A lighter moment: Malcolm X (jar left) snaps a picture of world heavyweight champion Cassius Clay, who later changed his name to Mohammed Ali, at a Florida soda fountain in 1964.
if a group has an answer to the problems of black people, then they should help solve the problems without having all black people join that group. In this sense his scope had been broadened." Younger civil rights activists and black artists and writers developed a deep-cultural and political respect for El-Hajj Malik EIShabazz even before his assassination in 1965. Amiri Baraka, the leader ofthe Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, writes that Malcolm X was, for him, the personification of "blackness ...my maxiAttallah Shabazz, second from right, daughter of Malcolm X, looks on during the rededication ceremony of the Malcolm X postage stamp in Philadelphia, in 1999. Others with Shabazz are David Fineman, left, Postal Service Governor, and Sonia Sanchez, extreme right, professor at Temple University. The family of Malcolm X sustained many blows, including the death of his widow, Betty Shabazz, in a fire started by her grandson.
mum leader/teacher." After his death, as the Black Arts Movement blossomed, hundreds of poems, cultural essays, plays, and public events celebrated his towering importance. With the publication of his autobiography, his reputation among millions of white Americans also grew. But those who had been privileged to know Malcolm personally recognized the vast difference between his public and private images. As the white attorney William Kuntsler observed in 1994: "I liked Malcolm instantly ...! thought Malcolm would be a fire-eater, burning with hatred, with no sense of humor. He was actually quite the opposite, a warm, responsive human being, not at all as he was depicted by the media ....He spent most of his public life trying to convince his black audiences that they had to resist the white avalanche 'by any means necessary.' A failure to resist, he often said, was part of a residual slave mentality. I completely agreed with him." In the late 1980s a new generation of African Americans came to discover Malcolm X in the dire context of rapid deindustrialization and economic decay in America's cities, the collapse of public institutions providing services to the poor, and the devastation of the crack-cocaine epidemic. America's political and corporate establishment was retreating from serious discussion of ways to solve press"f ing urban problems, and in this environ~ 5: ment what became known as the hip-hop ~ generation found a charismatic, powerful I voice to express its own rage, alienation,
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and spirit of resistance-that of Malcolm X. He was frequently mentioned in the music of virtually every major hip-hop artist and group, from Public Enemy and N.W.A. to Lauryn Hill and Wu-Tang Clan. But in taking excerpts from Malcolm's writings and samplings from his speeches, they frequently obscured or lost the full meaning of what he had attempted to accomplish, both politically and culturally. As the historian Michael Eric Dyson has written, the greatest significance of Malcolm X lies in his personal example of relentless self-criticism, and his belief that everyday people possess the capacity to change themselves and thus change the conditions under which they live. In Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X; Dyson observes: "Malcolm's push near the end of his life was for the people to learn and grow as much as they could in the struggle to free mind and body from the poisonous persistence of racism and blind ethnic loyalty, as well as economic and class slavery. He apologized for his former mistakes, took his lumps for things he'd done wrong in the past, and tried to move on, even though, as he lamented, many devotees (and enemies) wouldn't allow him to 'turn the comer.' For Malcolm's sake, and for the sake of our survival, black folk must turn the corner." D About the Author: Manning Marable is a professor of history and political science, and the founding director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University in New York.