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Walk the Way of Free Men: Malcolm X, Displaying the Original Man, and Troubling the Black Press as the Voice of the Race

D'Weston Haywood

in Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement

This chapter reinterprets the rise of black radicalism as a moment of competing “voices” across competing mass medias amid rapid changes in the black freedom struggle and media landscape of the ... More

This chapter reinterprets the rise of black radicalism as a moment of competing “voices” across competing mass medias amid rapid changes in the black freedom struggle and media landscape of the 1960s. It also reinterprets Malcolm X as a newspaper publisher, a rather underanalyzed side of Malcolm. Black publishers had long considered their papers the “voice” of the race, and Malcolm’s founding of Muhammad Speaks in 1960 to amplify the voice of Elijah Muhammad signified this. Yet, the paper’s founding also marked the beginning of the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) robust media campaign to use various medias—radio, books, and albums of Muhammad’s speeches—to promote Muhammad’s vision for racial advancement over others. His vision promised to redeem black manhood by renewing their lives, a vision displayed through salesmen for Muhammad Speaks. Thus, readers could read both the paper and their bodies. Malcolm, however, made his display through television. But when he began to gain a voice through television that rivaled that of Muhammad’s in print, the NOI’s media campaign turned from promising to renew the lives of black men to promising to take it away. Malcolm became a newspaperman cut short of his full publishing potential.Less

The Chickens Coming Home to Roost: Malcolm X, the Congo, and Modern Black Nationalism

Ira Dworkin

in Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State

This chapter presents Malcolm X’s travels in Africa during the months leading up to the Stanleyville (Kisangani) crisis of November 1964. Speeches, diaries, correspondence, FBI surveillance reports, ... More

This chapter presents Malcolm X’s travels in Africa during the months leading up to the Stanleyville (Kisangani) crisis of November 1964. Speeches, diaries, correspondence, FBI surveillance reports, and circumstantial evidence indicate that, during the final months of his life, Malcolm X may have been involved in recruiting African American volunteers through the OAAU (Organization of Afro-American Unity) and the OAU (Organization of African Unity) to serve in the Congo as mercenaries in opposition to white South African forces, a project that may have been a model for a similar effort soon undertaken by Che Guevara. In the wake of the 1964 U.S. airlift of Belgian paratroopers into Stanleyville to rescue white hostages, Malcolm spoke of the history of hand-severing, a reference which links him to Sheppard. Malcolm’s frequent commentary on the subject, in many of his most important forums during the final year of his life, locates the trajectory of African American involvement in the Congo at the center of his political vision and organizational praxis, and, by extension, at the heart of modern Black nationalism.Less

Vanguard

Joseph R. Fitzgerald

in The Struggle Is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation

Richardson’s influence on the development of Black Power through ACT, an organization she cofounded with other radical activists in 1964, is the focus of this chapter. ACT’s goal was to provide aid ... More

Richardson’s influence on the development of Black Power through ACT, an organization she cofounded with other radical activists in 1964, is the focus of this chapter. ACT’s goal was to provide aid and comfort to northern urban freedom campaigns, much as SNCC had done for local movements in the South. The chapter also analyzes ACT’s effect on the black liberation movement, particularly how it fostered the rise of militancy among younger activists who challenged moderates’ power to determine the civil rights movement’s goals, strategies, and tactics. Also covered is Richardson’s personal and working relationship with Malcolm X, who served as a consultant to ACT and was influenced by Richardson, as evidenced by his “ballot or bullet” speeches. Finally, the chapter discusses Richardson’s reasons for ending her active participation in the black liberation movement.Less

King the Sellout, or Sellin’ Out King?: Hip Hop’s Martin Luther King Jr.

James L. Taylor

in Dream and Legacy: Dr. Martin Luther King in the Post-Civil Rights Era

Imani Perry of Princeton University has raised the following question: “Why does the hip hop audience believe that it is okay to embrace the past, to converse with it, without adhering to its ... More

Imani Perry of Princeton University has raised the following question: “Why does the hip hop audience believe that it is okay to embrace the past, to converse with it, without adhering to its ideological divides or rules?” This points to an intergenerational tension in which the earlier stages have a utility that enables hip hop to borrow and sample without being obligated to community nor accountable to it. Throughout this essay it is argued to the contrary that the “ideological divides and rules” were indeed adhered to, at least with regard to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and interpreted and recruited them to its purposes. Errol Henderson insists it is the “sampling aspect of hip hop” that facilitates “cross-generational cultural transmissions” among “the relatively apolitical generation of the 1970s and 1980s with a staunch Black nationalist African subculture of the 1960s.” If sampling places hip hop in conversation with the past, so has “dissing.” Like any first-rate rap icon, Martin Luther King and the broad Civil Rights movement, have been subjected to well-known street poses of disrespecting (dissin’) and challenging (battling) from upstarts, whether in lyrics, film, or among the self-recognized “hip hop intelligentsia,” seeking to make their mark. Imani Perry suggests likewise, “dis- functions as a negative prefix (e.g., disrespect, dismiss, etc.), [and] gathered its meaning in the social context of inter-personal rejection, or what another generation might have referred to as ‘putting someone down’ not in the white American dialect sense of insulting, but in the black American sense of getting rid of someone as though setting someone on a table and walking away.” King was thus “dissed” ideologically in emergent “message” or “conscious” rap in the late 1980s through 1990s period.Less

From Civil Rights to Black Nationalism: Hollywood V. Black America?

Trevor B. McCrisken and Andrew Pepper

in American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film

If contemporary filmmakers have felt compelled to do away with the explicit racism of pre-civil rights Hollywood movie-making and make African Americans the subjects rather than the objects of their ... More

If contemporary filmmakers have felt compelled to do away with the explicit racism of pre-civil rights Hollywood movie-making and make African Americans the subjects rather than the objects of their gaze, then the vexed question of how successfully their ambitions have been realised needs to be addressed. There has been a small but growing number of films made by African-American directors (that is, Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles) whose focus is predominantly African-American subjects and which tend to privilege conflict and confrontation rather than reconciliation and assimilation. Examples of this type of film are Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Panther and Dead Presidents. Then there is Michael Mann's Ali (2001), a film about boxer Muhammad Ali. At stake is not only the question of how these black ‘independent’ films represent the struggle for racial equality and the emergence of black nationalism as a social, cultural and political force from the early 1960s onwards. Rather, it is also the viability of the distinction between Hollywood and this so-called black independent cinema in the first place.Less

Flexing a New Womanhood

Ula Yvette Taylor

in The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam

This chapter details the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class (MGT-GCC) instruction for women. The role of Sister Captain Burnsteen Sharrieff is highlighted along with Lottie and ... More

This chapter details the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class (MGT-GCC) instruction for women. The role of Sister Captain Burnsteen Sharrieff is highlighted along with Lottie and Ethel Muhammad, the daughters of Clara and Elijah Muhammad. Sister Thelma X, a vocal member of the Nation of Islam and her publication, Truth, are examined for both its pro-black and anti-Jewish rhetoric. Sisters Louise Dunlap and Ernestine Scott, two Nation women who defied Jim Crow laws by sitting in a “White Only” section of a railroad station, bring Minister Malcolm X and his future wife, Sister Betty X into the narrative.Less

The Life of Elijah Muhammad

Herbert Berg

in Elijah Muhammad and Islam

This chapter sketches the life of Elijah Muhammad, including his life before the Nation of Islam, his tutelage under Fard Muhammad, his struggles to keep the movement alive during years of ... More

This chapter sketches the life of Elijah Muhammad, including his life before the Nation of Islam, his tutelage under Fard Muhammad, his struggles to keep the movement alive during years of persecution and imprisonment, and his astounding success from the late 1950s through the turbulent years of Malcolm X. The last decade of Elijah Muhammad's life appears superficially as a period of malaise but was actually a time of economic successes and growth for his movement. Divisions within the Nation of Islam and renewed struggles for power began as the effects of serious illnesses and advancing age made it increasingly obvious that their Messenger would soon need a successor.Less

Black Manhood and the End of Nonviolence

Simon Wendt

in The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights

This chapter describes the shift of some of the major groups of the Black Power movement towards aggressive violence and even guerilla warfare in the second half of the 1960s. Since the late 1950s, ... More

This chapter describes the shift of some of the major groups of the Black Power movement towards aggressive violence and even guerilla warfare in the second half of the 1960s. Since the late 1950s, Malcolm X and like-minded radicals had called upon African Americans to abandon nonviolence. Deeply influenced by Malcolm’s calls to fight back against white violence, black activists in Cleveland and California organized armed groups in 1964. In the following years, as militant groups such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) or the Republic of New Africa (RNA) leaped to national attention, armed militancy became an integral part of the movement. The gendered function of armed resistance in the Black Power movement also produced radically altered concepts of self-defense. Unlike their counterparts who adhered to nonviolence, Black Power militants viewed self-defense as the antithesis of nonviolence and scorned mass demonstrations as perpetuating passiveness and powerlessness. For them, Martin Luther King’s philosophy would only weaken black men.Less

The Black University and the “Total Community”

Russell Rickford

in We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination

This chapter discusses the ideal of the “Black University,” a crucial theoretical framework for the politics of institution building in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Black University, a concept ... More

This chapter discusses the ideal of the “Black University,” a crucial theoretical framework for the politics of institution building in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Black University, a concept of adult education capable of serving the needs of “the total black community,” helped inspire several postsecondary Pan African nationalist establishments, including North Carolina’s Malcolm X Liberation University (MXLU). The chapter describes the formation and evolution of MXLU under its director, Owusu Sadaukai (Howard Fuller). It demonstrates how ideological evolution helped reshape MXLU while inspiring the creation of African Liberation Day, an annual series of demonstrations designed to raise awareness of and support for ongoing liberation movements on the African continent. Other Pan African nationalist formations, including Washington, DC’s Center for Black Education and East Palo Alto’s Nairobi College, are also discussed, as is the struggle to transform “Negro” colleges like Howard University into truly “black” institutions.Less

Confronted with Too Much

Todd McGowan

in Spike Lee

This chapter analyzes the films of Spike Lee. Lee's films employ types of excess such as unconventional shots, extreme characters, and improbable scenes to intervene in critical issues that trouble ... More

This chapter analyzes the films of Spike Lee. Lee's films employ types of excess such as unconventional shots, extreme characters, and improbable scenes to intervene in critical issues that trouble the contemporary world—the question of the subject's singularity, the role that fantasy plays in structuring our reality, the political impact of passion, the power of paranoia in shaping social relations, the damage that the insistence on community inflicts, the problem of transcendence, and the struggles of the spectator. Above all, Lee is known for being a political filmmaker and the concept of excess holds the key to understanding the politics of his films. Excess has enabled Lee to create a varied corpus of films that treat a broad spectrum of fundamental social and political problems. These films include She's Gotta Have It (1986), Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), and Malcolm X (1992).Less

“Island in a Sea of Ignorance” “Islam allows you to look beyond the wall.”—Umar Abdul Jalil

Robert Dannin

in Black Pilgrimage to Islam

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is about how a criminal referred to as “Satan” came out of prison and became an orator and a significant figure in international politics. ... More

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is about how a criminal referred to as “Satan” came out of prison and became an orator and a significant figure in international politics. However, in the case of black Americans, this narrative was not able to bring about questions regarding the Islamic religious conversions seen throughout prisons in the United States. Although Malcolm X contributed in no small part to popular traditions and practices and was canonized, there are no apparent aggravations concerning the commitment to Islamic worship and to the symbolisms attributed to such beliefs. This chapter addresses certain questions that concern those who attempt to change their lives in a good way that is based on Islamic principles.Less

Conclusion: Malcolm X’s Enlistment of Hamlet and Spinoza

Jeremy Matthew Glick

in Black Radical Tragic: "Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unfinished Haitian Revolution"

I look at the theoretical and political implications of Malcolm X’s evocation of Hamlet in his Oxford Union debate as well as his mediation on Spinoza in his Autobiography. I explicate the work of ... More

I look at the theoretical and political implications of Malcolm X’s evocation of Hamlet in his Oxford Union debate as well as his mediation on Spinoza in his Autobiography. I explicate the work of what I call the Black Radical Tragic by way of some dream-work in response to a Spinoza letter comforting his friend on the death of his infant child. By way of Malcolm X’s use of Spinoza and Hamlet, I define what I mean by the Black Radical Tragic.Less

America Means Prison

Dan Berger

in Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era

This chapter looks further at black bonding to confront racism and discrimination. By the 1950s black urban experience became entwined with black experience of confinement. It seemed that the ghetto ... More

This chapter looks further at black bonding to confront racism and discrimination. By the 1950s black urban experience became entwined with black experience of confinement. It seemed that the ghetto and the prison were places of black incarceration. Activists and nationalists portrayed racism as prison where black people were kept in ghettos in conditions of underemployment, violence, and other punitive situations. It was Malcolm X who was most vocal about this idea, espousing to his followers that his imprisonment would not come as a surprise, America already being a prison itself. Many radical organizations followed his ideas closely, of which the Black Panther Party was one. In the 1960s the prison became the metaphor for race and racial management. Reformists, social scientists, academics such as conservative Edward Banfield or liberal Kenneth Clark took on the issue. The “Berkeley Barb,” an underground newspaper and “The Outlaw,” a publication insert, spread prisoner issues, reported on strikes, and unified the revolutionary movements in the different prisons. The prison was no longer a far distant institution but occupied a place in the people's consciousness.Less

Traumatic Victimhood or Black Rage? Contrasting Visions of Black Power

Kristen Hoerl

in The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements

This chapter examines contrasting depictions of the Black Power movement in Hollywood film and television that either confirmed or resisted what Herman Gray refers to as the “civil rights subject.” ... More

This chapter examines contrasting depictions of the Black Power movement in Hollywood film and television that either confirmed or resisted what Herman Gray refers to as the “civil rights subject.” The first half of the chapter explains how nineties-era movies Malcolm X and Panther presented affirmative images of radical black protest but anchored these images to traumatic counter-memories of black victimhood. The second half of this chapter critically reviews a variety of negative portrayals of the Black Panthers in media products between 1994 and 2013 including the movies Forrest Gump, Barbershop 2, and The Butler, the miniseries ‘The 60s, and an episode of the television program Law & Order to argue that Hollywood has routinely depicted black rage, not structural racism or white violence as the central problem requiring tough-on-crime solutions. The chapter interprets these portrayals in the context of the political backlash against civil rights gains and racial inequities within the criminal justice system.Less

Insurgent Domesticity: Race and Gender in Representations of NOI Women during the Cold War Era

Sylvia Chan-Malik

in Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam

This chapter considers how the domestic spaces of Black American Muslim women were portrayed in photography, media, and literature during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s. The male ... More

This chapter considers how the domestic spaces of Black American Muslim women were portrayed in photography, media, and literature during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s. The male gaze and changing gender roles mediated these representations. In analyses of the 1959 CBS news documentary “The Hate That Hate Produced”; The Messenger Magazine, the first official publication of the NOI, edited by Malcolm X in 1959; a 1963 photo essay in Life magazine, photographed by Gordon Parks, and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, the chapter characterizes images of the domesticity of Black Muslim women as “insurgent visions” of American Islam, oftentimes imagined by men, yet enacted with women’s consent and participation.Less

The Appeal of Black Nationalism and the Promise of Prosperity

Ula Yvette Taylor

in The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam

This chapter explores the Nation of Islam conversion of activists Sonia Sanchez and Gwendolyn Simmons, after the assassination of Minister Malcolm X. Why political activists found a political home in ... More

This chapter explores the Nation of Islam conversion of activists Sonia Sanchez and Gwendolyn Simmons, after the assassination of Minister Malcolm X. Why political activists found a political home in the Nation post-1965 underscores how the Nation filled a vacuum as a Black Power alternative. Believers wanted the promises of wealth and protection, and the University of Islam evidenced the building of an independent Nation and it served to ground the movement’s teachings to children. Sonsyrea Tate’s schooling underscores how girls and teenagers were made into Muslim women for a Black Nation. The remaking of women into an Islamic womanhood at times clashed with revolutionary change.Less

Everywhere below Canada

Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria F. Robinson

in Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life

Drawing on Malcolm X's provocative 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet," this chapter follows the insight that everywhere below Canada is the South for black Americans. This chapter also provides ... More

Drawing on Malcolm X's provocative 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet," this chapter follows the insight that everywhere below Canada is the South for black Americans. This chapter also provides an overview of the book and the book's central arguments, laying the foundation for subsequent chapters.Less

Anglo-American Black Liberation

in Special Relations: The Americanization of Britain?

This chapter covers the density of links between black America in a decade of dramatic change and Britain at a critical transitional stage from a society of white hosts and black immigrants to one ... More

This chapter covers the density of links between black America in a decade of dramatic change and Britain at a critical transitional stage from a society of white hosts and black immigrants to one marked by a second generational multiculturalism. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the inflicting figure of black America's twentieth-century martyr. The movement of King in the United States became a resource for British blacks campaigning for equal access to jobs and housing. Malcolm X called King “a traitor to the Negro race.” He was also denied entry to France and returned to London “seething.” There were faces and voices of black anger and militancy in the media and in print. The American Black Power movement did not resonate only among London's African-Caribbean activists.Less