What Would Malcolm Do?
14 Resources For Understanding the Life and Legacy of Malcolm X Today
#RememberMalcolm — 50 Years Later
1. Read or Re-Read the Autobiography of Malcolm X
A true classic of Decolonial, Muslim and American Literature the autobiography of Malcolm X has been celebrated throughout the world as a testament to the possibility of transformation in the most dire of situations. While it is not without controversy because of the three chapters that Alex Haley left out of the book about Malcolm’s vision for Pan-African solidarity at the end of his life, it is required reading for all those who want to be introduced to Malcolm’s life, struggles, and transformations.
2. Watch His Speeches and the 1972 Documentary “Malcolm X”
To know who Malcolm was you have to see his passion, his gentleness, and his character, things that shine through most beautifully in his speeches and interviews as seen in the series of television clips and speeches above. You can also find an entire catalogue of his speeches on Spotify and the collected speeches from the last three weeks of his life in the book February, 1965: The Final Speeches. One of the most celebrated documentaries on the life of Malcolm, following the narrative of Alex Haley’s autobiography, which features almost exclusively Malcolms own words is the 1972 documentary narrated by James Earl Jones, “Malcolm X.”
3. Read this to your children and for yourself: “Malcolm Little, The Boy Who Grew Up to Be Malcolm X”
The Malcolm that most of us imagine is the Malcolm of Harlem and the Malcolm who traveled the world, but Malcolm Little, written by Malcolms daughter Ilyasah Shabazz. This beautifully illustrated book opens in 1925 in Malcolm’s birthplace of Omaha, Nebraska with his early family life and his love for his parents and his siblings. This book is a moving picture of the innocence of a child, the scourge of White Supremacy on Black families. This book is important for all children to read and is ultimately a powerful story of the hopes and dreams of a child despite the most difficult circumstances.
4. Malcolm’s Legacy Today — Sohail Daulatzai’s “Black Star, Crescent Moon”
Focusing mostly on the last 50 years since Malcolm’s murder, Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America is mandatory reading for our generation to see the presence of Malcolm’s vision across the social movements, cinema, literature and Hip Hop which have made up many of our political lives. Taking root in Malcolms conversion to Islam and his Third World internationalism what Daulatzai calls the Muslim International,
“Having shaped and been shaped by U.S.-based Black liberation struggles and Third World decolonization in the post-World War II era… is measured by what Aime Cesaire has called “the compass of suffering,” connecting geographies of violence and shared territories of struggle against racial terror, global capital, and war.”
Focusing on Malcolm X’s political vision at the end of his life Black Star, Crescent Moon makes clear that for, Malcolm Islam was “an alternative racial compass,” that created new possibilities for global unity and solidarities between Black Muslims in the United States and Muslims and other Third World peoples throughout the world. The possibilty these solidarites created led Malcolm in 1964 to establish both the Muslim Mosque Inc. and the Organization for Afro-American Unity. As he would state about these two organizations:
“The first step has been taken, brother sand sisters, since Garvey died, to actually establish contact between the twenty-two million Black Americans with our brothers and sisters back home [and it] was done two organizations. Done first by Muslim Mosque, which gives us direct ties to our brothers and sisters in Asia and Africa who are Muslims. You know you’ve got to unite with them, because there are 700 million Muslims. So as Muslims, we united with our Muslim brothers in Africa and Asia. And as members of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, we set on a platform to unite our people on this continent with our people on the mother continent… This has been the purpose of the OAAU and the Muslim Mosque: to give us direct links, direct contact, direct communication and cooperation with our brothers and sisters all over the earth. And once we are successful in uniting ourselves with our people all over the world, it puts us in a position where we are no longer a minority who can be abused and walked upon. We become part of the majority.”
Today Muslims make up nearly one-quarter of humanity and people of color will be the majority population in the United States in the next thirty years, so in the twenty-first century we see clearer then ever the importance of solidifying the solidarities of this global super majority if we can build the unity that Malcolm was calling for in his life.
5. Take a Closer at the Religious Life of Malcolm X
Of the canon of works about the life of Malcolm X, there is perhaps no more fascinating book then On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X by Louis A. DeCaro, Jr. From the religious and political upbringing of his youth to his life as a minister in the nation of Islam, ultimately to his conversion to traditional Islam, DeCaro tracks each of these transformations with a depth that you can find in no other book. There is no greater quote about these religious transformations then the words that Malcolm wrote after he went on Hajj in 1964,
“I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experiences and knowledge unfolds it.”
6. Passing the Baton — The Legacy of El Hajj Malik Shabazz For Muslims Today
In these two short films from the Muslim nonprofit Ta’leef Collective featuring Imam Zaid Shakir and Dr. Umar Faruq Abdullah, two of the most prominent leaders in the American Muslim community today, discuss the importance of Malcolm’s legacy as a Muslim. As Imam Zaid was told by Malcolm’s wife, Betty Shabazz this is something that is very important to his legacy when she stated to him explicitly,
“The Nationalists have claimed Malcolm. The Socialists have claimed Malcolm. Now, it’s time for you Muslims to claim Malcolm… because he was a believer… he was a believer.”
Imam Zaid and Dr. Umar’s own journeys to Islam, like millions of other converts to Islam throughout the world, are tied to Malcolm’s life, and the love they have for him is shown beautifully in these films. His status here is of the highest rank as he is often called amongst Muslims a Wali (a friend of God/ Saint) and a Martyr, and his legacy was passed on to the Muslim community as Imam Zaid states as tears role down his face, through his blood:
“People before us passed us this baton and in the 20th century it was a hard leg of the race. It was a time of colonization at the beginning of the century, it was a time of nationalist, secularist, socialist, and communist regimes who inherited the states that were carved out by the colonizers. There was open war on Muslim culture and customs, beliefs were denigrated and ridiculed, it was difficult to be a Muslim, but despite all of those hardships that baton was put in our hand. Are we going to drop it or are we going to pass it on? If we’re gonna pass it on, you’re gonna have to run with strength. Malcolm ran with strength, Malcolm ran with strength and Malcolm was one of the people that passed us that baton, and he passed it on with his blood. Not with his words, with his blood. You gonna drop it or you gonna get in the race, run hard and pass it on to those after you? Malcolm through his struggle, through his effort, through his sacrifice, was a purified soul, and because he was a purified soul he could follow the truth wherever it led him.”
7. The Legacy of Two Giants Written by Another, James Cone’s “Martin, Malcolm and America: A Dream, or a Nightmare”
James Cone of the Union Theological Seminary is considered one of the great Christian theologians of the 20th century and one of the founders of Black Liberation Theology. Cone has influenced generations of Christian, African American, and a multi-faith tapestry of religious thinkers. His book Martin, Malcolm and America: A Dream, or a Nightmare is considered by many to be a classic.
Ossie Davis who eulogized Malcolm X, said of the book,
“Martin & Malcolm & America I bequeath to my children and grandchildren as the cornerstone of their spiritual inheritance. This book sums up me and my generation. It is about my life as a Black man and as an American. Thank God it has finally come.”
8. Betty Shabazz and A Family History of Malcolm X
There are many questions left unanswered about Malcolm’s life and family from his autobiography and with Betty Shabazz: Surviving Malcolm, Seventh Child: A Family History of Malcolm X, and Growing Up X by Malcolm’s daughter Ilyasha Shabaz you get the full picture of the history of Malcolm’s family all the way from the shores of Africa up to the life and struggle of his wife and children after his murder in 1965.
When I started reading Betty Shabazz, Surviving Malcolm I was truly upset at myself for not having read it years ago. To understand the true depths of who Betty Shabazz was, and what Malcolm’s death meant to his family you have to read this book. One of the most powerful sections of the book for me was t know that just one month after Malcolm’s assassination in March of 1965, Betty went on Hajj. Just as people celebrated the 50th anniversary of Malcolms Hajj last year, we hope that the same will happen to celebrate the 50th annivesary of the Hajj of Betty Shabazz.
9. Malcolm’s legacy today #BlackLivesMatter
If you look at the set of circumstances surrounding Malcolm’s murder from infiltrators on his security team, to constant surveillance, the six years of his life that he spent in prison and his ultimate assassination. These same set of circumstances are the realities African American communities are fighting against throughout this country from mass incarceration, police killings of unarmed African Americans, mass surveillance, FBI infiltration and extra judicial murder. 50 years later as the United States exploded with protests throughout the country in response to the non-indictments in the police murders of Michael Brown and Eric Gardner there is one quote by Malcolm in particular that should be reflected on in our moment:
“Whenever any black man in America shows signs of an uncompromising attitude, against the injustices that he experiences daily, and shows no tendency whatsoever to compromise with it, then the American press characterizes him as a radical, as an extremist someone who’s irresponsible, or as a rabble-rouser or someone who doesn’t rationalize in dealing with the problem. That as long as a white man does it, it’s alright, a black man is supposed to have no feelings. But when a black man strikes back he’s an extremist, he’s supposed to sit passively and have no feelings, be nonviolent, and love his enemy no matter what kind of attack, verbal or otherwise, he’s supposed to take it. But if he stands up in any way and tries to defend himself, then he’s an extremist.”
10. Malcolm’s Global Influence — “Malcolm X at Oxford Union”
For all that Malcolm means to African-American’s, Muslims in America and other communities of color in the United States, his message has resonated throughout the world in ways that he probably could not have imagined. In one of his final international public speeches, recorded and broadcast throughout the world on the BBC in December of 1964, Malcolm’s debate at Oxford Union is one of the most comprehensive glimpse’s into the political vision he had developed in the final year of his life.
This speech is the subject of two recent books if you are interested in going deeper: Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era by Saladin Ambar and The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union: A Transatlantic Story of Antiracist Protest by Stephen Tuck. The full text of the speech as well as Audio and Video of the speech are embedded below.
11. So Many Malcolm books to choose from
There is an entire canon of work that is continually coming out about the life and political thought of Malcolm X. In the last ten years alone there have been countless books and book chapters written about his life, some of which include: The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X, Malcolm X: A Historical Reader, Islam and the Black American by Sherman Jackson, Islamic Liberation Theology by Hamid Dabashi, Islam is a Foreign Country by Zareena Grewal, Rebel Music by Hisam Aidi, Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography, The Iconography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and/ as Critical Theory by Reiland Rabaka, Black Cresent by Walter Gomez, The Geography of Malcolm X: Black Radicalism and the Remaking of American Space and Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imagination. The work that garnered the most attention of all of these was Manning Marable’s book, A Life of Reinvention, although it has been critiqued by many in books such as By Any Means Necessary Malcolm X: Real, Not Reinvented and A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X.
12. Malcolm X The FBI File
Malcolm like so many other activists of his age lived under constant government surveillance by the FBI COINTELPRO program. In total, “from March, 1953 forward, shortly after he was released from a Boston prison, the FBI watched every move Malcolm X made. Their files on him totalled more than 3,600 pages, covering every facet of his life.” Collected by Clayborne Carson Malcolm X: The FBI File is a resource to understand government surveillance, one that we can only begin to understand today as movement leaders FBI/ NSA files can no longer be counted by pages but are instead counted by terabytes as nearly everything about us can and in many cases is collected by government surveillance actors.
13. Read the 1964 Diary of Malcolm X
After years of lawsuits keeping this from being published, finally in 2014 Malcolms diary was released. “In 1964, Malcolm X made two trips to Africa and theMiddle East. During those trips, he kept copious notes. This remarkable document, The Diary of Malcolm X El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, 1964, is comprised of those notes, along with editing, annotations, and commentary by editors Herb Boyd and Ilyasah Al-Shabazz. The Diary captures Malcolm X in all his comlexity, reveals some of his trepedations, and above all, reveals his humanity as he encounters a coterie of dignitaries, world leaders, and ordinary people who were mesmerized by his genius as he was in wonder of he often challenging new cultures he experienced from country to country. Readers will discover how significantly the Diary complements his autobiography, at times fillin in the blanks, expanding an incident, and adding context to moments sometimes only mentioned in passing in the autobiography.”
14. #RememberMalcolm 50 Years Later Events
Al-Hajj Malik Shabazz, our beloved leader Malcolm X was murdered on February 21st, 1965. 50 years after Malcolm, his death now longer than his life of 39 years, is a time for us to reflect on where we are as Muslims, and for all people of faith who remember and want to live into his legacy.
This anniversary is being marked by a number of events throughout the country and throughout the world. Including a Black history month speech #RememberMalcolm at Zaytuna College featuring Imam Zaid Shakir, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and Rev. Curtis Flemming. The Muslim ARC put together a conversation called Reclaiming Malcolm:
As well as X Speaks, readings of Malcolm’s final 8 speeches organized by Nsenga Knight:
We are calling for submissions of written and artistic pieces to print this month:
Are we missing events? Tweet us @ummahwide to let us know
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