Malcolm X's departure..

Thanks to Lia for sending me this article today. Forty-three years ago today Malcolm X was assassinated. I post this NY Times interview because it shows an introspective X who is struggling to maintain a sense of authority, externally, while trying to grasp his change in beliefs internally.

I still think Malcolm is publicly still very much identified with his extremist years as a minister of the Nation of Islam, which is not where he left off.

Malcolm started out as a young hoodlum who went to prison for burglary. There he found guidance and salvation in the preachings of Elijah Muhammed and converted to his extremist brand of Islam. Once released, Malcolm developed into a star preacher for the Nation of Islam's separatist messages, such as developing the black community completely independent of the white "devils" of the world. Eventually though Malcolm began to question the NOI when he learned his leader and mentor, Elijah Muhammed, was committing adultery with his own secretaries and validating it with passages from the Bible.
Disillusioned, Malcolm left the NOI, and became a Sunni Muslim. He changed his message to a more hopeful one after extended trips to Africa where he met Muslims of all races and cultures. He could no longer embrace a separatist mindset.

The following interview was one of his last and most human. It showed a man who's internal arc was taking him to places unexpected but also showed he was confronting one of man's heaviest fears: challenging his own hard-instilled beliefs. That's a rare thing to find in today's leaders. He was 39.

I promise I'll post something more light after this one.

Malcolm X Shot to Death at Rally Here

Malcolm Knew He Was a 'Marked Man'

By Theodore Jones

I live like a man who's already dead," Malcolm X said last Thursday in a two-hour interview in the Harlem office of his Organization for Afro-American Unity.
"I'm a marked man," he said slowly as he fingered the horn-rimmed glasses he wore and leaned forward to give emphasis to his words. "It doesn't frighten me for myself as long as I felt they would not hurt my family."
Asked about "they," Malcolm smiled, shook his head, and said, "those folks down at 116th Street and that man in Chicago."
The references, Malcolm quickly confirmed, were to his former associates in the Black Muslim movement and to Elijah Muhammad, the organizer and head of the movement. Before Malcolm X left the movement 18 months ago, he was the minister of the Black Muslim's Harlem mosque at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue.
"No one can get out with out trouble," Malcolm continued, "and this thing with me will be resolved by death and violence."
Why were they after him? "Because I'm me," he replied.
But realizing that was not enough to say, he pushed into an almost endless flow of sentences.
"I was the spokesman for the Black Muslims," he said. "I believed in Elijah Muhammad more strongly than Christians do in Jesus. I believed in him so strongly that my mind, my body, my voice functioned 100 per cent for him and the movement. My belief led others to believe.
"Now I'm out. And there's the fear if my image isn't shattered, the Muslims in the movement will leave. Then, they know I know a lot. As long as I was in the movement, anything he [Elijah Muhammad] did was to me by divine guidance."
Malcolm said that he knew many things that made him a dangerous man to the movement."
"But I didn't want to harm anyone or the movement when I got out," he added. "But I had learned to disbelieve, sir, and Mr. Muhammad knew that I would fight against him if I did not believe and he threatened."
The man, who was once the dynamic spokesman for the Black Muslims, suddenly leaned forward and began watching the traffic at Seventh Avenue and 125th Street though the large picture window of his private office in the Hotel Theresa.
He began talking again, but this time he spoke as if there was only the battered mahogany desk and the rusted, three-section filing cabinet in the small room.
"I know brothers in the movement who were given orders to kill me," he said slowing, nodding his head and rubbing his small goatee. "I've had highly placed people within tell me, "be careful, Malcolm."
"The press gives the impression that I'm jiving about this thing," he said, turning, but not accusing his visitor. "They ignore the evidence and the actual attempts."
How did Malcolm see the future and his feud with the Black Muslims?
"I have no feud with the Black Muslims, sir. This is a one-sided thing. Those that have done violence are fanatics who think they are doing the will of God when they go and maim and cripple those who left the movement."
Those who left the movement, Malcolm continued, "have not been involved in violence against those within," adding: "I believe in taking action but not action against black people. No, sir."
What about the comments by people in Harlem that now they do not know where Malcolm X stands? Is it possible to change so suddenly?
He smiled, opened his black suit jacket, and began rubbing his fingers along the black sweater vest he wore underneath.
"I won't deny I don't know where I'm at," he said with a boyish grin. "But by the same token how many of us put the finger down on the point and say I'm here."
"I know that I'm 1,000 percent against the Ku Klux Klan, the Rockwells and any organized white groups that are against the black people in this country," he said, in reference to Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the Nazi party in the United States, and such groups as the Citizens Council.
Then assessing his present situation, he observed:
"I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else's control. I feel what I'm thinking and saying now is for myself. Before, it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own mind, sir."