Happy Birthday Brother Malcolm

(Published 19.5.2009)

http://www.dailynationalcourier.com/national_courier/may2009_daily/19-05-09/artical/artical1.htm

He would have been eighty-four-year-old today if not killed by hired assassins ninety-eight days before his 40th birthday on February 21, 1965. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925 his father, a Baptist minister and an outspoken follower of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who advocated "back-to-Africa" movement for African Americans, was murdered violently by White Supremists when he was just six years old. In December 1938, after his mother was declared legally insane due to nervous breakdown he along with his brothers and sisters were separated as they were sent to different foster homes. His mother Louise had to remain in state mental hospital till Malcolm and his siblings secured her release 26 years later.
Though one of the best students in his junior high school Malcolm dropped out after a white eighth-grade teacher told him that his aspirations of being a lawyer were "not a realistic goal for a nigger". The discouragement had impacted him throughout his life because it ingrained in him a conviction that there was no place in the white world for a career-oriented black man, no matter how smart he was, in a time were racial segregation was legal in the US.
After a series of white foster parents he moved to Boston in February 1941 where he lived with his older half-sister, Ella Little Collins. During this time Malcolm held a variety of jobs including intermittent employment with the New Haven Railroad. Between 1943 and 1946, he drifted from city to city and job to job ultimately moving to New York City in 1943. At this point in his life he got involved various criminal activities including drug dealing, gambling, racketeering, robbery, and prostitution racket.
He was declared "mentally disqualified for military service" by military physicians in 1943 for army-draft by the examining officer that he could not wait to "steal us some guns, and kill us [some] crackers 9white men."
In late 1945, he returned to Boston and went on a series of burglaries targeting the residences of wealthy white families along with associates. On January 12, 1946, he was arrested for burglary while trying to pick up a stolen watch he had left for repairs at a jewelry shop. He was charged with larceny and breaking and entering, and eventually sentenced to eight to ten years in Massachusetts State Prison where he earned the nickname of "Satan" for his hostility toward religion.
In 1948 he learnt about a "˜new religion "Nation of Islam" exclusively for the Black Americans that preached black self-reliance and, ultimately, the unification of members of the African diaspora, free from white American and European domination. He showed no interest to join the new religion until his brother Reginald wrote him advising, "don't eat any more pork and don't smoke any more cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison." Little quit smoking and refused to eat pork.
In late 1948, he wrote a letter to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad advised him to atone for his crimes by renouncing his past and by humbly bowing in prayer to Allah and promising never to engage in destructive behavior again. Little, who always had been rebellious and deeply skeptical, found it very difficult to bow in prayer. It took him a week to bend his knees. Finally he prayed, and he became a member of the Nation of Islam. In his autobiography written by Alex Haley, who later penned down Best Selling book "˜Roots', Malcolm said that discovering Islam in jail "was like being hit by tons of bricks'. After being released from prison in August, 1952 was released from prison and visited Elijah Muhammad in Chicago where like many other members of the Nation he replaced his last name "˜slavemaster' name Little by X to symbolize the true African family name that he never could known. By In June 1953, Malcolm X was named assistant minister of the Nation of Islam's Temple Number One in Detroit. By late 1953, he established Boston's Temple Number Eleven and many other Temples after that in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and later he was selected to lead the Nation of Islam's Temple Number Seven in Harlem, New York. After a 1959 television broadcast in New York City about the Nation of Islam, The Hate That Hate Produced, Malcolm X became known to a much wider audience.
Malcolm's fiery speeches frightened the then legally racially segregated White America. He called Blacks the original race of the world and White race a race of devils. Unlike Civil Rights Movement lead by Martin Luther King Malcolm which was fighting against racial segregation Malcolm advocated complete separation of African Americans from white people. He proposed establishing a separate country for Afro Americans, that was the term he preferred to use for his Blacks, as an interim measure until they could return to Africa.
He disagreed with the civil rights movement's strategy of nonviolence and instead advocated that black people use any necessary means of self-defense to protect themselves. His fiery speeches sprinkled with such sentences as "We are non-violent to people who are non-violent to us, but we are not non-violent to people who are violent to us", "By any means necessary", "Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks" were just of dozens of his favourite rhetorics that frightened the White America.
His fiery speeches and powerful affect on Blacks at the grass roots helped made Martin Luther King acceptable to then White segregated America- "I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King", Malcolm's conversation to Mrs. Coretta Scott King. He criticized 1963 "March on Washington" as "the farce on Washington". He said he did not know why black people were excited over a demonstration "run by whites in front of a statue of a president who has been dead for a hundred years and who didn't like us when he was alive". Had there been no Malcolm Martin Luther King might not had been so easily acceptable to White America. A sizeable segment of Blacks felt he articulated their genuine grievances better than the civil rights movement. Malcolm advocated Human Rights for Blacks compared to civil rights demanded by Dr. King. Malcolm married Betty X (Sanders) in 1958. Lansing, Michigan.[77] The two had been friends for about a year and half. The couple had six daughters. Their names were Attallah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah Lumumba and twins, Malaak and Malikah who were born after his assassination.
Malcolm X was a prominent member of a Harlem-based welcoming committee made up of community leaders who met with Cuban Revolutionary president Fidel Castro when he visited New York to attend the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in September 1960. Malcolm impressed Castro so much that he requested a private meeting with him. During the General Assembly meeting, Malcolm X was also invited to many official embassy functions sponsored by African nations, where he met heads of state and other leaders, including Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of the Zambian African National Congress. Malcolm was silenced by Elijah Muhammad for ninety days for sparking public outcry when while commenting about the assassination of President Kennedy ten days he called it "a case of "chickens coming home to roost" adding that "chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad. In March, 1964, Malcolm announced his break from the Nation of Islam over his dismay about rumors about Elijah Muhammad's extramarital affairs with young secretaries one of whom he met personally told him that Elijah was the father her child. He founded Muslim Mosque, Inc., a religious organization and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, a secular group that advocated black nationalism. On March 26, 1964, he met Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C., after a press conference which followed both men attending the Senate to hear the debate on the Civil Rights bill. This was the only time the two men ever met; their meeting lasted only one minute just long enough for photographers to take a picture.
Next month Malcolm delivered a speech "The Ballot or the Bullet" in which he advised African-Americans to exercise their right to vote wisely. Several Sunni Muslims encouraged Malcolm X to learn about Islam. Soon he converted to Sunni Islam, and decided to make his pilgrimage to Mecca.
In April, 1964, Malcolm X departed New York for Jeddah to perform the Haj. He was treated as a guest of the state and was visited by Muhammad Faisal, the son of Prince Faisal. The trip allowed Malcolm to discover true essence of Islam that made no distinction between "˜blonde hair and blue-eyed' and blackest of the black Muslims. He returned a changed man denouncing said the trip allowed him to see Muslims of different races interacting as equals. He came to believe that Islam could be the means by which racial problems could be overcome. He also changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Malcolm's life was cut in his prime by hail of bullits fired by three assassins belonging to Nation of Islamas he uttered "˜Asalam Alakum' at a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity on February 21, 1965 at Audubon Ballroom New York. Afro-American actor Ossie Davis delivered a moving eulogy at his funeral on February 27, "Here - at this final hour, in this quiet place - Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes -extinguished now, and gone from us forever. For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought - his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are - and it is, therefore, most fitting that we meet once again - in Harlem - to share these last moments with him"¦ Malcolm had stopped being a "˜Negro' years ago. It had become too small, too puny, too weak a word for him. Malcolm was bigger than that. Malcolm had become an Afro-American and he wanted - so desperately - that we, that all his people, would become Afro-Americans too"¦There are those who will consider it their duty, as friends of the Negro people, to tell us to revile him, to flee, even from the presence of his memory, to save ourselves by writing him out of the history of our turbulent times. Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain - and we will smile. Many will say turn away - away from this man, for he is not a man but a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy of the black man - and we will smile"¦ Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him. Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves. .. Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man - but a seed - which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will know him then for what he was and is - a Prince - our own black shining Prince! - who didn't hesitate to die, because he loved us so."
Malcolm's funeral was attended by civil rights leaders and ambassadors and staff from Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia. He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. With the death of the "shining black prince" the "brightest hopes had gone for forever" for Afro-Americans who still remember Malcolm who keeps on living not only in their heart but also the hearts of oppressed anywhere.