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Essay Subject: Examines life, career & political & personal development of assassinated black leader & his role as symbol of pride in black community.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines life, career & political & personal development of assassinated black leader & his role as symbol of pride in black community. Paper Introduction: On February 26, 1965, a breakaway member of the Black Muslim movement was preparing to deliver a speech at the Audobon auditorium in Harlem. As he stepped out onto the podium to speak, a disturbance broke out in the audience. Amid the disorder three gunmen--by some unconfirmed reports, there were more--reached the stage and opened fire on the speaker (Perry, 1991, pp. 366-67). When the firing ended, their target had been hit by 16 shotgun pellets and pistol rounds (Lord and Thornton, 1992, p. 84). He died almost instantly. The slain speaker was Malcolm X, and the assassins were Black Muslims. Though conspiracy theories implicating whites, some including the FBI, have continued to revolve around the events in the Audobon, no credible evidence for such conspiracies has ever been found. Whether the assassination was ordered by Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. By 1992, for example, sales of the Autobiography ofMalcolm X had increased 3 percent over their 1989 level (Lord andThornton, 1992, p. 166-7 ). Barrytown, NY: Station Hill.----------------------- 1 That paragraph is deliberate, of course; it's just to displaya bit more of the slang that was used by everyone I respected as "hip"in those days. Upon his release, he became a member of the BlackMuslim organization, and changed his name to Malcolm X. They brought markedly differentperspectives to the problems of American race relations and African-American liberation. Yet a generation after his death, Malcolm X occupies a uniqueposition within the African-American community as a prophet, martyr, andsymbol of pride. Why has Malcolm X achieved such posthumous standing? And in no time at all, I was talking the slang like alifelong hipster (Malcolm X and Haley, 1964, p. In his Afrocentric portrayal of history, whites were a diabolicalrace created some thousands of years ago by a renegade black scientist; insome formulations of his doctrine, the reign of the whites was to end after7, years, sometime in the twentieth century (McCartney, 1992, pp. The autobiography of Malcolm X.New York: Grove Press. . Among these, Malcolm X might appearto be a somewhat unlikely figure to have been taken up by the African-American community as its leading martyr figure of the age. It is true that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were notclose, personally or politically. His formal education ended with theeighth grade. His father, Earl Little, was an activist inMarcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, an early black-nationalist organization which held that African-Americans should establishan independent state (Perry, 1991, p. 94-99). 2). New York: Free Press. By the late 195 s, Malcolm X was the rising star in the Black Muslimmovement, becoming prominent enough to be featured in Mike Wallace'shostile 1959 documentary (Lord and Thornton, 1992, p. 366-67). But the vastly expanded sales of his autobiography reflect a broadinterest in his actual ideas. Malcolm became a member of the Harlem demimonde, selling marijuana,engaging in petty burglaries, working the "numbers" (gambling) racket. 9).However, consistant with their separatist outlook, Elijah Muhammad and theBlack Muslims preached African-American self-discipline, self-sufficiency,and education. Mainstream opportunities were limited for a youngblack man with limited education, but opportunities were open to a youngblack man of great native intelligence, if he were willing to skirt theedge of the law or go beyond it. His works, and memorabilia associated with him, are farmore sought-after by African-Americans than are works or memorabiliacommemorating Martin Luther King. He attempted to read books, but found themnearly incomprehensible. . And the same experience came when I studied that. 173). 76). The key element in the resurgent interest in Malcolm X may be a sensethat he represented not only black anger, but also, and even morecrucially, the search for black self-empowerment. . Hedied almost instantly. Yet, on a political level, in some respects they worked in tandem,rather like the "good cop, bad cop" method of interrogation: By frightening whites and by making many of them feel that MartinLuther King's nonviolent approach was a blessing in disguise, Malcolmhelped create the political climate that spurred the passage of thecivil rights bills of 1964 and 1965. U.S. Eventually Malcolm X became so voracious a reader that, after prisonlights-out, he would read by the light from an outside corridor thatfiltered under his cell door (Malcolm X and Haley, 1964, p. There he discovered that Islam, aspracticed by the world's Muslims, had little in common with any doctrine ofblack separatism. T. 37 -74). Malcolm X, and Haley, A. 173. Moreover, while Loury's picture might be true of the Malcolm X thatalarmed Mike Wallace's white viewers in 1959, it is manifestly untrue ofthe Malcolm X who was gunned down by Black Muslims in 1965. Within a few years, however, as related earlier, this lifestyle endedabruptly with Malcolm's arrest, conviction for burglary, and imprisonment.His self-education in prison has already been described, but it was in parttriggered by his exposure to the ideas of Elijah Muhammad, founder of theBlack Muslims. (1991). Inthis light, it is worth giving critical consideration to the criticism ofMalcolm X, and of the revival of interest in Malcolm X in the African-American community, as voiced by Glenn Loury, a contemporary blackneoconservative intellectual. Loury, G. The nature of thisstruggle can best be expressed in Malcolm X's own words, in hisAutobiography of Malcolm X (1964), co-written with Alex Haley. This was adecisive break from the bitter doctrine of Elijah Muhammad, and the ensuingstruggle for power within the Black Muslim movement led directly to MalcolmX's assassination. There is an element of truth in this. The legacy of MalcolmX. The last stage of Malcolm X's journey from homeboy to blackseparatist to Muslim universalist was thus tragically abbreviated. Yet itis perhaps crucial to understanding Malcolm X's enduring significance. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn'tremember . . 76-84. References Lord, L., & Thornton, J. He was, afterall, killed not by white racists or a white authority structure, but byfellow African-Americans. The Harlem Renaissance of the 192 s had endedwith the Great Depression, but Harlem remained the cultural center ofAfrican-American life. 84). The two men were rivals within the black community, having very little incommon. (1992, November 23). Not only did itgive him perspectives unimagineable to the "homeboy"--his own term--that hehad been, but it was something he mastered in his own right, not anyone'sgift. Whether theassassination was ordered by the Black Muslim leadership also remainsunproven, though there is strong reason for suspecting that this was thecase (Perry, 1991, pp. Though conspiracy theories implicating whites, some including theFBI, have continued to revolve around the events in the Audobon, nocredible evidence for such conspiracies has ever been found. No doubt at the penumbra of the Malcolm X phenomenon are peoplewho know little about him but simply have bought a Malcolm X cap or T-shirt. His prestige was undoubtedly amplifiedby the 1992 motion picture directed by Spike Lee, but Lee's decision tomake a major film about Malcolm X reflects an upsurge of interest that wasalready taking hold. But which Malcolm X is the relevant one in today's African-Americancommunity? Like many other rural African-Americans, he made his way toHarlem in his late teens. Philadelphia: Temple University. He came back from Mecca determined to re-orient the Black Muslimmovement away from black racism and toward orthodox Islam. When the firing ended, their target had been hit by 16shotgun pellets and pistol rounds (Lord and Thornton, 1992, p. Ashe stepped out onto the podium to speak, a disturbance broke out in theaudience. A further spiritual transformation, however, awaited Muhammad X. Later, this would be in his own view a fundamental differencebetween himself and Martin Luther King: whereas he saw King as asking whitemen for justice, Malcolm X was convinced that black men had to assertjustice by and for themselves. I was so fascinated that I went on--I copied the dictionary'snext page. On February 26, 1965, a breakaway member of the Black Muslim movementwas preparing to deliver a speech at the Audobon auditorium in Harlem. His mother, Louisa or Louise, was of West Indian extraction,from the island of Grenada. Elijah Muhammad, the son of a rural George preacher, had bythe 193 s developed a doctrine that had little in common with orthodoxIslam. In the196 s, Malcolm X's image was that of a man who frightened whites ratherthan reaching out to them. As early as 1959, when he first came to thewidespread notice of white America, it was in the context of a presentationon "black racism" by Mike Wallace of CBS News (Lord and Thornton, 1992, p.76). The slain speaker was Malcolm X, and the assassins were BlackMuslims. 285-86). Under the influence of this movement, Malcolm Little beganhis prison education. Loury suggests that Malcolm X is a falselight: It is a telling commentary on the moral confusion of today'sorthodoxy that so many young blacks see in Malcolm X and Martin LutherKing a legitimate polarity of philosophic alternatives . News and World Report, pp. In the late194 s, Malcolm Little (his birth name) was in prison, convicted for astring of burglaries in 1945 and 1946 (Perry, 1991, pp. Thus, a strong element of blacknationalism was present in Malcolm's family background. A facileexplanation would be that, far more than, say, Martin Luther King, hesymbolizes a prevalent attitude of black rage and frustration 3 yearsafter the Civil Rights era. In1964, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca. But it is to the radicalism of MalcolmX that Afrocentrist, rejectionist rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton lookfor inspiration (Loury, 1995, p. Readers of the Autobiography of Malcolm Xcan trace the evolution of his thinking, and will see that in the endMalcolm X was a martyr for inclusionism, who stood against racism in allits forms. Malcolmprovides very poor guidance. Yet the Black Panthers, who were even more militant in their day,have been largely forgotten. He reached theconclusion that the whiteness he hated and despised was not whiteness perse, but white racism, and by extension all forms of racism. In acelebrated passage, he describes his reaction when he reviewed his effortthe following morning: I'd written words that I never knew were in the world.Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many ofthese words meant. 57). However, whatever their differences in style andoutlook, Malcolm X effectively reinforced Martin Luther King as a politicalactor. 3). Malcolm: The life of a man who changed blackAmerica. Hisleisure was spent in the hip Harlem nightclub subculture: Shorty would take me to groovy, frantic scenes indifferent chicks' and cats' pads, where with the lights and the juke downmellow, everybody blew gage and juiced back and jumped. Historically, as noted earlier, this is incorrect or at leastincomplete. He alsoestimated that he had written a million words while in prison (Malxom X andHaley, 1964, p. Little in the first half of his life, however, indicated how deeplythose ideas might have taken root. One day he checked a dictionary out of the prisonlibrary, and spent the rest of that day copying a page out of it. Why should he have become the focus of so much contemporaryinterest? The Black Muslim movement was thus anti-white and anti-integrationist; it is the direct progenitor of the Nation of Islamorganization associated with Louis Farrakhan (McCartney, 1992, p. In fact, without Malcolm's help,King and his associates might not have succeeded in their arduouscampaign to lift the yoke of legally sanctioned racial oppression (Perry,1991, pp. Withevery succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and eventsfrom history (Malcolm X and Haley, 1964, p. In Mecca, he had a new experience of racial brotherhood: During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, Ihave eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, andslept in the same bed (or on the same rug)--while praying tothe same God--with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest ofblue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was thewhitest of white (Malcolm X and Haley, 1964, p. McCartney, J. (1964). 78). 345). I met chicks whowere as fine as May wine, and cats who were hip to all happenings. Black Power ideologies: An essay inAfrican-American political thought. Perry, B. Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska (Perry,1991, p. Malcolm considered himself streetwise, and was so regarded by friendsand fellow prisoners, but he discovered that there was a kind of knowledgehe had never known existed. His self-education was relevant in two respects. One by one from the inside out: Essays andreviews on race and responsibility in America. Many other black leaders were to be gunned down in the second half ofthe 196 s and early 197 s, from Martin Luther King, assassinated by a whitesupremacist (again with unproven allegations of conspiracy), to militantBlack Panthers gunned down by police. C. (1992). 76). . At the end ofhis life, Malcolm X had repudiated black separatism and racial hatred, andembraced orthodox Muslim teachings of universal brotherhood. (1995). Amid the disorder three gunmen--by some unconfirmed reports,there were more--reached the stage and opened fire on the speaker (Perry,1991, pp. In the firsthalf of the 196 s, he embodied the radical wing of the Civil Rightsmovement, as Martin Luther King embodied the moderate, integrationist wing. 175). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.