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<font size=3>From: Grace Boggs <glbg@sbcglobal.net><br><br>
<br>
LET’S TALK ABOUT MALCOLM X <br>
By Grace Lee Boggs <br>
Michigan Citizen, Feb. 18-24, 2007 <br><br>
<br>
Forty-two years ago, on February 21. 1965, Malcolm X was gunned
down at the Audubon Ballroom in New York. <br><br>
At his funeral Ossie Davis eulogized him as “Our black shining
prince.” Two years later dozens of poets testified to
his impact on our lives in “For Malcolm,” published by Broadside
Press. <br><br>
“He opened us/who was a key,” wrote Gwendolyn Brooks. <br><br>
Today most young people in their teens and 20s know nothing about
Malcolm, while older folks who refer to him reverentially are
not sure why. <br><br>
For a brief period in 1992, after Spike Lee made the film with Denzel
Washington starring as Malcolm, a lot of young folks
walked around in X caps and T-shirts, thinking that Malcolm X meant
Malcolm the Tenth. <br><br>
I believe that we could all benefit by intergenerational
discussions about Malcolm, including those who knew him
personally or heard him speak at a meeting or on TV, those
who have only read his autobiography, and those who don’t even know
or care that he lived. <br><br>
Who was this man who, as Ossie Davis put it in the Preface to “For
Malcolm,” had been a criminal, an addict, a pimp and a prisoner; a
racist and a hater who really believed the white man was a devil?
Why was he able to keep snatching our lies away? <br><br>
Was “by all means necessary” the only thing he stood for? Do
we have to choose between him and MLK? Or do we need to
snatch those lies away in order to begin building the new world that
is now both necessary and possible? <br><br>
I think of Malcolm as a very gentle person who was constantly
transforming himself, constantly creating and recreating himself as a
more socially responsible, more loving human being. Recognizing how
far he had come, always conscious of how he (and reality) were
still changing, Malcolm had the kind of humility and
practiced the kind of dialectical thinking that revolutionary
leaders need. That is why his Autobiography is so fascinating. <br><br>
For example, I recall a meeting that Max Stanford, Pat Robinson, Bill
Worthy, Jimmy and I had with him in a Harlem lunchroom in the
spring of 1964. <br><br>
We had arranged the meeting because we felt that since his break with Mr.
Muhammed and the Nation, Malcolm needed time to reorient himself. So we
asked him to come to Detroit to work with us. I was struck by
the seriousness with which Malcolm considered the proposal, but turned it
down because he felt that at that stage in his personal and political
development he needed to travel to Africa and the Middle East. <br><br>
Another example is his conversation with Jan Carew, with whom he stayed
in London two weeks before his assassination. Carew’s account of their
conversation in Ghosts in our Blood should be required reading for
everyone who believes that “by all means necessary” is all that Malcolm
stood for (just as MLK’s speeches in the last three years of his life
should be required reading for everyone who believes that “I have a
dream” is all that King stood for). <br><br>
Carew begins the conversation by describing himself as a Pan Africanist,
a Black Marxist and a nationalist. To which Malcolm replies: <br><br>
“I’m a Muslim and a revolutionary and I’m learning more about political
theories as the months go by. The only Marxist group in America
that offered me a platform was the Socialist Workers Party. I respect
them and they respect me.. The Communists, with the exception of
the Cuban Communists, have gone out of their way to attack me, If a
mixture of nationalism and Marxism makes the Cubans fight the way they do
and makes the Vietnamese stand up so resolutely to the might of America
and its European and other lapdogs, then there must be something to it.
But my Organization of African American Unity is based in Harlem and
we’ve got to creep before we walk and walk before we run.” <br>
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