Malcolm X
Malcolm X (Malcolm Little) (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) (May 19, 1925 - February 21, 1965). Icon of the black power movement. Malcolm X, was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska.
Malcolm Little was the son of a Baptist minister who was an avid supporter of Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association. While living in Omaha, the Little family was often harassed. At one point, the family’s house was set afire.
In 1929, the Little family moved to Lansing, Michigan. While in Michigan, Malcolm’s father was killed -- his body severed in two by a streetcar and his head smashed. In his autobiography, written with Alex Haley, Malcolm asserted that his father may have been killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Malcolm’s mother, stricken by the death of her husband and the demands of providing for the family, was committed to a mental institution.
Leaving school after the eighth grade, Malcolm made his way to New York City, working for a time as a waiter at Smalls Paradise in Harlem. Malcolm began selling and using drugs. He also began to engage in burglary. It was for burglary that Malcolm was sentenced to a ten-year prison term in 1946.
While in prison, Malcolm became acquainted with the Black Muslim sect, then headed by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm soon became a convert to the Nation of Islam. Not long afterwards, Malcolm Little became Malcolm X.
Following his parole in 1952, Malcolm became an outspoken defender of Black Muslim doctrines, accepting the basic argument that evil was an inherent characteristic of the “white man’s Christian world.”
Unlike his mentor Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X sought publicity, making provocative and inflammatory statements to predominantly European American civic groups and college campus audiences. Branding European Americans as “devils,” Malcolm X spoke bitterly of a philosophy of vengeance and “an eye for an eye.” When, in 1963, Malcolm characterized the Kennedy assassination as a case of “chickens coming home to roost,” he was suspended from the Nation of Islam by Elijah Muhammad.
Disillusioned with Elijah Muhammad’s teachings (and with Elijah Muhammad’s personal indiscretions), Malcolm formed his own organizations, the Organization of Afro-American Unity and the Muslim Mosque, Inc. In 1964, Malcolm made a pilgrimage to Islam’s holy city, Mecca. After his experiences in Mecca, Malcolm underwent another spiritual metamorphosis. Malcolm became a more orthodox practitioner of Islam and adopted the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
As a believer in the more orthodox tenets of Islam, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz adopted views that were not popular with other black nationalists, including the view that not all Europeans and European Americans were evil and that Africans and African Americans could make gains by working through established channels.
As a result of his new views, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz became the recipient of death threats. On February 14, 1965, his home was firebombed. His wife and children escaped unharmed. A week later, on February 21, 1965, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was shot and killed at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, while preparing to speak. Three of the men arrested were later identified as members of the Nation of Islam.
As Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz had a profound influence on both African Americans and European Americans. Many African Americans responded to a feeling that he was a man of the people, experienced in the ways of the street rather than the pulpit or the college campus, which traditionally had provided the preponderance of African American leaders. Many young European Americans responded to Malcolm’s blunt, colorful language and unwillingness to retreat in the face of hostility.
During the 1960s, as Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was considered to be a violent fanatic by mainstream America and mainstream Afro-America. Over time, his image as Malcolm X was transformed into one in which the Malcolm X persona became an advocate of self-help, self-defense, and education.
However, the most enduring legacy
may not be the one that is commonly accepted. It should be remembered that just as Malcolm X tried to put his past as Malcolm Little behind so too did El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz try to put his past as Malcolm X behind him. It is important to understand that the man known as Malcolm X was buried under the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was a devout Sunni Muslim who believed in justice and in the brotherhood of man.
Compounding the misunderstanding concerning the legacy of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz is the 1992 theatrical release of a movie directed by Spike Lee, a movie entitled Malcolm X. As titled, the movie Malcolm X is respectful iconolatry of a man who evolved into the more fully developed El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. However, because of the importance of distinguishing historical fact from cinematic myth, some of the historical discrepancies with the movie Malcolm X are discussed here.
The first historical discrepancy centers on the movie's portrayal of Earl Little. In the film, Earl Little is portrayed as a race leader -- a man willing to stand up against European American racists to promote Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. As a defiant African American in a racist America, the film Malcolm X leaves little doubt that European American racists murdered Earl Little.
However, in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was written with Alex Haley’s assistance and was published posthumously, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz paints a far less idealized portrait of his father. As remembered by El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Earl Little was an abusive husband and father who “savagely” beat his children, except for his favored son, Malcolm. As recalled by El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, “I actually believe that as anti-white as my father was, he was subconsciously so afflicted with the white man’s brainwashing of Negroes that he inclined to favor the light one.”
"My father was a big, six-foot-four, very black man. He had only one eye. How he had lost the other one I have never known. He was from Reynolds, Georgia, where he had left school after the third or maybe fourth grade. ... One of the reasons I’ve always felt that my father favored me was that to the best of my remembrance, it was only me that he sometimes took with him to the Garvey U.N.I.A. meetings which he held quietly in people’s homes. ... I noticed how differently they all acted, although sometimes they were the same people who jumped and shouted in church. But in these meetings both they and my father were more intense, more intelligent and down to earth, it made me feel the same way. ... I remember how the meetings always closed with my father saying, several times, and the people chanting after him, “Up, you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will!”" -- From The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Only six at the time of Earl Little’s death in 1931, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz could only remember “a vague commotion, the house filled up with people crying, saying bitterly that the white Black Legion had finally gotten him.”
Much of the movie Malcolm X glamorizes the criminal career of Malcolm Little and the fiery speeches of Malcolm X. Unlike the Autobiography, the movie spends little time reflecting on the significance of the final year in the life of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Instead of focusing on the mature political perspective that El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz developed, the movie Malcolm X emphasizes Malcolm’s cynicism, racial pessimism, and uncritical acceptance of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. The film treats Malcolm’s break with Muhammad as a son’s disillusionment with a morally flawed surrogate father, but Malcolm left the Nation of Islam for political as well as personal reasons. Malcolm’s Autobiography makes it very clear that before Malcolm learned of Elijah Muhammad’s marital infidelities, Malcolm had already become dissatisfied with his leader’s policy of nonengagement, -- a policy which not only prevented members of the Nation of Islam from participating in civil rights protests but even prohibited Nation of Islam members from voting. The blistering verbal attacks that Malcolm X makes on national civil rights leaders are highlighted in the film without showing the ties that El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz made with those same civil rights leaders in the last year of his life.
As the southern civil rights movement grew in scale during 1963, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz came to recognize that Elijah Muhammad’s nonengagement policy was hurting the Nation of Islam’s recruitment efforts in African American communities. Indeed, in the Autobiography, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz admitted his disappointment with the failure of the Nation of Islam in becoming involved in the expanding freedom struggle. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz said, “I felt that, wherever black people committed themselves, 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.’”
One of the more dramatic scenes in the movie underscores the limitations placed upon those in the Nation of Islam but in the manner portrayed is rather misleading. In the film, Malcolm X is shown demanding and getting hospital treatment for a member of the Nation of Islam named Brother Johnson (Johnson Hinton), who was beaten by New York City police in 1957. Although the incident confirms the notion that the Nation of Islam did not engage in militant action unless its members were threatened, Lee stages the event to suggest that the Nation was far more willing to challenge European American authority than it actually was.
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz initially defended Elijah Muhammad’s nonengagement policy and fiercely attacked Martin Luther King, Jr.’s strategy of nonviolent resistance. However, he later recognized that the Nation of Islam offered no real alternative for African American civil rights activists who were then facing vicious European American racists in the South. It was far easier to talk about armed self-defense in Harlem than it ever was to face unarmed Bull Connor’s police dogs in Birmingham, Alabama.
Even though the film ignores this fact, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz knew that the Nation of Islam was not above making deals with the “white devils” when such deals served its leaders’ interests. Near the end of his life, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz admitted that, even while criticizing civil rights activists for working with European American liberals, he once, on Elijah Muhammad’s orders, negotiated a mutual non-interference agreement with Ku Klux Klan leaders in Atlanta.
Although Spike Lee’s film depicts Malcolm’s period of independence from the Nation mainly through scenes of foreboding, such as repeated threatening telephone calls, his final months consisted of much more than waiting for martyrdom. Among the many important episodes from the last year of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz which the film overlooks include (1) the brief meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., at the United States Capitol; (2) the crucial “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech delivered at a symposium sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality; (3) the meeting of the Organization of African Unity and subsequent talks with leaders of Egypt, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, and Uganda; (4) the day long October 1964 meeting in Nairobi with leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the resulting cooperation between SNCC and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s newly formed Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU); and (5) the December 1964 appearance of Fannie Lou Hamer and other Mississippi civil rights activists as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s honored guests at an OAAU meeting in Harlem.
The film shows El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz watching televised scenes of civil rights activities but fails to mention his February 1965 trip to Selma, Alabama, where he addressed young protesters and expressed support for the voting rights struggle. While in Selma, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz met with Coretta Scott King, whose husband was then in jail. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz affirmed his desire to assist King’s voting rights efforts, explaining that if European Americans knew that Malcolm X was the alternative, “It might be easier for them to accept Martin’s proposals.” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s increasing political involvement was further indicated in the weeks before his assassination by the telegram he sent to the head of the American Nazi party: “I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad’s separationists Black Muslim Movement, and if your present racist agitation of our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other Black Americans ... you and your KKK friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation.”
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s political militancy led to increasing governmental interest and escalating threats from members of the Nation of Islam. The new political course caused El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz to attract very powerful and very deadly enemies.
The movie Malcolm X shows various members of the Nation of Islam preparing to kill El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, while also intimating that European American government agents may have also been involved. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz is depicted as being followed, presumably by CIA agents, while on his trip to Mecca and Africa. The movie shows a hidden microphone in El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s New York City hotel room. In the movie, when El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and his wife, Betty, discuss the many threats they had received, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz speculates, “The more I keep thinking about the things that have been happening lately, I’m not at all sure it’s solely the Muslims. I trained them, I know what they can and cannot do, and they can’t do some of the stuff that’s recently been going on.”
It is somewhat ironic that after the assassination of President Kennedy, Malcolm X had remarked that the killing of Kennedy was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. In an oddly reciprocal way, the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. For years as Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz had helped foster a mentality that encouraged members of the Nation of Islam to define other African Americans as race traitors. As Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz espoused an often vicious rhetorical militancy which created an environment where the death of the traitor could be deemed appropriate. Once El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz left the Nation of Islam and began criticizing it, he too became the object for rhetorical vilification. Indeed, one of his former proteges, a certain Louis X (now known as Louis Farrakhan) went so far as to label El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz as a Judas “worthy of death.” Within such a climate of animosity, the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz became almost inevitable.
Despite the historical inaccuracies, the director Spike Lee must be commended for the effort that was involved in developing and producing a movie such as Malcolm X. Indeed, one of the more encouraging trends of the last decade of the twentieth century, was the fact that such stories about the African and African American experience could finally be made. However, while presenting an entertaining story about the life and career of the man known as Malcolm X, the movie ultimately fails to adequately address the seeds of destruction which Malcolm X himself had sown. Additionally, by glamorizing the rebelliousness of Malcolm Little, and the subsequent racist demagoguery of Malcolm X, the meaning of the mature statesmanship of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz is obscured and the true lesson of Malcolm's life -- the true lesson of his “entire” life -- is missed.
Part of the lesson of Malcolm's life, is also found tragically in the story of the family that he left behind. In 1958, Malcolm X married Betty X (nee Betty Jean Sanders) in Lansing, Michigan. The couple had six daughters. Their names were Attalah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah Lumumba, Malaak, and Malikah. After the death of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, his widow, Betty Shabazz, received financial support from a number of benefactors and celebrities. She was able to raise her children in upper class affluence, sending her children to private, predominantly European American schools.
In 1994, Betty Shabazz openly criticized Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, of having been involved in the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Farrakhan denied any involvement and blamed the assassination on the turbulence of the times. Subsequently, in 1995, Qubilah, the daughter of Betty Shabazz and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was implicated in a murder for hire plot to kill Farrakhan. As it turned out, the man that Qubilah had contacted was an undercover law enforcement agent.
Surprisingly, Louis Farrakhan, the target of the murder for hire plot, came to the defense of Qubilah. Farrakhan accused the government of manipulating Qubilah into engaging in the murder for hire plot. Farrakhan even sponsored a fundraiser for Qubilah's legal defense. Farrakhan's actions led to a reconciliation between himself and Betty Shabazz. Betty Shabazz even spoke at the 1995 Million Man March.
Qubilah was not imprisoned for her actions but was ordered to undergo two years of psychological counseling and therapy for her drug addiction and alcohol abuse. During this two year period, Qubilah's son, Malcolm, lived with his grandmother, Betty Shabazz. Malcolm proved to be a rebellious child who resented having to live with his grandmother. In retaliation, on June 1, 1997, Malcolm then twelve years old, set his grandmother's house on fire with his grandmother, Betty Shabazz, in it. On June 23, 1997, Betty Shabazz died from the burns she endured. Malcolm, the namesake grandchild of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was sentenced to eighteen months in juvenile detention for manslaughter.
It cannot be escaped that the one of the lessons of the life of Malcolm X, and of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, is one marked by tragedy. While his militant stance against oppression became an inspiration for many, his embracing of violence as a viable force against oppression also became an indelible part of his legacy, and sadly it is this legacy of violence which continues to manifest itself in African American families and communities to this day.
X, Malcolm see Malcolm X
Little, Malcolm see Malcolm X
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz see Malcolm X
Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik El- see Malcolm X
Compounding the misunderstanding concerning the legacy of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz is the 1992 theatrical release of a movie directed by Spike Lee, a movie entitled Malcolm X. As titled, the movie Malcolm X is respectful iconolatry of a man who evolved into the more fully developed El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. However, because of the importance of distinguishing historical fact from cinematic myth, some of the historical discrepancies with the movie Malcolm X are discussed here.
The first historical discrepancy centers on the movie's portrayal of Earl Little. In the film, Earl Little is portrayed as a race leader -- a man willing to stand up against European American racists to promote Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. As a defiant African American in a racist America, the film Malcolm X leaves little doubt that European American racists murdered Earl Little.
However, in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was written with Alex Haley’s assistance and was published posthumously, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz paints a far less idealized portrait of his father. As remembered by El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Earl Little was an abusive husband and father who “savagely” beat his children, except for his favored son, Malcolm. As recalled by El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, “I actually believe that as anti-white as my father was, he was subconsciously so afflicted with the white man’s brainwashing of Negroes that he inclined to favor the light one.”
"My father was a big, six-foot-four, very black man. He had only one eye. How he had lost the other one I have never known. He was from Reynolds, Georgia, where he had left school after the third or maybe fourth grade. ... One of the reasons I’ve always felt that my father favored me was that to the best of my remembrance, it was only me that he sometimes took with him to the Garvey U.N.I.A. meetings which he held quietly in people’s homes. ... I noticed how differently they all acted, although sometimes they were the same people who jumped and shouted in church. But in these meetings both they and my father were more intense, more intelligent and down to earth, it made me feel the same way. ... I remember how the meetings always closed with my father saying, several times, and the people chanting after him, “Up, you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will!”" -- From The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Only six at the time of Earl Little’s death in 1931, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz could only remember “a vague commotion, the house filled up with people crying, saying bitterly that the white Black Legion had finally gotten him.”
Much of the movie Malcolm X glamorizes the criminal career of Malcolm Little and the fiery speeches of Malcolm X. Unlike the Autobiography, the movie spends little time reflecting on the significance of the final year in the life of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Instead of focusing on the mature political perspective that El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz developed, the movie Malcolm X emphasizes Malcolm’s cynicism, racial pessimism, and uncritical acceptance of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. The film treats Malcolm’s break with Muhammad as a son’s disillusionment with a morally flawed surrogate father, but Malcolm left the Nation of Islam for political as well as personal reasons. Malcolm’s Autobiography makes it very clear that before Malcolm learned of Elijah Muhammad’s marital infidelities, Malcolm had already become dissatisfied with his leader’s policy of nonengagement, -- a policy which not only prevented members of the Nation of Islam from participating in civil rights protests but even prohibited Nation of Islam members from voting. The blistering verbal attacks that Malcolm X makes on national civil rights leaders are highlighted in the film without showing the ties that El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz made with those same civil rights leaders in the last year of his life.
As the southern civil rights movement grew in scale during 1963, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz came to recognize that Elijah Muhammad’s nonengagement policy was hurting the Nation of Islam’s recruitment efforts in African American communities. Indeed, in the Autobiography, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz admitted his disappointment with the failure of the Nation of Islam in becoming involved in the expanding freedom struggle. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz said, “I felt that, wherever black people committed themselves, 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.’”
One of the more dramatic scenes in the movie underscores the limitations placed upon those in the Nation of Islam but in the manner portrayed is rather misleading. In the film, Malcolm X is shown demanding and getting hospital treatment for a member of the Nation of Islam named Brother Johnson (Johnson Hinton), who was beaten by New York City police in 1957. Although the incident confirms the notion that the Nation of Islam did not engage in militant action unless its members were threatened, Lee stages the event to suggest that the Nation was far more willing to challenge European American authority than it actually was.
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz initially defended Elijah Muhammad’s nonengagement policy and fiercely attacked Martin Luther King, Jr.’s strategy of nonviolent resistance. However, he later recognized that the Nation of Islam offered no real alternative for African American civil rights activists who were then facing vicious European American racists in the South. It was far easier to talk about armed self-defense in Harlem than it ever was to face unarmed Bull Connor’s police dogs in Birmingham, Alabama.
Even though the film ignores this fact, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz knew that the Nation of Islam was not above making deals with the “white devils” when such deals served its leaders’ interests. Near the end of his life, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz admitted that, even while criticizing civil rights activists for working with European American liberals, he once, on Elijah Muhammad’s orders, negotiated a mutual non-interference agreement with Ku Klux Klan leaders in Atlanta.
Although Spike Lee’s film depicts Malcolm’s period of independence from the Nation mainly through scenes of foreboding, such as repeated threatening telephone calls, his final months consisted of much more than waiting for martyrdom. Among the many important episodes from the last year of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz which the film overlooks include (1) the brief meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., at the United States Capitol; (2) the crucial “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech delivered at a symposium sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality; (3) the meeting of the Organization of African Unity and subsequent talks with leaders of Egypt, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, and Uganda; (4) the day long October 1964 meeting in Nairobi with leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the resulting cooperation between SNCC and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s newly formed Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU); and (5) the December 1964 appearance of Fannie Lou Hamer and other Mississippi civil rights activists as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s honored guests at an OAAU meeting in Harlem.
The film shows El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz watching televised scenes of civil rights activities but fails to mention his February 1965 trip to Selma, Alabama, where he addressed young protesters and expressed support for the voting rights struggle. While in Selma, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz met with Coretta Scott King, whose husband was then in jail. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz affirmed his desire to assist King’s voting rights efforts, explaining that if European Americans knew that Malcolm X was the alternative, “It might be easier for them to accept Martin’s proposals.” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s increasing political involvement was further indicated in the weeks before his assassination by the telegram he sent to the head of the American Nazi party: “I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad’s separationists Black Muslim Movement, and if your present racist agitation of our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other Black Americans ... you and your KKK friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation.”
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s political militancy led to increasing governmental interest and escalating threats from members of the Nation of Islam. The new political course caused El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz to attract very powerful and very deadly enemies.
The movie Malcolm X shows various members of the Nation of Islam preparing to kill El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, while also intimating that European American government agents may have also been involved. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz is depicted as being followed, presumably by CIA agents, while on his trip to Mecca and Africa. The movie shows a hidden microphone in El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s New York City hotel room. In the movie, when El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and his wife, Betty, discuss the many threats they had received, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz speculates, “The more I keep thinking about the things that have been happening lately, I’m not at all sure it’s solely the Muslims. I trained them, I know what they can and cannot do, and they can’t do some of the stuff that’s recently been going on.”
It is somewhat ironic that after the assassination of President Kennedy, Malcolm X had remarked that the killing of Kennedy was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. In an oddly reciprocal way, the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. For years as Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz had helped foster a mentality that encouraged members of the Nation of Islam to define other African Americans as race traitors. As Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz espoused an often vicious rhetorical militancy which created an environment where the death of the traitor could be deemed appropriate. Once El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz left the Nation of Islam and began criticizing it, he too became the object for rhetorical vilification. Indeed, one of his former proteges, a certain Louis X (now known as Louis Farrakhan) went so far as to label El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz as a Judas “worthy of death.” Within such a climate of animosity, the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz became almost inevitable.
Despite the historical inaccuracies, the director Spike Lee must be commended for the effort that was involved in developing and producing a movie such as Malcolm X. Indeed, one of the more encouraging trends of the last decade of the twentieth century, was the fact that such stories about the African and African American experience could finally be made. However, while presenting an entertaining story about the life and career of the man known as Malcolm X, the movie ultimately fails to adequately address the seeds of destruction which Malcolm X himself had sown. Additionally, by glamorizing the rebelliousness of Malcolm Little, and the subsequent racist demagoguery of Malcolm X, the meaning of the mature statesmanship of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz is obscured and the true lesson of Malcolm's life -- the true lesson of his “entire” life -- is missed.
Part of the lesson of Malcolm's life, is also found tragically in the story of the family that he left behind. In 1958, Malcolm X married Betty X (nee Betty Jean Sanders) in Lansing, Michigan. The couple had six daughters. Their names were Attalah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah Lumumba, Malaak, and Malikah. After the death of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, his widow, Betty Shabazz, received financial support from a number of benefactors and celebrities. She was able to raise her children in upper class affluence, sending her children to private, predominantly European American schools.
In 1994, Betty Shabazz openly criticized Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, of having been involved in the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Farrakhan denied any involvement and blamed the assassination on the turbulence of the times. Subsequently, in 1995, Qubilah, the daughter of Betty Shabazz and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was implicated in a murder for hire plot to kill Farrakhan. As it turned out, the man that Qubilah had contacted was an undercover law enforcement agent.
Surprisingly, Louis Farrakhan, the target of the murder for hire plot, came to the defense of Qubilah. Farrakhan accused the government of manipulating Qubilah into engaging in the murder for hire plot. Farrakhan even sponsored a fundraiser for Qubilah's legal defense. Farrakhan's actions led to a reconciliation between himself and Betty Shabazz. Betty Shabazz even spoke at the 1995 Million Man March.
Qubilah was not imprisoned for her actions but was ordered to undergo two years of psychological counseling and therapy for her drug addiction and alcohol abuse. During this two year period, Qubilah's son, Malcolm, lived with his grandmother, Betty Shabazz. Malcolm proved to be a rebellious child who resented having to live with his grandmother. In retaliation, on June 1, 1997, Malcolm then twelve years old, set his grandmother's house on fire with his grandmother, Betty Shabazz, in it. On June 23, 1997, Betty Shabazz died from the burns she endured. Malcolm, the namesake grandchild of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was sentenced to eighteen months in juvenile detention for manslaughter.
It cannot be escaped that the one of the lessons of the life of Malcolm X, and of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, is one marked by tragedy. While his militant stance against oppression became an inspiration for many, his embracing of violence as a viable force against oppression also became an indelible part of his legacy, and sadly it is this legacy of violence which continues to manifest itself in African American families and communities to this day.
X, Malcolm see Malcolm X
Little, Malcolm see Malcolm X
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz see Malcolm X
Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik El- see Malcolm X
Males
Males. In Brazil, a Muslim black slave; a term employed by the Berbers and Arabs for the Mandingo blacks. These slaves worshipped Allah and were very fond of wearing a talisman engraved with fragments of verse from the Qur’an in Arabic script. Many males were literate and were trained in different crafts. The planters considered them their most valuable slaves, even though they were rebellious and were ever ready to flee to the wilderness. In 1805, it was estimated that one-third of the blacks in Bahia were males. The term males also refers to a vigorous and flourishing Muslim sect with temples, leaders, and well-organized congregations; still active at the turn of the nineteenth century all over northeastern Brazil.
Males. In Brazil, a Muslim black slave; a term employed by the Berbers and Arabs for the Mandingo blacks. These slaves worshipped Allah and were very fond of wearing a talisman engraved with fragments of verse from the Qur’an in Arabic script. Many males were literate and were trained in different crafts. The planters considered them their most valuable slaves, even though they were rebellious and were ever ready to flee to the wilderness. In 1805, it was estimated that one-third of the blacks in Bahia were males. The term males also refers to a vigorous and flourishing Muslim sect with temples, leaders, and well-organized congregations; still active at the turn of the nineteenth century all over northeastern Brazil.
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