Malcolm X

by Clayborne Carson

  We spent the rest of that day and evening as well as a good part of the following day talking with Malcolm about the nature of each of our trips. At that point [Malcolm] had been to eleven countries, talking with eleven heads of state and had addressed the parliaments in the majority of these countries. Although he was very tired he planned to visit five more countries. He felt that the presence of SNCC in Africa was very important and that this was a significant and crucial aspect of the “human rights struggle” that the American civil rights groups had too long neglected. He pointed out (and our experience bears him correct) that the African leaders and people are strongly behind the Freedom Movement in this country; that they are willing to do all they can to support, encourage and sustain the Movement, but they will not tolerate factionalism and support particular groups or organizations within the Movement as a whole. It was with this in mind that he formed his Organization of Afro-American Unity.

  Discussion also centered around Malcolm’s proposed plan to bring the case of the Afro-American before the General Assembly of the United Nations and hold the United States in violation of the Human Rights Charter. The question was at that time (and ultimately was evident) that support from the civil rights voices in this country was not forthcoming and the American black community was too plinted [sic] to attempt such a move without looking like [complete] asses and embarrassing [our] most valuable allies. We departed with Malcolm giving us some contacts and the hope that there would be greater communication between the [OAAU] and SNCC.45

  On November 24, 1964, Malcolm returned to the United States with renewed determination to establish continuing contacts with activists in SNCC and other groups. At a November 29 OAAU rally at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm agreed with local activist Jesse Gray’s suggestion that mercenaries should be sent to Mississippi rather than to the Congo. He continued to emphasize the need to link the African-American freedom struggle with freedom struggles throughout the world. “You waste your time when you talk to this man, just you and him.”46 On December 20, Fannie Lou Hamer, a SNCC worker and former congressional candidate of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) shared a Harlem platform with Malcolm, who suggested that his role in the black struggle was to strengthen the hand of nonviolent groups by demonstrating to whites that more violent alternatives existed. “We need a Mau Mau,” he announced. “If they don’t want to deal with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, then we’ll give them something else to deal with. If they don’t want to deal with the Student Nonviolent Committee, then we have to give them an alternative.”47 After hearing Hamer speak, Malcolm immediately invited her and the SNCC Freedom Singers to be honored guests at an OAAU meeting, where he clarified his position regarding civil rights. Despite having once doubted whether African Americans were United States citizens, he argued that blacks should register to vote as independents. After Hamer spoke, Malcolm told his followers, “I want Mrs. Hamer to know that anything we can do to help them in Mississippi, we’re at their disposal.” At the end of December, Malcolm met with a SNCC-sponsored group of youngsters from McComb, Mississippi, and told them, “we here in the Organization of Afro-American Unity are with the struggle in Mississippi one thousand per cent. We’re with the efforts to register our people in Mississippi to vote one thousand per cent. But we do not go along with anybody telling us to help nonviolently.”48

  Early in 1965, Malcolm met with a group of civil rights leaders in a gathering organized by Juanita Poitier, the wife of actor Sidney Poitier. Labor leader A. Philip Randolph, Whitney Young of the Urban League, Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women, and actor Ossie Davis were among those who attended. Davis recalled that the group “spent that day discussing Malcolm’s philosophy, the mistakes he made, what he wanted to do now, and how he could get on board the people’s struggle that was taking place.”49

  Malcolm’s most direct involvement in the Southern black struggle occurred a few weeks before his death. On Wednesday evening, February 3, 1965, he addressed several thousand Tuskegee Institute students, and the following Thursday morning, he spoke to student activists at Brown’s Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Alabama. SCLC staff member Andrew Young recalled that, in order to lessen its impact on the audience, Malcolm’s talk was “sandwiched between” those of two other SCLC staffers, James Bevel and Fred Shuttlesworth. Coretta Scott King, who arrived at the Chapel shortly after Malcolm’s speech, recalled that Young sought her help in steering the students back toward nonviolence. She later wrote that Malcolm reassured her that, by coming to Selma, he intended to assist her husband’s work, commenting, “If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.”50 An FBI report of the speech noted that Malcolm called upon President Johnson to “order a full scale investigation of the Ku Klux Klan” but that he did not threaten action by his followers. The FBI report commented:

  [Malcolm] further stated that no one at the church, or any Negro in Selma involved in the demonstrations, had done nothing they would not have done if he had never appeared in Selma. He apparently made this statement due to press statements that his presence in Selma had embarrassed other civil rights leaders.51

  Malcolm was unsuccessful in his attempt to meet with King while in Selma, but such a meeting with King undoubtedly would have occurred if Malcolm had lived.

  Shortly after leaving Selma, Malcolm embarked on his final foreign visit. On February 8, he addressed the First Congress of the Council of African Organizations. When he flew to Paris to deliver another talk, French authorities barred his entry, calling him an “undesirable” likely to “trouble the public order.” Forced to return to London after a few hours of questioning in the Orly Airport transit lounge, Malcolm reacted to the French action in a conversation with Afro-Cuban nationalist Carlos Moore. “I was surprised . . . since I thought if there was any country in Europe that was liberal in its approach to things, France was it, so I was shocked when I got there and couldn’t land.” He blamed the American government, suggesting that France had “become a satellite of Washington, D. C.”52

  Soon after his return to the United States, Malcolm’s house was firebombed. He attributed the act to his enemies in the Nation of Islam. While the identity of the arsonist was never determined, Malcolm’s public criticisms of Elijah Muhammad had unquestionably made him a target for Muslim zealots. During December, Fruit of Islam Captain Raymond Sharrieff had sent an open telegram to Malcolm officially warning him that “the Nation of Islam shall no longer tolerate your scandalizing the name of our leader and teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, regardless of where such scandalizing has been.”53 Minister Louis X (later Louis Farrakkan), once Malcolm’s protégé, also attacked his former friend in strong terms. “IS Malcolm bold enough to return and face the music ... ? Would he like to face Mr. Muhammad?” Louis X wrote in Muhammad Speaks. Describing Malcolm as “the target of the dissatisfaction of both his own followers (which are very few) and the followers of Muhammad,” Louis X condemned Malcolm for his efforts to establish ties with civil rights groups:

  He had blasted the white man and the NAACP for 9 or 10 years. He had preached the truth, as revealed to Muhammad by Allah: that the white race was a race of devils. . . . Malcolm now pleads to the white man that he had learned they were not devils, by seeing so-called white Muslims in Mecca. . . .

  Malcolm was doomed, according to the article. “The die is set, and Malcolm shall not escape, especially after such evil, foolish talk about his benefactor (Elijah Muhammad). . . . Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death, and would have met with death if it had not been for Muhammad’s confidence in Allah for victory over the enemies.”54

  Malcolm’s assassination on February 21, 1965, ended his efforts to establish an alliance between his nationalist followers and the militant offspring of the civil rights movement. Deprived of Malcolm’s leadership, African-American politics remained divided into hostile, warring camps. After Malcolm’s death, the divi
sions were evident even among militant blacks who saw themselves as his ideological descendants. On one side were nationalists who resolutely refused to participate in efforts to achieve black advancement through struggle within the American political system. On the other were radical activists who sought to mobilize African-Americans for confrontational politics while placing little emphasis on the cultural and psychological transformation that would foster effective black political action.

  4. Malcolm’s Ambiguous Political Legacy

  Assassinated while still at an early stage of his development as an independent political leader, Malcolm X became, after his death, a historical influence on the black struggles. Deprived of the opportunity to continue refining his ideas, he left a body of thought, mostly in the form of speeches, to be developed and reinterpreted by others. His death came on the eve of a turbulent era of African-American politics that made his words prophetic. During 1966 and 1967, the debate over the Black Power slogan brought many of his still controversial ideas into the black political mainstream. Nevertheless, Malcolm’s ideological descendants disputed the nature of his political legacy and selectively borrowed from it. “Cultural nationalists” saw the “Old Malcolm”— before his break with the Nation of Islam—as their spiritual mentor, while “revolutionary nationalists” were inspired by the “New Malcolm” of 1964 and 1965. Malcolm, himself, was unable to offer guidance to the black activists who transformed his ideas into Black Power politics. The contradictory tendencies in Malcolm’s life paralleled the bitter and sometimes deadly intrablack conflicts of the late 1960s. Indeed, Malcolm became one of the first victims of those internecine battles.

  The FBI’s interest in Malcolm did not end with his death. Instead, the Bureau’s efforts to combat the new forms of racial militancy became more ruthless in the post-Malcolm era. Aware of the threat that Malcolm might have posed if he had succeeded in unifying the black militant community, the FBI attempted to exacerbate conflicts among the various factions that identified themselves with Malcolm’s ideas. The FBI’s COINTELPRO against so-called “black nationalist-hate groups,” which had begun in August 1967, sought to forestall a black nationalist coalition that would lead to “a true black revolution.” In the view of FBI leaders, the danger posed by Malcolm X was not simply that he was a black nationalist but that he had been a potential “‘messiah’ who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Malcolm clearly would have been targeted for COINTELPRO’s “dirty tricks” if he had not been assassinated. The FBI’s treatment of black nationalists became more hostile as they followed Malcolm’s lead in abandoning separatist strategies that did not involve confrontations with white authorities.55

  By the end of the 1960s, the federal government had developed a policy toward black militancy that clearly distinguished between groups and leaders that were considered potential threats and those that were not. The criterion for inclusion on the list of COINTELPRO targets was not advocacy of racial separatism; black political groups and leaders were treated as worthy of aggressive counterintelligence projects according to the extent to which they sought to undermine capitalism and to mobilize mass confrontations with government authorities. Thus, despite his integrationist sentiments, King remained a major target of the FBI until his death. Conversely, the FBI did not target the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which, despite the black separatist leadership of Roy Innis, established ties with the Nixon administration.

  By associating himself with the upsurge in nonnationalist activism of the 1963–1965 period, Malcolm helped to transform African-American nationalism into something it had not been since the Garvey era—that is, a movement that was taken seriously as a threat by the United States government. Although the FBI had long been interested in the Nation of Islam, only after Malcolm’s break with the group did the FBI shift the focus of its covert programs from anticommunism to efforts to undermine black nationalist militancy. The reasons for this shift included both the rise of urban racial violence and the increasing involvement of nationalists in mass activism. By 1967, the Bureau had recruited an army of more than three thousand informants in black communities with BLACKPRO and other informant programs. When the counterintelligence program was revised, during August 1967, to target so-called “Black Nationalist-Hate Groups,” the Nation of Islam was included among the groups to receive the FBI’s “intensified attention.” Yet, according to Kenneth O’Reilly’s comprehensive study of the FBI’s efforts against black militancy, during the 1967–1968 period most local offices no longer considered the Nation of Islam a major threat.56

  Indeed, in March 1968, when FBI field offices were directed to identify targets for new COINTELPRO efforts, the emphasis was on potential rather than existing threats posed by black nationalist leaders and organizations. A memorandum written to W. C. Sullivan stressed the need to “prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups.” SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael was identified as a militant with “the necessary charisma” to become the “messiah” who might have unified the “militant black nationalist movement.” Ultimately, the California-based Black Panther Party became the primary target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO projects. The Panthers, with their emphasis on armed self-defense and militant (though not anti-white) rhetoric, were clearly the political offspring of Malcolm’s last years.

  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 argu
ed, “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.