Michael Steven Smith
I HEARD MALCOLM speak when he came to the University of Wisconsin in 1963. He had yet to break with the Nation of Islam and was protected by several of their bodyguards. All were dressed nattily in suits and small knotted neck ties.
Malcolm had light skin and reddish hair. “Detroit Red” they had called him when he lived there. He spoke in a cadence, which was musical. I can’t remember the details of what he said. The short of it was that he counseled fighting back.
He had a wonderful sense of humor. A lovely and courageous man, I thought then. He once posed for a photo in front of a Levy‘s rye bread advertisement which proclaimed “you don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s.”
Despite my atheism, I identified with him, supported him, followed his evolution into a revolutionary and supporter of socialism. I smiled when he said, reflecting on reforming capitalism, that “a chicken can never lay a duck egg. And if it did, well, it would be a pretty revolutionary chicken.” A friend of mine had a photo of him on her apartment wall and said she loved Malcolm. I knew what she meant.
I remember clearly the night Malcolm X was murdered in the winter of 1965, a cold February night. I’d come home late to my law school dormitory at NYU and picked up the New York Times, which you could get after midnight. The story of his death was on the front page. Crushing. The true story emerged later, the story of Cointelpro on how the government assassinated Black leaders in order to quote prevent “the rise of a Black Messiah” in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s words.
It was a blow we are still reeling from. Imagine the level of consciousness and organization. we in America would be at if Malcolm was still here, instead of say, Reverend Al Sharpton, who the media foisted upon us as a leader. Or, truth be told, Barack Obama, who appointed General MacChrystal, an assassin, to head the U.S. imperial forces in Afghanistan.
Obama, promoted by modern advertising was, as Chomsky has written, foisted upon us as “Brand Obama.“ In Chris Hedges’s description, Obama was a Black man with the keys to the car, now driving the empire, misleading, widely, for the time being, supported by both those who profit from Empire and those who don’t.
Two years later, 1967, I moved to Detroit. A real Black nationalist place. I appreciated that Malcolm had lived there. When Pathfinder Press published Malcolm Speaks, edited by George Breitman and then a second seminal volume by Breitman, Malcolm X: the Evolution of a Revolutionary. I got them carried by the central book distributor in the area. They appeared in many Detroit bookstores. Later, when I worked for Pathfinder in New York City, I helped get them distributed nationwide. They still are in print.
Malcolm has been relegated to an icon, the fate as Lenin wrote, of many revolutionaries. His picture adorned a US postage stamp. This is now, who can tell the future? I think it is likely that what Malcolm stood for, Black consciousness, unity in action, identifying with those struggling against imperialism, worldwide, independence from the two capitalist parties, self-defense by any means necessary, and a deep sense of love, as Che said, those ideas will have a time to come to the fore.
A 101st birthday salute to you, our brother, Malcolm X.