“The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.”
“In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.”
“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda… I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
"For the freedom of my 22 million black brothers and sisters here in America, I do believe that I have fought the best that I know how, and the best that I could, with the shortcomings that I have had...I know that societies often have killed people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine."
February 21st, 1965 a man took the stage of the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan when a commotion in the 400 person crowd caught the attention of security. In the confusion, three men approached the stage and fired a total of 21 shots into the orator at the podium. At 3:30 pm, he was pronounced dead at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. His wake would draw close to 30,000 mourners, his funeral broadcast on television, with acclaimed actor Ossie Davis delivering the eulogy. This man’s name was El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, born Malcolm Little, known to the world as Malcolm X.
Before his tragic death, Malcolm X had narrated his life to the man who would later write the ultimate heritage tome, Roots, and that story would be written down, published and placed in the hands of young men everywhere as a testament to the redemptive power of pure will and determination. It is a story which has inspired countless readers, a sweeping epic of the modern age, an expansive tumultuous life of triumphs and atonement. It is the story of a man who lived for the glory himself, then for the freedom of his people, prior humbling himself before God. This is the story of an uneducated pimp who soon traveled the world, speaking eloquent and passionate words which divided, enraged and advanced a people. This is The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
The book is so vividly descriptive that it places you in those moments, beautifully recreating the sights and sounds of 1940’s Harlem or the depression-ridden South. The language is so fluid, so rhythmically and meticulously composed so as to cause one to question whether they’re indeed reading an autobiography at all, or indeed if this is some novel, some work of fiction with such a grandiose figure, like some biblical prophet, crafted to inspire and inform, and the narrative itself is so grand and expansive that it reinforces the question of validity.
Yet its all true, every word. These things did happen, and they happened within the lifetime of our fathers and grandfathers. They happened in the newspapers, the television. They’re a matter of public record, the events that unfolded in the life of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (the name Malcolm took after his trip to the holy city of Mecca, “El-Hajj” a signifier of one who has performed the sacred rite), but what the Autobiography gives us is the internal monologue, reconstructed as though unfolding in real time, without a sense of retrospection until such time as it occurred in Malcolm’s life (he speaks of his time with the Nation of Islam with passion, fury and devotion until such time within the book as he discovers the true Muslim faith in Mecca. Only then does he express his regret for his words and actions upon the pulpit as a puppet of Elijah Muhammad).
Indeed, the extraordinary thing about Malcolm,which sets him apart from other revered leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, is that he admitted when he was wrong. He changed his beliefs, not on a whim, but upon his own personal growth. It was such moments of sincerity, of honest apology, and the introspection such as seen in the book, that forbid Malcolm from the Valhalla-like place of deification the public places figures like King or Gandhi or Harvey Milk. But indeed, it is this which makes Malcolm all the more inspiring. It is his mortality, his utter humanity. His faltering, that he might rise back up. He was not a prophet, some beatific figure of purity and unwavering certainty. He was a man, a great man, a man who shared his failings and his flaws that others might see how he climbed still anyway. How he ascended and soared every time he sank. In that way, Malcolm is akin to the great St. Augustine, whose confessions by which we were all reminded that those who we worship so, and hold others against in a manner of disdain and derision, all preached forgiveness and atonement, including Malcolm in his final days, upon his return for the Hajj.
To discuss the narrative of the life of Malcolm X here is to rob the book of part of its joy for first-time readers, who know Malcolm only as some distant figure, pushed to the side-column of history in an MLK-centric chapter on Civil Rights. Perhaps a more progressive class had the students read “The Ballot or the Bullet”, but still ignored the subject or decried Malcolm as a violent man, an preacher of terror, a failed leader. His prominence both as an advocate for equality “by enemy means necessary” and, more tragically, his faith as a Muslim have made him a controversial figure once more in the modern American cultural landscape, and yet Malcolm is indeed perhaps the most worthy of admiration, because there are no dark parts of his history in which demons could hide, only to emerge with the erosion of sanctity known as time (as the alleged sexual proclivities of certain other figures have). His story, with all its falters and flaws, has been made known. His time as a criminal, his time under the spell of a false prophet and his eventual redemption in the name of God, are all on display within a book, a story of a journey so vast and spectacular, so heartbreaking and inspiring that it takes the reader on one of their own. They emerge at the end a changed man, one who truly understands the meaning of “by any means necessary” not as a challenge toward some outward enemy, but as a trial of the soul, demanding a man put everything of what he is out there, on the line, staring down his fate.
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