western Journal of Black Studies
13 (1989); p. 104.

26
. Malcolm X to King, July 21, 1960.

27
. See FBI reports; Clayborne Carson,
In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 103; Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer,
Voices of Freedom, p
. 249.

28
.
Muhammad Speaks
, July 31, 1962, and January 31, 1963.

29
.
Muhammad Speaks
, September 15, 1962.

30
. Perry,
Malcolm
, p. 210; Hampton and Fayer,
Voice of Freedom
, p. 256.

31
. Letter sent to King, Roy Wilkins, Gardner C. Taylor, Adam Clayton Powell, James Farmer, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, Ralph Bunche, Joseph H. Jackson, and James Forman, August 1, 1963, in Malcolm X 1960–1965 folder, NAACP Papers, Group III, Box A227, Library of Congress.

32
. Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiography, p
. 289.

33
. Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiography
, pp. 294. According to Bruce Perry, Malcolm, as early as 1959, “unsuccessfully tried to secure Elijah Muhammad's permission to boycott Harlem stores that refused to hire or promote black employees. The same year, the Messenger made Malcolm apologize for organizing a protest demonstration in nearby Newark. Malcolm kept pressing Mr. Muhammad for permission to engage in demonstrations. The Messenger instructed him not to raise the subject again.” See
Malcolm
, p. 211.

34
. Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiography
, pp. 293.

35
. FBI, November 15, 1963.

36
. Quoted in Thomas Gentile,
March on Washington: August 28, 1963
(Washington: New Day Publications, 1983), p. 162; Malcolm X, with Alex Haley,
Autobiography of Malcolm X, p
. 278.

37
. Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots,” in George Breitman, ed.,
Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
(New York: Merit Publishers, 1965), p. 16.