50 Years After His Death, Malcolm X's Work Is Unfinished

50 years after his death, Malcolm Xs work is
unfinished
Malcolm X on March 5, 1964 (Eddie Adams/AP)
By Krissah Thompson February 19
After a life filled with transformation, Malcolm X found himself in February 1965 in
the throes of yet another.
He had been a fringe figure, known mostly to a small circle of black Muslims and
big-city sophisticates, but now he was branching out seeking allies at home and
abroad to help him become a part of the Southern civil rights movement. He had
plans to take the cause to the United Nations, charging the U.S. government with
failure to protect its black citizens from racist white terrorism.
He was fashioning himself as an internationalist. A political player.

It was a transformation thwarted. History ended up casting Malcolm X as radical
foil to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the nonviolent martyr. He was boiled down
to his aphorisms: By any means necessary. The ballot or the bullet.
But 50 years after he was gunned down by an assassin in Harlems Audubon
Ballroom, Malcolm X is getting another look. His issues particularly those that
occupied the last year of his life and his tactics speak to the current conversation.
Object 1
Police brutality? Malcolm would have been on point amid the protests in Ferguson,
Mo., and Staten Island. Whenever something happens, 20 police cars swarm on
one neighborhood, Malcolm told an interviewerduring his crusade against anti-crime
bills. This force ... creates a spirit of resentment in every Negro. They think they
are living in a police state and they become hostile toward the policeman.
Voting rights? Once again in the spotlight, as activists challenge photo ID laws that
they say hinder minority voters, and definitely a preoccupation for Malcolm. When
white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own,
it is left up to them to determine whos going to sit in the White House and whos
going to be in the doghouse, he said in 1964.
So now scholars are holding forums on Malcolms legacy. His associates are
drawing attention to the work he left unfinished. The Oscar-nominated film
Selma features a cameo from Malcolm, dramatizing his efforts to reach out.
[ Why Malcolm Xs image as a separatist lives on, 50 years after his death]
He was on a committed campaign to internationalize the movement, recalled
Peter Bailey, who worked for the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), the
political group that Malcolm founded less than a year before his death. Malcolm
changed the conversation about the civil rights movement and the way activists
think of themselves in ways that resonate today
We called ourselves a human rights organization, not a civil rights organization,
Bailey added, because human rights is an international term.

Putting
Malcolm X during a rally of African American

Muslims in a Washington. (Richard
Saunders/Getty Images)
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X differences aside
Todays civil rights movement has struggled
smile for photographers in Washington on
March 26, 1964. (Henry Griffin/AP)
with public rifts younger protesters chafing
against older activists over tactics. You can imagine Malcolm shaking his head and
sighing.
Once the rebel, toward the end of his life he was seeking allies.
He had differences with King and other black leaders, but he wanted those
differences to remain in the closet, Malcolm said in 1964. When we come out in
front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the
man.
It was a dramatic shift. Malcolm had more than once implied that nonviolence was
cowardly. He suggested that the peaceful Southern protesters should meet the
violence of white lawmen with self-defense. But he respected the grass-roots
sentiment there and over time, his respect for King increased.
[ Martin Luther King, Jr.s life revisited: 40 years after death ]
Theyve been compared so often, but the men met only once, a grip-and-grin for
cameras as they passed in a Capitol Hill hallway in March 1964 after observing a
filibuster over the proposed Civil Rights Act.
Malcolm was pushed out awkwardly by an associate from behind a pillar, said
Garrett Felber, a researcher who worked with the scholar Manning Marable on his
Pulitzer Prize-winning Malcolm X biography. Standing in front of King, whom he

had described as an Uncle Tom, Malcolm shook hands with King before the press.
In later years, their commonalities were clear.
Malcolm wanted to be an inspirational force offering a different perspective than
King, said Clayborne Carson, a Stanford University historian who was selected by
Coretta Scott King to edit her husbands papers. Both of them were
internationalists. Both agreed that the African American struggle had to join ties
with the struggle against colonialism and that they both saw the civil rights struggle
as the struggle for human rights.
Malcolm saw reason for them to work together. He wrote letters to King. He began
to invite members of the Student-Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to Harlem to
speak to his followers. Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi voting rights activist,
came, too.
Three weeks before he was killed, students at the Tuskegee Institute invited him to
speak there, and he went to Selma, Ala., a couple of days later.
It was an overture, said Peniel Joseph, professor of history at Tufts University and
the author of Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power.
He gave a speech and he told the press that Dr. King is right. He was presenting
himself as an alternative and trying to help the movement.
Local authorities wouldnt allow Malcolm to meet with King, who was in jail, but
Malcolm did have a conversation that afternoon with Coretta Scott King.
She was nervous, not knowing what to expect.
He leaned over and said to me, Mrs. King, I want you to tell your husband that I
had planned to visit him in jail here in Selma but I won't be able to do it now. ... I
didnt come to Selma to make his job more difficult, but I thought that if the white
people understood what the alternative was that they would be more inclined to
listen to your husband, she recalled in the Eyes on the Prize documentary
series.
She thanked him, she said and later wondered how much he could have achieved
had he lived.
Object 2
n 1959, journalist Mike Wallace hosted a series called "The Hate That Hate Produced,"
featuring a young Nation of Islam minister named Malcolm X. Here are two powerful
clips. (News Beat/PBS)
Determination
By late February 1965, Malcolm was back in Harlem. He was planning for the
future and thought he could do that by building up his organization.
He was an organizer, Bailey said. He believed in structure.
Malcolm was under threat after leaving the Nation of Islam and being surveilled by
law enforcement, but he was determined to keep working, his nephew Rodnell
Collins said.
He did not want his children to see their father not fighting for a cause, said
Collins, who was 20 when his uncle was killed. He believed in dying with your
boots on, fighting for a cause.
In a meeting with followers, Malcolm put to a vote whether he should speak at an

upcoming event, recalled Lez Edmond, a friend who urged him to stay in the
background for a while.
The other side prevailed, said Edmond, an associate professor at St. Johns
University. He put his arm around me and said, Brother, you seem to be very
upset. I said, I am. But I didnt see any fear in his eyes.
On Feb. 21, Bailey was among the four or five people backstage to talk with
Malcolm before he took the stage of the Audubon Ballroom.
He told us he was going down to Jackson, Mississippi, to speak, Bailey recalled.
Then he was going to spend six months building up OAAU.

As Malcolm took the stage, someone in the audience called out, Get your hand out
of my pocket! Before Malcolms bodyguards could calm the crowd, a man charged
forward and shot him in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun. Two other men ran to
the stage firing handguns. He was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m. at Columbia
Presbyterian Hospital.
Malcolm X addresses a crowd of about 1,000 at an outdoor rally in upper Manhattan on Aug. 10, 1963. (AP)
Changing portrait
Alex Haleys The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published later in 1965, turned him into
a martyr. It was an all-American narrative of transformation and redemption: a
criminal turned devoutly religious man, who traded Nation of Islams white devil
rhetoric for a spirit of brotherhood. It recast the radical as the kind of man who
would be commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp in 1999.
I dont know if hed appreciate that, the activist and black studies scholar Richard
Newman said at the time. Its ironic to see him honored by the government he
despised.
A less gauzy picture came into focus four years ago when Marables unflinching
biography of Malcolm was published, revealing exaggerations and narrative
liberties in the Haley-penned biography. But the portrait remained of a strong and
formidable leader, said Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African and African
American Studies at Duke University. Hes one of the organizers of The Legacy of
Malcolm X: Afro-American Visionary, Muslim Activist conference being held at
Duke this weekend. There he wants to talk about the forgotten Malcolm.
[ Manning Marable book revisits assassination of Malcolm X, names alleged triggerman ]
The thing we forget is that Malcolm X, when all was said and done, he really was
an incredible political strategist and really a visionary, Neal said. He was

someone who was constantly revising his views of the world, the way he would
present his public persona, his ideas about radicalism and movements civil rights
movements, black power movements.
Civil rights images and figures throughout history.
Linda Brown Smith, 9, was a third-grader when her father started a class-action suit in 1951,
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., which led to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954
landmark decision against school segregation. AP
As for todays young activists, Malcolms influence continues. Taurean K. Brown, a

27-year-old based in North Carolina who writes and speaks about social justice, has
found direction in Malcolms life and political positions.
Brown fashions himself as a Malcolm-type revolutionary pushing for radical
change instead of Kings gradual reforms. And in the rumbling protests following
the deaths of Eric Garner in New York, Michael Brown in Ferguson and 12-year-old
Tamir Rice in Cleveland, he sees an awakening the black nationalist leader would
have admired.
Malcolms legacy is fully entrenched in the uprising that is going on today, said
Brown, who was headed to a social-justice conference this weekend at the
University of Texas at Arlington. There is a heavy appreciation for black
consciousness and black pride. His influence will always be powerful for youth
because he connected with black youth in the hood, the disadvantaged. He
understood.
Ellen McCarthy contributed to this report.
Krissah Thompson began writing for The Washington Post in 2001.

She has been a business reporter, covered presidential campaigns and written about civil rights
and race. More recently, she has covered the first lady's office, politics and culture.

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50 years after his death, Malcolm Xs work is

Malcolm X on March 5, 1964 (Eddie Adams/AP)

By Krissah Thompson February 19

He was fashioning himself as an internationalist. A political player.

We called ourselves a human rights organization, not a civil rights organization,

Bailey added, because human rights is an international term.

Malcolm X during a rally of African American

Pulitzer Prize-winning Malcolm X biography. Standing in front of King, whom he

In a meeting with followers, Malcolm put to a vote whether he should speak at an

Then he was going to spend six months building up OAAU.

an incredible political strategist and really a visionary, Neal said. He was

Civil rights images and figures throughout history.

As for todays young activists, Malcolms influence continues. Taurean K. Brown, a

Krissah Thompson began writing for The Washington Post in 2001.

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