Twenty years ago this month, on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated. Like the re-election of Ronald Reagan, the remembrance of Malcolm X is sure to inspire drastically different responses among blacks and whites in the United States. White America's image of Malcolm X during his lifetime, and the one that lingers today, was of a fanatical Black Muslim preacher of anti-white hatred. But to most of black America Malcolm is remembered as a courageous and forceful leader who told the unvarnished truth about American racism with a skill and honesty rarely seen before or since.
As is so often the case, it is the predominant white perception of Malcolm X, formed by the establishment media, that is skewed and distorted. Fortunately the true legacy of Malcolm X has been preserved in his autobiography, which was published shortly after his death. In that book we find a man who struggled against the highest of odds to claim simple human dignity first for himself and later for his people. He was an angry man; perhaps, as Time magazine put it, “the angriest Negro in America.” But his anger was justified, and often righteous. And as all who read his book discover, he was also a person of profound insight, intelligence, wit, compassion, and faith.
It is true that Malcolm X first came to national prominence as a preacher in Elijah Muhammad's black separatist Nation of Islam, which at that time held bizarre quasi-religious doctrines about the superiority of the black race. But in the last two years of his life, Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and denounced its racial teachings. This change of heart was the result of Malcolm's religious experience during his Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.
As he recounted it, Malcolm found himself surrounded in Mecca by fellow Muslims from all over the world and of every possible skin color. For the first time in his life, he was in a situation where race didn't matter — it faded into irrelevance before the pilgrims' common devotion to Allah. Malcolm X then knew that all human beings are children of the One Creator and capable of redemption.
Christians could certainly question the sufficiency of Malcolm's conversion, but its authenticity was clearly demonstrated in his actions. From that day on, he ceased all blanket indictments of white people, making an effort to reach out to sympathetic whites whom he previously might have scorned. However, he was as scathing as ever in his condemnation of the white racism that dominated the United States and the Western world.
The experience at Mecca represented the apex of a long journey for the former Malcolm Little. The journey had begun in his native Lansing, Michigan, where his father, a Baptist preacher, was brutally killed by Ku Klux Klansmen. Malcolm's mother suffered a mental breakdown under the strain of raising the family alone, and the children were shuffled amongst various relatives and foster homes. Malcolm eventually ended up as a teenager staying with an aunt in Boston. There he began his long descent into the street life of drugs and crime that ended at age 21 with a 10-year prison sentence for burglary.
While in prison Malcolm Little began to rebuild his life. He read voraciously in every field of study. He encountered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, the self-proclaimed Messenger of Allah to the blacks of North America. In the Nation of Islam, Malcolm found an anchor for his life and a much-needed affirmation of blackness in a society where dark skin was considered the worst possible social stigma.
When Malcolm Little emerged from prison, he dropped the slave master's surname and became Malcolm X, in keeping with Nation of Islam custom. He also quickly became Elijah Muhammad's most charismatic and effective minister, traveling the breadth of the country speaking for the Nation at colleges and street rallies as well as in the national media.
After discovering what he considered true Islam, Malcolm founded his own orthodox Sunni mosque, and his own secular black political group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Through this organization Malcolm hoped to establish himself in the mainstream of Afro-American leadership, begin building an independent black political and economic power base in the United States, link the Afro-American struggle to other Third World anti-colonial movements, and eventually take black America's case before the United Nations.
BUT MALCOLM WAS shot to death before any of his big plans got off the ground. It is generally believed that Malcolm X was killed by agents of Elijah Muhammad. The break between the two men had not been a congenial one. But in the final weeks of his life, Malcolm had become convinced that the intensifying pattern of threats and harassment against him had to be coming from a source bigger and more powerful than the Nation of Islam.
The great tragedy of Malcolm's life, like that of Martin Luther King Jr.'s, is that he was struck down just as he was discovering a new breadth of vision for himself and his people. But we don't remember Malcolm X only because of the crushed promise of his last months.
In his short life he made a lasting contribution to U.S. society and to the ongoing movement for a more just world. By being completely fearless about whose toes he might step on, Malcolm permanently raised the level of consciousness and open discussion about the pervasiveness of white racism in American life. He insisted that what was then commonly called the “Negro problem” was in fact a white problem, one that could only be solved when whites resolved to root out the racism in their own communities. That aspect of Malcolm's legacy is today more relevant than ever as racism, both public and private, is on the upsurge.
Malcolm's emphasis on the global nature of racism and colonialism and his efforts to link the Afro-American struggle to that of other Third World peoples paved the way for campaigns like the one currently being led by the black community against U.S. support for apartheid. And perhaps more important, Malcolm X made millions of Afro-Americans proud of being black. Where there had been victimization and despair, he spread empowerment and hope.
In brief — to use biblical language that, even as a Muslim, Malcolm X would probably have approved — he exalted the lowly and brought down the mighty. And he sought in his own way to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord when hatred and oppression would be banished from the earth.
Danny Collum was an associate editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.
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