Chapter nine
The Politics of Malcolm X
Racial segregation was not the law in the North, but it was the reality. In virtually all aspects of life, Northern Blacks encountered racism and segregation. Blacks who left the South found themselves forced to live in huge urban ghettos. Black schools were inferior and segregated. The jobs that Blacks had moved north to find proved to be the worst and the lowest-paid. Skilled or professional jobs were reserved for whites. Blacks were constantly subject to “white” authority, especially police harassment. “When our Black fathers go to work in the mornings, they hear the muttered insults of their white neighbors,” the novelist and poet Richard Wright wrote in Twelve Million Black Voices, describing the experience of Southern Blacks encountering racism in the North for the first time. “Bricks are hurled through the windows of our homes; garbage is tossed at our Black children when they go to school; and finally bombs explode against our front doors.”1
A study conducted in Los Angeles after the 1965 Watts rebellion showed that large percentages of Blacks had either suffered or witnessed harassment by police: almost a quarter said they had been mistreated by the police, and 40 percent said they had seen others abused.2 Any illusions held by Southern Blacks about the liberal North were not shared by the majority of Blacks living in Northern ghettos. And while Northern Blacks were inspired by the struggles in the South, their conditions made them receptive to a movement independent of—and quite different from—the one led by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Council. In the first years of the explosion of the civil rights movement, the most significant organizational expression of this new movement was the Nation of Islam (NOI).
The Nation of Islam had its roots in the demise of the Garvey movement, which had collapsed in the late 1920s but still could claim some supporters in various areas. Disoriented and without any organization or leadership, some of Garvey’s followers attempted to maintain a semblance of organization. In Detroit, some of these Garveyites joined the newly formed Nation of Islam, whose members were popularly known as the Black Muslims. By the late 1950s, the group’s membership reached an estimated 100,000, with Malcolm X its most prominent member. 3
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. His father was a Baptist minister and a former member of Garvey’s UNIA. When Malcolm X was four, his family’s home was burned down by Ku Klux Klan members. After living in various state institutions, Malcolm moved to Boston and from there to New York City. He became involved in petty criminal activity on the East Coast, was convicted for larceny in Boston, and sentenced to an eight- to ten-year jail term in 1946. While in prison, he became involved with the NOI, and on his release in 1952, he quickly rose to prominence in the organization, playing a crucial role in increasing its size and influence.
In formal terms, the ideas of the Nation of Islam were profoundly conservative. The organization combined elements of orthodox Islam with ideas of its own making, claiming that the “Original Man” was Black and that whites were a degenerate and inferior offshoot, destined to rule the world for 6,000 years, after which they would be destroyed. That 6,000-year period was coming to a close, and Blacks could only save themselves by withdrawing into their own society and separating from whites. The only salvation lay in following Elijah Muhammad, Allah’s messenger on earth. The Black Muslims preached a doctrine of hard work, thrift, obedience, and humility. The Nation’s militia, the Fruit of Islam, strictly enforced an ultra-puritanical sexual morality.
Seeing economic independence from white society as crucial, the organization also encouraged its members to “buy Black.” The Nation of Islam established dozens of businesses, owned farmland, and built mosques in most major Northern cities. The NOI did not condemn capitalism, only whites. Indeed, the Black Muslims believed in copying white capitalists: “Everywhere, the Negro is exploited by the white man; now, the Black Man must learn to protect his own, using the white man’s techniques.”4
Like Garvey, Elijah Muhammad called for establishing an independent Black state—in the United States or elsewhere. “The best thing the white man can do is give us justice and stop giving us hell. I’m asking for justice. If they won’t give us justice, then let us separate ourselves from them and live in four or five states in America, or leave the country altogether.”5
Beyond pressing for demands or defending their interests, the organization was hostile to political involvement. That such an inward-looking religious sect was capable of substantial growth is a testimony to the widespread bitterness of large numbers of urban Blacks. To hundreds of young recruits, the Nation of Islam represented self-respect, self-reliance, and Black pride. The group’s unabashed condemnation of white America, as well as its rejection of integration and nonviolence, rang true, and especially appealed to Malcolm X.
The bold and articulate Malcolm X quickly became a pull for more militants to join the Nation of Islam. A 1959 television documentary called The Hate That Hate Produced, which featured an interview with Malcolm X by Mike Wallace, brought the Muslims much greater national attention, and fuelled their growth.6 The NOI’s message was not designed to appease whites. In the televised interview, Malcolm X bluntly stated, “I charge the white man with being the greatest liar on earth.... I charge the white man with being the greatest robber on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest deceiver on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest troublemaker on earth.”7 And in response to the charge that the Nation was racist, he said, unapologetically, “If we react to white racism with a violent reaction, to me that’s not Black racism. If you come to put a rope around my neck and I hang you for it, to me that’s not racism. Yours is racism, but my reaction has nothing to do with racism.”8
Malcolm X rejected the view that integration into American society was either possible or desirable.
When someone sticks a knife into my back nine inches and then pulls it out six inches they haven’t done me any favor. They should not have stabbed me in the first place.... During slavery they inflicted the most extreme form of brutality against us to break our spirit, to break our will...after they did all of this to us for three hundred and ten years, then they come up with some so-called Emancipation Proclamation.... And today the white man actually runs around here thinking he is doing Black people a favor.9
According to Malcolm X, the federal government and the Democratic Party were no allies, but part of the problem.
Roosevelt promised, Truman promised, Eisenhower promised. Negroes are still knocking on the door begging for civil rights. Do you mean to tell me that in a powerful country like this, a so-called Christian country, that a handful of men from the South can prevent the North, the West, the Central States and the East from giving Negroes the rights the Constitution says they already have? No! I don’t believe that and neither do you. No white man really wants the Black man to have his rights, or he’d have them! The United States does everything else it wants to do.10
Malcolm X was sharply critical of liberals who talked about racism in the South, but had nothing to say about conditions in the North.
[T]hey front-paged what I felt about Northern white and Black Freedom Riders going South to “demonstrate.” I called it “ridiculous”; their own Northern ghettos, right at home, had enough rats and roaches to kill to keep all of the Freedom Riders busy.... The Northern Freedom Riders could light some fires under Northern city halls, unions, and major industries to give more jobs to Negroes.... Yes, I will pull off that liberal’s halo that he spends such efforts cultivating! The North’s liberals have been so long pointing accusing fingers at the South and getting away with it that they have fits when they are exposed as the world’s worst hypocrites.11
He was also sharply critical of the civil rights movement’s leaders, comparing them to house slaves in the slave South. Far from leading the struggle, their role was to contain it.
Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but moderate Uncle Toms, twentieth century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, to keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent. That’s Tom making you nonviolent. It’s like when you go to the dentist, and the man’s going to take your tooth. You’re going to fight him when he starts pulling. So he squirts some stuff in your jaw called novocaine, to make you think they’re not doing anything to you. So you sit there and because you’ve got all of that novocaine in your jaw, you suffer—peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw, and you don’t know what’s happening. Because someone has taught you to suffer—peacefully.12
Malcolm went on to attack the whole premise of nonviolence that underlay the Southern desegregation movement. Instead, he argued for Black self-defense: “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts a hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion. In fact, that’s the old-time religion.... Preserve your life, it’s the best thing you’ve got. And if you’ve got to give it up, let it be even-steven.”13
Technically, Malcolm X was only amplifying the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and indeed always prefaced any of his speeches with the phrase “Elijah Muhammad teaches....” But Malcolm X had turned these ideas into an indictment of the system, increasingly breaking out of the straitjacket of the NOI. While Muhammad shunned politics, Malcolm was becoming more political. One Muslim complained, “It was Malcolm who injected the political concept of ‘Black nationalism’ into the Black Muslim movement, which...was essentially religious in nature.”14 Aware that the growing politicization of the movement was having an effect on the NOI, including its leading spokesperson, Elijah Muhammad had taken mea-sures to reassert his control. A police attack on the Nation in Los Angeles in 1962 drove home the bankruptcy of the NOI’s politics. In April 1962, a Black Muslim had been killed and several wounded by the Los Angeles police department. The NOI preached self-defense, and the police murder entailed taking retaliatory action. Malcolm X immediately flew out to Los Angeles to direct the Nation of Islam’s response. “A campaign in defense of the Los Angeles victims and around the issue of police brutality could, if skillfully and boldly conducted, forge bonds of solidarity and unity between Muslims and non-Muslim Negroes strong enough to discourage or deter government prosecution of the Nation of Islam,” argued George Breitman, editor of several books of Malcolm X’s speeches.15 But this went against the whole approach that Elijah Muhammad advocated, and he “stayed the Black Muslims’ hand.”16 Verbal radicalism, often extreme in its denunciations of whites, was acceptable in an earlier period when members of the NOI were establishing their reputation as opponents of the system. But the explosion of anger among Blacks demanded more than words; it demanded action, and that was one thing Elijah Muhammad would not countenance.
Politics Force a Break with the NOI
Malcolm X’s break with the Nation of Islam finally came in December 1963. Responding to a question from the audience at a meeting in New York City, Malcolm attributed John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the hate and violence produced by a society that whites themselves had created. The “chickens have come home to roost,” Malcolm said. “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” The statement was consistent with the hostility to the U.S. administration that Black Muslim ministers had expressed in the past. Elijah Muhammad did not see it that way, informing Malcolm that “the country loved this man,” and that he would be suspended for ninety days so that “Muslims everywhere can be disassociated from the blunder.”17 Malcolm accepted the suspension without protest, but it soon became clear that the suspension was in fact an expulsion.
Malcolm’s initial assessment of his break with Elijah Muhammad is interesting because it underscored the fact that he was not yet fully conscious that he had come to express a profoundly different political viewpoint from the Nation of Islam. Malcolm still considered himself a loyal member until late February 1964. He initially explained the split by saying, “Mr. Muhammad and I are not together today only because of envy and jealousy.”18 But while this is certainly true, it was only symptomatic of the fundamentally different relationship that he was developing to the Black struggle. As he put it:
If I harbored any personal disappointment whatsoever, it was that privately I was convinced that our Nation of Islam could be an even greater force in the American Black man’s overall struggle—if we engaged in more action. By that, I mean that I thought privately that we should have amended, or relaxed, our general non-engagement policy. I felt that, wherever Black people committed themselves, in the Little Rocks and the Birminghams and other places, militantly disciplined Muslims should also be there—for all the world to see, and respect, and discuss.
It could be heard increasingly in the Negro communities: “Those Muslims talk tough, but they never do anything, unless somebody bothers Muslims.” I moved around among outsiders more than most other Muslim officials. I felt the very real potentiality that, considering the mercurial moods of the Black masses, this labeling of the Muslims as “talk only” could see us, powerful as we were, one day suddenly separated from the Negroes’ frontline struggle.19
On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X formally announced his break with the Nation of Islam. The Black Muslim movement, he said, “had gone as far as it can because it was too sectarian and too inhibited.”20
I am prepared to co-operate in local civil rights actions in the South and elsewhere and shall do so because every campaign for specific objectives can only heighten the political consciousness of the Negroes and intensify their identification against white society....
There is no use deceiving ourselves. Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem.21
Malcolm went on to criticize the leadership of the civil rights movement:
I shall also tell them that what has been called the “Negro revolution” in the United States is a deception practiced upon them, because they have only to examine the failure of this so-called revolution to produce any positive results in the past year.
I shall tell them what a real revolution means—the French Revolution, the American Revolution, Algeria, to name a few. There can be no revolution without bloodshed, and it is nonsense to describe the civil rights movement in America as a revolution.22
In order to become involved in the civil rights movement, Malcolm drew the conclusion that he needed to separate politics and religion. The first organization he founded was religious, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. But its aim was to provide a bridge for his supporters in the Black Muslims. In April he explained:
It’s true we’re Muslims and our religion is Islam, but we don’t mix our religion with our politics and our economics and our social and civil activities—not any more. We keep our religion in our mosque. After our religious services are over, then as Muslims we become involved in political action, economic action and social and civic action. We become involved with anybody, anywhere, anytime and in any manner that’s designed to eliminate the evils, the political, economic and social evils that are afflicting the people in our community.23
In the same speech he described himself as an adherent of Black nationalism, which he defined in these terms: “[W]e should control the economy of our community. Why should white people be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks in our community? Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man?”24 He added, “The social philosophy of Black nationalism only means that we have to get together and remove the evils, the vices, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our community.”25
From Black Nationalism to Third Worldism
Soon after this speech Malcolm was to take the first of two trips to Africa. These trips had an important impact on his ideas. He met with several important African heads of state—including Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt—and was influenced by the ideas of “third worldism.” In general terms, “third worldism” was the view that the world was dominated by two superpowers—the USA and the USSR—and that the developing countries of the world represented an independent alternative. A defining moment for third worldism was the conference of non-aligned nations held in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. When Malcolm X returned to New York, he announced the formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), modeled after the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which brought together the different African heads of state. The OAAU was a Black nationalist organization that sought to build community organizations, schools, Black enterprises, and voter registration campaigns to ensure community control of Black politicians.
After his visit to Africa, Malcolm began to argue that the Black struggle in the United States was part of an international struggle, one that he connected to the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. “It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture,” he argued.26 He also began to argue in favor of socialism. Referring to the African states, he argued:
[A]ll of the countries that are emerging today from under the shackles of colonialism are turning towards socialism. I don’t think it’s an accident. Most of the countries that were colonial powers were capitalist countries, and the last bulwark of capitalism today is America. It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism. And if you find one and you happen to get that person into a conversation and they have a philosophy that makes you sure they don’t have this racism in their outlook, usually they’re socialists or their political philosophy is socialism.27
In connecting the struggle against racism with capitalism and imperialism, Malcolm abandoned his previous attitude toward whites: “In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again—as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a Black man.”28 On another occasion he said:
We will work with anyone, with any group, no matter what their color is, as long as they are genuinely interested in taking the type of steps necessary to bring an end to the injustices that Black people in this country are afflicted by. No matter what their color is, no matter what their political, economic or social philosophy is, as long as their aims and objectives are in the direction of destroying the vulturous system that has been sucking the blood of Black people in this country, they’re all right with us.29
He no longer defined the struggle for Black liberation as a racial conflict. “We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American Negro is part of the rebellion against the oppression and colonialism which has characterized this era,” he said. “It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white, or as purely an American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiters.”30
While Malcolm no longer believed all whites were the enemy, he maintained the need for separate all-Black organization: “Whites can help us, but they can’t join us. There can be no Black-white unity until there is first some Black unity. There can be no workers’ solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity. We cannot think of uniting with others, until we have first united ourselves.”31 But Malcolm’s new conception of the struggle also led him to question his previous understanding of Black nationalism. In January 1965, Malcolm answered the question, “How do you define Black nationalism?” in the following terms:
I used to define Black nationalism as the idea that the Black man should control the economy of his community, the politics of his community, and so forth.
But when I was in Africa in May, in Ghana, I was speaking with the Algerian ambassador who is extremely militant and is a revolutionary in the true sense of the word.... When I told him that my political, social and economic philosophy was Black nationalism, he asked me very frankly, well, where did that leave him? Because he was white. He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all appearances he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory of Black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where does that leave revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, and Mauritania? So he showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries, dedicated to overthrowing the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary.
So, I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my definition of Black nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the problems confronting our people as Black nationalism? And if you notice, I haven’t been using the expression for several months. But I still would be hard pressed to give a specific definition of the overall philosophy, which I think is necessary for the liberation of Black people in this country.32
Political Trajectory
During this period Malcolm’s political ideas were evolving rapidly—a development cut short by his death. Malcolm X was assassinated before he could fully develop his views on a series of political topics. Some socialists, such as George Breitman (then a member of the Socialist Workers Party), argued that Malcolm was moving toward revolutionary socialism at the time of his death. This idea, however, was more a reflection of the SWP’s understanding of the relation between Black nationalism and socialism than of Malcolm’s own ideas. According to Breitman, Malcolm was
a Black nationalist plus a social revolutionist, or in the process of becoming one.
Socialists should be the last to be surprised at such a development. We have for some time been stressing the tendency of nationalism to grow over into and become merged with socialism; we have seen just that transformation occur in Cuba with Castro and his movement, which began as nationalist. We have argued against many opponents that the logical outcome of Black nationalism in a country like ours is to reach the most advanced, most radical social and political conclusions.33
Leaving aside the relationship between Black nationalism and socialism, which I will discuss later, Breitman’s assessment of Malcolm X is too one-sided. While it is clear that Malcolm’s political ideas were on the whole moving to the left, there is little evidence that he was adopting revolutionary socialist politics. His idea of socialism did not involve working-class self-emancipation and workers’ power, but rather saw socialism as synonymous with national independence and economic development. His uncritical stance toward the newly independent African regimes actually blunted the edge of some of his earlier formulations. The complete absence of any concept of class in his assessment of the African regimes was mirrored in his advocacy of cross-class alliances among Blacks in the United States. His willingness to engage in electoral politics and his advocacy of “community control” were by no means, as later developments would prove, necessarily a challenge to the system.
The absence of class politics in Malcolm’s ideas meant that while he understood the need for “allies,” he did not look to Black—or white—workers as the agency for change. He therefore never saw the need to build a revolutionary organization that would attempt to overcome racial divisions, instead advocating building a broad-based all-Black organization.
In answer to the question “Can there be any revolutionary change in America while the hostility between Black and white working classes exists? Can Negroes do it alone?” Malcolm answered:
Yes. They’ll never do it with working-class whites. The history of America is that working-class whites have been just as much against not only working Negroes, but all Negroes, period, because all Negroes are working-class within the caste system. The richest Negro is treated like a working-class Negro. There never has been any good relationship between the working-class Negro and the working-class whites...[and] there can be no worker solidarity until there’s first some Black solidarity. There can be no white/Black solidarity until there’s first some Black solidarity. We have got to get our problems solved first and then if there’s anything left to work on the white man’s problems, good, but I think one of the mistakes Negroes make is this worker solidarity thing. There’s no such thing—it didn’t even work in Russia.34
It is impossible to predict how Malcolm’s politics would have developed had he lived. In the end, he was still a Black nationalist, but had developed ideas that put him squarely on the left of the Black nationalist movement. His hostility to the system and the twin capitalist parties, his commitment to end racism, his identification with anti-imperialism, and his call to struggle “by any means necessary” represented an enormous advance in the ideas of the time. Gunned down as he was about to address a meeting at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, New York, Malcolm X had become one of the most important radical Black figures in the United States, and his influence was growing, especially among younger Blacks. His death was therefore welcomed by defenders of the system, both Black and white. The New York Times editorial for February 22 read:
Malcolm X had the ingredients for leadership, but his ruthless and fanatical belief in violence not only set him apart from the responsible leaders of the civil rights movement and the overwhelming majority of Negroes. It also marked him for notoriety, and for a violent end....
Malcolm X’s life was strangely and pitifully wasted. But this was because he did not seek to fit into society or into the life of his own people. He could not even come to terms with his fellow Black extremists. The world he saw through those horn-rimmed glasses of his was distorted and dark. But he made it darker still with his exaltation of fanaticism.
Yesterday someone came out of that darkness that he spawned, and killed him.35
The Times assessment was shared by Black opponents of Malcolm X. Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, told the press, “He seems to have taken weapons as his god. Therefore we couldn’t tolerate a man like that. He preached war. We preach peace.”36 Carl T. Rowan, a syndicated Black columnist, described him as “an ex-convict, ex-dope peddler who became a racial fanatic.... A Black who preached segregation and race hatred.”37 The social democrat Bayard Rustin, associate of Martin Luther King, Jr., added to this chorus in March 1965, “Now that he is dead, we must resist the temptation to idealize Malcolm X, to elevate charisma to greatness.” Later, he added, “Malcolm is not a hero of the movement, he is a tragic victim of the ghetto.”38
The real tragedy, of course, is that Malcolm X was gunned down just as he was beginning to “think for himself,” as he put it, and to express a radical program for Black liberation. His premature death and the subsequent suppression and decline of the Black movement have made it easier for second-rate reformists to claim Malcolm as theirs. But anyone who listens to Malcolm’s speeches or reads any of his writings can be in no doubt as to his trajectory, which is summarized well in his famous “Ballot or the Bullet” speech, given April 3, 1964, in Cleveland:
I’m not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I’m not a student of much of anything. I’m not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican, and I don’t even consider myself an American....
Well, I am one who doesn’t believe in deluding myself. I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in American doesn’t make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn’t need any legislation, you wouldn’t need any amendments to the Constitution, you wouldn’t be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now....
No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the twenty-two million Black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the twenty-two million Black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver—no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.39