Malcolm X: Down for the cause before the cause

Michael E. Ross Reporter • Profile • E-mail

When Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) was shot to death at 3:10 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, he was perceived as a pariah of the still-burgeoning drive for equality in America — monitored by the police and the government, marginalized by more mainstream civil rights figures, vilified as a danger to the nation.

What a difference two generations makes — and doesn’t make.

Even now, 40 years after his untimely death, many of the issues that dominated the life and career of Malcolm X remain — like the man himself — at the forefront of African-American life, and American life in general.

Today, he inspires black America in particular even as he haunts America in general with a message still seen as hostile, a message that’s spanned five decades and galvanized younger generations more powerfully, in many ways, than more centrist civil rights leaders like the Rev.  Martin Luther King Jr.

From the still-robust sales of his 1965 autobiography to the adoption of his image and oratory by a generation fired by hiphop, the power of Malcolm X has only increased.

The 40th anniversary of his passing comes in an America that has changed, and not changed, in its reception to both the messenger and his message — a nation sometimes angrily sensitized to Islam, Malcolm’s adopted faith.

Power of the word
It’s that power of Malcolm X — not just the power of one’s personal transformation, but also the ability to communicate that transformation to a wide audience — that’s evident in his book “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

Ballantine Books By the late 1990s, almost 3 million copies of “The Autobiography” had been sold worldwide.

“The Autobiography,” a work whose blazing candor and unflinching self-examination has inspired books from Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice” to “Monster,” the autobiography of an L.A. gang member, remains a seminal American work.

By the late 1990s, almost 3 million copies had been sold worldwide, according to the Malcolm X Center at Columbia University.

In 1999, Time magazine selected the book as one of the top 10 nonfiction works of the 20th century.

Embracing a native son, or not
Even as Malcolm X has attained broad recognition in the wider American culture, aspects of his identity are still problematic. The state of Nebraska, where Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925, has wrestled in recent years with that recognition.

The Nebraska Hall of Fame, established in 1961 to officially recognize prominent Nebraskans, boasts a range of public figures, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather; anthropologist Loren Eiseley; Gen. John J. (Black Jack) Pershing, commander of American Expeditionary Forces in World War I; and William Frederick Cody, the frontiersman and adventurer more widely known as Buffalo Bill.

Chad Rachman / AP A statue of Malcolm X stands behind two of his daughters Ilyasah, center, and Malaak Shabazz at a book signing for ‘Growing Up X’ at the Audubon Ballroom, in April 2002 in New York.

How the incendiary presence of Malcolm X would figure in that pantheon of Nebraskans, and whether to embrace him as a native son, has been a matter of debate for the state’s Hall of Fame Commission. Malcolm X was considered but rejected by the commission in April 2004.

A bill currently in the statehouse would seek to have ethnic and gender diversity as factors for consideration. The bill also changes the selection process by requiring public hearings.

“When you consider the makeup of the people on the commision — older white people — the likelihood is not the greatest,” said state Sen. Ernie Chambers of the chances for Malcolm’s inclusion.

“Nebraska is a white-dominated, extremely conservative state,” Chambers said. “Most of the people in the state don’t know anything about Malcolm, and some of those who do have more erroneous information than accurate information.”

Chambers, who is Nebraska’s only African-American state legislator, said the matter is now on an indefinite timetable.

If inducted, Malcolm X would be the first African American to be so enshrined.

Maybe the reactions of the Nebraska lawmakers dogging Sen. Chambers are emblematic of wider American perceptions.

Observances of Malcolm X’s death come in an America still painfully aware of the cultural and philosophical gulf between Christianity and Islam — a gulf no doubt widened by those responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

‘ ... Americans will have to come to terms with Islam within the United States and outside, and formulate positions at individual and societal levels that bring the same respect to Islam that people bring to Christianity.’ — HOWARD DODSON director, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

“He was aware of the fact that the Islamic population in the world is growing at an incredibly rapid rate, in the United States it’s growing significantly,” said Howard Dodson, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, based in New York City.

“That means that Americans will have to come to terms with Islam within the United States and outside, and formulate positions at individual and societal levels that bring the same respect to Islam that people bring to Christianity,” Dodson said. “That kind of respect will be won over time. It won’t happen overnight.”

For Dodson, Malcolm’s place in history is secure. “Malcolm’s right up there with Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela in the pantheon of leaders of 20th century black history,” he said.

“He resonates and continues to be a voice and presence 40 years later, in large measure because of the kind of life he lived,” Dodson said. “He was as hard on black America as he was on American society.”

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