Tuesday, June 7, 2011
The Art of Elizabeth Catlett Mora
Elizabeth Cattlett Mora,
Queen Mother of the
Black Arts Movement
Sharecropper
Queen Mother Elizabeth Cattlett Mora gave me refuge
in Mexico City during my second exile as a resister to
the Vietnam war, 1969. She and her husband, Poncho (RIP)
were witnesses at my civil wedding to Barbara Hall, mother of my daughters Nefertiti and Amira. When I walked into her house,
she was working on this piece honoring the Black Panther Party. After leaving Mexico City, I did not see her again until over thirty years later when she came with Sonia Sanchez to my book party at Amiri Baraka's house in Newark, NJ.
--Marvin X
“Stargazer” (2007) by Elizabeth Catlett.
Art Spolight: Elizabeth Catlett,
“First an Outcast,
Then an Inspiration”
4 Jun 2011
Courtesy of Reginald and Aliya Browne
By CELIA McGEE
Published: April 21, 2011
While we are featuring the works of young, up-and-coming artists, this is an opportunity to get to know one of Americas most noted artist. Ms Catlett is the premier artist of our time and the exhibition which seeks to display works of new artists that are inspired by her is a fresh and exciting idea. Talking with her a bit last year in regards to the authenticity of a 1939 lithograph she did, Ms Catlett commented on how she was looking forward to this show while chastising those people forging her artwork George Bayard of Bayard Art Consulting said.
By CELIA McGEE
IN the fall of 1932, fresh out of high school, Elizabeth Catlett showed up at the School of Fine and Applied Arts of the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, having been awarded a prestigious full scholarship there. But she was turned away when it was discovered that she was “colored,” and she returned home to Washington to attend Howard University.
Elizabeth Catlett
Seventy-six years later, the institution that had rejected her, now Carnegie Mellon University, awarded her an honorary doctorate in recognition of a lifetime’s work as a sculptor and printmaker. By then, after decades of living and making art in Mexico, she had become a legendary figure to many in the art world, to the point where some were even surprised to learn she was still alive.
But not everyone, and certainly not the far younger, primarily African-American artists included along with her in the show “Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation With 21 Contemporary Artists,” on view now at the Bronx Museum of Art. “A lot of people like her are just kind of myths,” said Hank Willis Thomas, whose gold-chain and cubic zirconia nod to both the abolitionists of the 19th century and to rappers, “Ode to CMB: Am I Not a Man and a Brother,” is in the show and shares with much of Ms. Catlett’s work a concern with the history of slavery and “the black body as commodity,” he said. “A lot of her work,” he added, “especially from the ’60s and ’70s, could pass as art of today.”
Ms. Catlett, now 96, is known for her work’s deep engagement with social issues and the politics of gender, race and deprivation. She started down this road during the Depression, when she participated in the Federal Art Project, and followed it consistently into the era of the activist Black Arts movement in the ’60s and beyond. Which is not to say she has focused on message at the expense of form: she prepared for her M.F.A. under Grant Wood at the University of Iowa (“he was so kind,” she recalled recently, and he always addressed her as “Miss Catlett”) and also studied in New York with the Modernist sculptor Ossip Zadkine and at the Art Students League, developing her own brand of figurative modernism in bronze, stone, wood, drawings and prints.
Though that style has often been compared to Henry Moore’s, her work has always been grounded in her perspective as a black woman and artist, ruminating on communal struggle, pride, resistance, resilience and history, particularly through her depictions of the female form.
The curator of the Bronx Museum show, Isolde Brielmaier, has juxtaposed 31 of Ms. Cattlet’s works with pieces by 21 other artists — less to point out her direct influences on them, Ms. Brielmaier said, than to explore resonances between the older artist and the younger ones. The idea, she added, was to make the show about “what all the artists are thinking, and to look at the past and the future.”
Ms. Catlett herself, who is back in New York this week for a panel discussion about “Stargazers” at the museum on Friday, demurs about her influence on later generations. (She is, however, clear about the most important advice she can offer an artist, she said during her previous visit to the city, in the fall: “Never turn down a show, no matter where it is.”) She has lived much of her life, after all, on the margins of an art history she and other artists of color were not invited to help write for a very long time.
In 1947, while on a fellowship in Mexico, she married the artist Francisco Mora, whom she had met through the Taller de Gráfica Popular printmaking collective. Their left-wing political associations did not endear her to the State Department, which declared her an undesirable alien when she took Mexican citizenship in 1962. This, on top of Ms. Cattlet’s race, contributed to her relative obscurity in the mainstream American art world.
Close
The photographer Carrie Mae Weems, a generation older than most of the other artists in “Stargazers,” recalled encountering Ms. Catlett “through reading on my own,” in the late 1960s. “She wasn’t taught to me in class, as most black artists were not taught to me in class, and most women artists.”
The show gets its title from Ms. Catlett’s black-marble “Stargazer” (2007), a reclining female figure that manages to feel just as powerfully assertive as her standing red-cedar sculpture “Homage to My Young Black Sisters” of 1968, with its black-power salute. The reversal of the traditional passivity of the odalisque figure, said the Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi, who upends the convention in her own work, “is definitely something I quote.” And Ms. Catlett’s more militantly upright sculptures seem to reappear in Sanford Biggers’ monumental woodcut “Afro Pick” (2005), and in Roberto Visani’s recycling of guns and other weapons into works that are street-wise, loaded with history and totemic.
In keeping with Ms. Brielmaier’s aim for the show, the impact is not always a matter of visible influence. Mickalene Thomas, for example, said her intricately bedizened paintings and pattern-happy photographs do not draw on Ms. Catlett’s work in any obvious way, but that “she’s been very inspirational.”
“I like how her draftsmanship and sculpting have informed the political impact of images she created,” Ms. Thomas said, allowing work created with a specific ideological bent to nevertheless “take the African American experience and make it universal.”
Another artist in the show, Xaviera Simmons, also talked about her intense admiration for Ms. Catlett’s formal skills, and for the fact that she is “still working in her 90s, and making art that’s so technically savvy and stunning.”
“That’s kind of diva,” Ms. Simmons said.
Ms. Simmons is friends with Ms. Catlett’s granddaughters (one of whom, Naima Mora, is known to students of another discipline as a winner on “America’s Next Top Model”). When Ms. Brielmaier decided to include her large-scale photograph “One Day and Back Then (Seated),” which shows Ms. Simmons sitting in the type of rattan chair made famous by Huey P. Newton and wearing little more than black paint and an Afro wig, “I was a little afraid of offending my best friends’ grandmother,” she said. But then again, she thought, Ms. Catlett “has her nudes” — and ultimately, “we all work in the same tradition.”
via theblackbottom.com
Courtesy Neogriot.com
Race in America: The Grand Denial
By Dr. Marvin X
A Response to "Killing in the Pan Africa Hood"
By Rudolph Lewis
Bobby McFerrin's Beyond Words
Bobby Mcferrin's "Beyond Words"
Bluenote CD Vocals,
Bobby Mcferrin Piano,
Chick Corea Drums,
Omar Hakim Percussion,
Cyro Baptista Wooden flute,
Keith Rhodes Bass and Guitar,
Richard Bona
Reviewed by Marvin X
May 22, 2002 (c) 2002 by Marvin X
Bobby is indeed beyond words. Words cannot describe this bird from heaven singing outside my window as dawn approaches, singing sounds without words, beyond birds, beyond scatting, a world of his own, without peer, conjuring, configuring sounds that take us beyond the beyond, stopping by Brazil, getting off the boat in Africa, passing through America, stepping, prancing, dancing, chanting, floating on top of the piano and drums as they carry him along as he joins Sun Ra on some planet, maybe Jupiter, Mars, who knows where Bobby goes, but we go with him, enjoying a genius at work. What person on earth can be without the heavenly sounds of Bobby Mcferrin's Beyond Words? We are in childhood, playing in the mud, it tastes so good Mama has to whip us into the house, we don't care, whip me Mama, I gotta eat this mud. Take me, Bobby, into eternity, twist and turn at the corners of yesterday and tomorrow, never saying a word, just sounds from the Creator who blessed us with this wonder child, Bobby Mcferrin.
His persona changes from lover to friend to trickster: are we hearing the human voice or an instrument, a trumpet, flute, let it go, enjoy, stop trying to figure out the magician, we'll only get entangled up his sleeve, inside his hat, let the magic soothe, heal, stop trying to figure out what is and ain't real. Listen to the drummer tell Bobby, "I got ya [you] back, dance on, fly into the sun." And the piano says, "If you fall I will catch you, so swim, run, jump, do anything-I ain't goin [going] nowhere [anywhere]."
My overall favorite is "fertile field," beginning with a whistle; a fast paced, energetic, aggressive, up-tempo piece into Bobby Land, where few can go. Chick is with him neck and neck, along with drummer Omar--traveling the space ways (as Sun Ra would say) with equal energy. Bobby touches down in South Africa for a quick Miriam Makeba click, moves on to silence rappers, stop poets in mid sentence-vocalists, don't even come on stage; indeed, brother is beyond words, beyond this world.
Another favorite is "Pat and Joe," a brief enchanting piece featuring Richard Bona's guitar, with chorals and Bobby chanting as it glides into the sunset or over the horizon. "Mass" is also an enchanting choral piece with Bobby again chanting throughout? Percussionist Baptista completes the circle. I see the entire album as a choreographer's dream. It should make excellent music for a chorus of spiritual dancers. Maybe I'll choreograph it for my Recovery Theatre! Just thank Jesus, as Bobby does, and thank Chick Corea, piano, Richard Bona, bass and guitar, Omar Hakim, drums, Cyro Baptista, percussion, Keith Rhodes, wooden flutes. Go Bobby, go Bobby.
Now the Christians might say, "That boy [is] talking in tongues," and they would be right because essentially that is exactly what he does, transcending not only English but all other languages, for they have all failed us, yes, even the varieties of our Mother tongue-obviously they failed to keep us off the ships, which was their primary and ultimate failure-yes, a total, abysmal and horrendous breakdown of communication, reflecting a degeneration of a people's soul, heart and mind, but most importantly, a collapse of all their social institutions, instigated by the ruling classes who perverted language into a tool of deception for human exploitation, after all, language allowed humans to become chattel, persuaded African armies to capture neighbors and even their own citizens; allowed judges to falsely charge, convict and sentence millions to enslavement; language guided us to the door of no return, along with the gun and rum.
Bobby has accomplished what many poets attempt after we realize we are captives of English and seek to liberate ourselves with pure sound, grunts, wails, moans, anything but English, the oppressor's filthy tongue, so vile it is called a bastard language. Bobby has succeeded with sounds as pure as the driven snow, primal incantations, fresh as a child from the mother's womb, thus the healing power of his music: we are forced out of this world, the oppressive vowels and consonants that make up the words which are the source of our collective madness, the vehicle for transmission of myths and rituals which compose our daily lives, that allow us to behave like beasts with each other, a constant denial and misrepresentation of our Divine essence. Man in the Mirror, look at yourself lost in the Valley of the Shadow of death, in the matrix of conspicuous consumption, obsessive materiality, to the extent that you would employ wage slaves around the world so you can wear expensive shoes, that you would kill your brother in the hood and steal his shoes.
Only by returning to our aboriginal language can we liberate ourselves from this oppressive social order and begin anew, a new consciousness, a new mind, a new soul. This is precisely why the Christians talk in tongues; talk their holy language, the language of the Ghost, the unseen source from the primal essence of our soul. When the Christians heard me recite Arabic at my son's funeral, they said, "That boy [is] talking in tongues." Indeed, Arabic and tongues are the same sound, same vowels and consonants. And we ain't Arabic, but Arabic derives without doubt from the ancient Himyaritic of Ethiopia, source of the first man, we are told. Why would the first man come from there but not his language, and his religion, for that matter? Ethiopia is the source of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well: the Kushites or Blacks from Ethiopia were the aboriginal Arabians, who dwelled there before the Semites, inhabiting the land from the Persian Gulf to Yemen, to Jerusalem, where they were known as the Canaanites, brothers of the Egyptians/Ethiopians. Diop, Dr. Ben, Rogers, DuBois and other have written on this subject.
Bobby shows us how to transcend this world and all therein. As Jesus said, we can be in this world, but not of it. Alas, silence would be better than bitch, ho and motherfucker. But these words are not nearly as detrimental as the outright abject, obscene, profane defilement of truth used by political leaders such as Bush, Powell, Rice and Rumsfeld, and the hypocritical language of religious leaders who pimp, rob and exploit believers, promising them residue from slavery in the form of a fictionalized, juvenile, fabricated, imaginary heaven in the sky after they die. You religious swine, how dare you cry about the use of bitch, ho and motherfucker by me, rappers or anybody, while you have sex with your own children, murder in the name of God, sell drugs in the name of God, Christians and Muslims alike around the world, from Afghanistan to Colombia. If our tongues are vile, imagine what your souls look like! May God have mercy on you vipers. And let us not neglect to mention the deceptive language of the media-pharaoh's magicians, whose gross sins of commission and omission keep the people deaf, dumb and blind-as the media Mongols confessed after 911-yet they continue in their inordinacy, blindly wandering on, as the Qur'an says. The Qur'an also says, "Will you hide the truth while you know?"
So let us go then, beyond words, beyond the ship, beyond the shore, beyond the forest up the mountain path where the Divine awaits us to come be one and indivisible, to be pure, holy, righteous and free while we live. Bobby is calling us to go there: go Bobby, go Bobby.
Marvin X is one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement, poet, playwright, essayist, author of 30 books. He is called the USA's Rumi (Bob Holman), Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland CA (Ishmael Reed), the father of Muslim American literature (Dr. Mohja Kahf), One of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing (Amiri Baraka).He is available for reading/ performance/ lectures on a variety of topics. He lectures and reads his poetry from coast to coast.
jmarvinx@yahoo.com. Visit http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com.
Comment on Why I'm A Narrow Minded Black Nationalist
Comment on Marvin X's Why I'm a Narrow Minded Black Nationalist
Comment from Gerald Ali, United Kingdom
Well written, states the case clearly, but one point lacking, where ??? What part of the usa/usa would be good to found such a nation ?? My view from outside the usa/usa is south..... The gulf is an opening to the world, by water, Mexico... and below is an opening to trade, which in this world is needed by all nations, below in south America, the Caribbean, are more of African descent. All nations need farmers, hamlets, villages [where so many of the earths people actually live] towns, but in a future world do they/ will they need cities or are they of the past ??? Or can a society be reconstituted differently, can the barriers between town and country be broken/removed and yet the nation still be organised ???
Children are ''alienated' from the earth, most particularly by city life...... End the alienation, they will grow up as full human beings.... Karl Marx said the proletariat was ''alienated from the means of production, in bourgeois society''', some are small minded, literalists, they do not apply the concept, so do not realise its full meaning. The earth is itself the means of production of human life and all that sustains it. As with all other life......So the call was not just for the proletariat to take control of the means of production in the cities, but for people generally to take control of the earth from the bourgeois class....
So what in full reality, as a living entity is a nation. ??? Migration south, till a majority is reached in one, possibly more states, but it will need farmers, village people, workers etc. Any American is open to live in any state of the 50 in the union. Will it need to be organised migration, that is what or should be under discussion.
Reply by Marvin X
The south is the North American African homeland, although we claim the planet earth and the universe. The south has access to the sea, such as the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, etc. Yes, we must be on land as the original means of production. There may be a need for city states where we are in abundance, such as Brooklyn, Harlem, South side of Chicago, Atlanta.
In many areas of the south we are the majority or near majority, it would not take a great effort to buy the whites out, a reverse gentrification. But what is most important is for us to first have a revolution in consciousness, to detox and recover from our addiction to white supremacy Type II (Dr. Nathan Hare). We cannot live in a nation with reactionary values and behavior, we must rid ourselves of negative conduct, such as expressions of self hatred, jealousy, envy, greed, yes, those tragic flaws that cause the destruction of society.
Even now, throughout the south, North American African politicians, religious leaders and educators are under indictment for improprieties. We want to exercise devil minded behavior that must be outlawed in the "Republic of New Africa." Those who persist in such behavior would be banished back to white America. As we did in Africa, we can have a society with no police and no jails. Our economic system would be based on Gross National Happiness, rather than gross national product. It must be a fair market system rather than free market. There must be a living wage for workers. Under the pain of death or banishment, partner violence, verbal abuse and emotional abuse would be outlawed.
Spirituality would be the order of the day, as opposed to religion. As per gender, unity and equality in diversity would be the law. We must recognize men and women are different beings. Men do not bleed five days per month, nor do they get pregnant. This does not make them unequal, only different. Leadership would be based on knowledge, not gender.
In our foreign relations, Pan Africanism would be our first priority, to have functional unity with our people in Africa and throughout the Americas, or where ever we are throughout the earth and in the universe. We recognize our people from outer space.
We would maintain a symbiotic relationship with the United States of America, for we may need assistance for the next 25 to 50 years, just as the US assisted Israel and shall soon assist the Palestinians. We would most certainly have relations with all nations in the Americas, especially such progressive countries as Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Brazil, but wherever African people are, e.g., Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Columbia, Guyana, etc.
These matters are for our thinkers and planners to configure. Blacks have been migrating back to the south for years.
Now there are those North American Africans in the south who are in denial about the white man, who imagine they know how to deal with him since they've been doing so for centuries.
We say many of them are in denial, if not simple ignorance. Many of our people in the south are in virtual slavery, mental and physical, ignorant wage slaves who must maintain three minimum wage jobs to survive. Yes, one can live in a mansion for $100,000, but outside the mansion is a hostile environment, steeped in racism and religiosity. Must we repeat the words of Harriet Tubman, "I could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves"?
If we are to prevent the Second Civil War, separation is in order, the same that must occur between a husband and wife who have found themselves disagreeable to live with in peace.
Let us move expeditiously toward Nation Time. But we have no desire to be in a nation of reactionary Negroes who want to party and bullshit. Those welcome must desire radical consciousness, spiritual, political, economic and cultural.
--Marvin X
6/7/11
Elijah Muhammad, Messenger of Allah to the Socalled Negro
OBITUARY
Elijah Muhammad Dead; Black Muslim Leader, 77
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
The death of the 77-year-old "Messenger of Allah," as his followers called him, came as thousands of Muslims were gathering in Chicago for their biggest annual religious celebration, Saviour's Day, scheduled for tomorrow.
Mr. Muhammad suffered from heart trouble, bronchitis, asthma and diabetes. He entered Mercy Hospital Jan. 30.
Mr. Muhammad was considered by Black Muslims as the "Last Messenger of Allah." Strict adherence to that belief might cause some problems of succession, but it is expected generally that one of his sons will assume the leadership.
Mr. Muhammad is survived by six sons and two daughters.
Built Religious Body
By C. Gerald Fraser
In his 41 years as its spiritual leader, Elijah Muhammad molded the Nation of Islam into a significant religious body.
At the same time, he developed the Nation of Islam's empire of schools in 46 cities, restaurants, stores, a bank, a publishing company that prints the country's largest circulating black newspaper, and 15,000 acres of farmlands in three states that produce beef, eggs, poultry, milk, fruit and vegetables delivered across the country by Nation of Islam-owned truck and air transport.
Elijah Muhammad did not create the Nation of Islam but he built it on a number of principles. Among them: Islam is the true religion, "knowledge of self" is vital, "doing for self" is necessary, the black man is supreme and the white man is "the devil."
These principles caught the imagination of thousands of mostly young, male and female, lower-class black American former Christians who became followers of Mr. Muhammad. And recently, black professionals--physicians, police officers and the college-educated, for example--have joined the movement. Estimates of membership range from 25,000 to a high of 250,000 claimed by the movement.
These principles also brought down upon the Nation of Islam scorn from black and white Americans. But Elijah Muhammad contended that to call whites "blue-eyed devils" was neither to hate them nor to teach hate. "They say that I am a preacher of racial hatred," Mr. Muhammad once said, "but the fact is that the white people don't like the truth, especially if it speaks against them. It is a terrible thing for such people to charge me with teaching race hatred when their feet are on my people's neck and they tell us to our face that they hate black people. Remember now, they even teach you that you must not hate them for hating you."
Comments by Marshall
Many blacks did not buy that explanation. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a black liberal and a civil rights lawyer in 1959, said then that Mr. Muhammad's organization was "run by a bunch of thugs organized from prisons and jails and financed, I am sure, by Nasser [Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt] or some Arab group." Justice Marshall added that followers of Mr. Muhammad were "vicious" and a threat to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and state law enforcement agencies.
The negative view was shared by most blacks described by the press as "black leaders." But a black conservative, George Schuyler, a columnist for The Pittsburgh Courier, held the view more common to many among the black masses. "Mr. Muhammad," Mr. Schuyler wrote in 1959, "may be a rogue and a charlatan, but when anybody can get tens of thousands of Negroes to practice economic solidarity, respect their women, alter their atrocious diet, give up liquor, stop crime, juvenile delinquency and adultery, he is doing more for Negroes' welfare than any current Negro leader I know."
There were thugs, dope addicts and prostitutes in the Nation of Islam. But their conversion from criminal to believer was viewed in black communities as a near miracle. Blacks were awed by the discipline, and admired the orderliness the followers displayed. Where home, school and church had failed many of the followers, Mr. Muhammad had succeeded.
The opportunity to be "somebody" was one of Mr. Muhammad's major offerings to black men and women who joined the Black Muslims--the name given the group by Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, chairman of the department of religion and philosophical studies at Fisk University and author of "The Black Muslims in America."
Dr. Charles V. Hamilton, a political scientist and member of the Columbia University faculty, said Elijah Muhammad "was one of the few who has been able to combine religion and race with a rather continuing economic influence."
Fard Founded Nation
Actually, the concepts preached and practiced by Mr. Muhammad were handed to him by the founder of the Nation of Islam, W. D. Fard, or Master Farad Muhammad. Where Mr. Fard came from and where he went when he dropped out of sight are unknown. But in a 1930 Depression-ridden Detroit, "The Prophet," as he was known to customers who bought the fabrics he peddled from door-to-door, created the Temple of Islam.
He told those who listened that he had come to "wake the Dead Nation of the West," that he would teach the truth about the white man, that blacks must get ready for Armageddon--the inevitable confrontation between black and white--that black men were not to be called "Negroes" and that Christianity was the religion of the slavemasters.
Mr. Fard established Temple No. 1 in Detroit, the University of Islam--the temple's elementary and secondary school, Muslim Girls Training Class and the Fruit of Islam-- the elite corps of males assigned to protective and disciplinary functions.
As was his practice, Mr. Fard gave his followers their "original" name, and the man who came to him as Elijah Poole received the name Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Fard selected a Minister of Islam and a staff of assistant ministers. Elijah Muhammad, as one of the assistants, became very close to Mr. Fard, and after Mr. Fard disappeared in 1934, Elijah Muhammad became the Minister of Islam.
Mr. Fard has since been deified as Allah and his birthday, Feb. 26, is observed throughout the Nation of Islam as Saviour's Day.
Elijah Muhammad's ascent is another instance of a black man from a small Southern town who achieved national eminence as a religious leader. He was born in Sandersville, Ga., on Oct. 7, 1897. His parents were sharecroppers--and former slaves. His father, Wali Poole, was also a Baptist preacher, and Elijah was one of 13 children.
His formal education ended at the fourth grade, and at 16 he left home. In 1919 he married Clara Evans and in 1923, with two children, they moved to Detroit. A series of jobs included work on a Chevrolet assembly line.
The Detroit experience was as critical to his later activities as were his modest beginnings. Mr. Fard and Mr. Muhammad were building a Northern urban movement in bad economic times with predominantly Southern-born blacks.
At various times in Detroit during the nineteen-thirties Communists, anti-union, pro- Ethiopian and pro-Japanese elements tried to co-opt the movement. In this period Elijah Muhammad was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor because he sent his children to the University of Islam instead of to Detroit's public schools. And finally, internal turmoil within the Detroit temple caused Mr. Muhammad to move to Chicago, where he established Temple No. 2.
Along with non-Muslims, Elijah Muhammad was arrested in Chicago in 1942 and charged with sedition and violation of the Selective Service Act.
Cleared of the sedition charges, he was convicted of exhorting his followers to avoid the draft and he was sent to Federal prison in Milan, Mich., for about four years. He was credited with controlling the Nation of Islam from his prison quarters.
Role of Malcolm X
It was a man who joined the Nation of Islam in prison, however, who gave the movement its greatest exposure. El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz--Malcolm X.
Malcolm X joined the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts prison. He was released from jail in August, 1952, and his rise paralleled the period of most significant growth in black awareness.
Malcolm X was Elijah Muhammad's most prominent apostle. Malcolm X was the chief spokesman, the main recruiter; he brought the heavy-weight boxing champion Muhammad Ali into the movement. But by 1963 Malcolm X was disenchanted, while denying that he was a rival of Mr. Muhammad for top leadership. He believed Mr. Muhammad's religious interpretations that excluded Caucasian Moslems too narrow, and he was concerned by the Black Muslims' policy of non-engagement in civil rights and political affairs.
In the 10 years since Malcolm X's assassination by three said to be Black Muslims, Elijah Muhammad ruled his movement from its Chicago headquarters. (Occasionally, he spent time in Phoenix, where the climate relieved some of his asthmatic discomfort.)
Mr. Muhammad, a small man about 5 feet 5 inches tall with a high, thin voice, held court in his offices, listening to aides, weighing their reports by balancing what they said with the qualities he saw in them as individuals. He was serious but witty and verbally creative. He illustrated many of his spiritual lessons about the need of blacks to elevate their behavior, as he saw it, with little humorous dramatic sketches.
Although Mr. Muhammad personally enjoyed disasters that befell whites, seeing them as Allah's work, he sought to prevent any public expression of Muslim enjoyment of the event. Thus, he suspended Malcolm after Malcolm X had said of the assassination of President Kennedy that the "chickens had come home to roost."
He prevented Black Muslims from participating in the country's political process, including any political activity on behalf of a separate state, because, he contended, what was to be achieved by the Nation of Islam was to be achieved divinely, though natural catastrophes and warring among whites on a national and international scale.
Relations with American black Moslem groups have become increasing hostile since the assassination of Malcolm X. Black Muslims were accused of killing seven persons associated with the Hanafi Muslims in Washington two years ago. And Sunni Muslims in Brooklyn were said by the police to have tried to steal guns from a sporting goods store to prepare for a war with Black Muslims.
In recent years, Mr. Muhammad moderated the anti-white tone of the religion. He remarked last year that "The slavemaster is no longer hindering us, we're hindering ourselves. The slavemaster has given you all he could give you. He gave you freedom. Now get something for yourself."
Elijah Muhammad was a mystic. But his mysticism was applied; it always had a quite earthly purpose. Forerunning transcendental meditation and other modern popular sects, he saw the need for 20th-century religions to declare themselves based on science, not faith. Islam was a science and a "way of life," not a religion, he said. Yet, he would refer to the Mother Plane, a mysterious space ship with superior beings, giant black gods or something like that, that patrolled the universe, keeping an eye on the devil and ready to rescue Black Muslims from Armageddon.
Berkeley Police Stop Marvin X for Standing While Black
Berkeley Police Stop Marvin X for Standing While Black
This past Sunday, as Marvin X was standing at the bus stop near his house, a Berkeley police car drove up. The officer came up to him and said, "What's your name?"
Why?
What's your name?
Why do you need to know my name?
You fit the description of someone we're looking for.
You don't need to know my name!
This is not a criminal matter. It's about a missing person.
That's a lie. You just want to harass a nigguh.
That's not true.
Yes it is.
What's your name?
El.
Thank you, sir, have a nice day.
Yeah, you have a nice day, devil.
Monday, June 6, 2011
How to think about Manning's Malcolm
Rethinking Malcolm means first learning how to think: What was Marable thinking? And how?
by Abdul Alkalimat / June 2011
The new book by Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, will help us get to a deeper understanding of Malcolm X and the times we’re living in now. This will not be a direct result of what Marable has done, but rather what needs to be done because of what he has done. We can advance our thinking through deep and thorough criticism of this book.1 We are facing a challenge to our perspective, our philosophy and our politics for Black liberation. We respect Manning Marable and ourselves by taking him seriously and raising our critique to the highest level.
Many will oppose and even resent this review, but I write for the brothers and sisters who will dare to struggle, to take the hard core stance we need for victory.
First came the book days after Marable’s death, and then an avalanche of praise and polemic vaulting Marable into the esteemed ranks of ruling class darling public intellectuals.
I collected and sent to the H-AFRO-AM e-list nearly 100 reviews and commentaries on this Marable book. (http://tinyurl.com/100reviews) They range from “magnificent,” “magisterial,” and “a magnum opus of a life’s work based on 20 years of research,” to “sloppy,” “unprofessional,” and “speculative based on logical fallacy.” Why such extremely opposite views of this book?
Of course we have been here before, with a book trying to redefine a major historical figure under the pretext of making him or her more human. This is usually done with innuendo, hearsay, and gossip supported by state surveillance reports, all amounting to nothing that can be supported with responsibly sourced data, meaning what would stand academic peer review.
The main trend uniting these books is their focus on redirecting the force of revolutionary nationalism toward reform, toward the kind of social democracy that finds its home in the capitalist Democratic Party or toward the personal (sexual identity) being as important as the political. Such work has been done on, among others, Nat Turner (Styron 1976), Paul Robeson (Duberman, 1989), Martin Luther King (Garrow 1987 and Dyson 2000) and Malcolm X (Perry 1991, Lee 1992).
As a generational deviation, this trend is exposed in the book Betrayal by Houston Baker (2008). Marable’s book is somewhat different from this trend, but nevertheless fits the genre.
It is necessary to critique this book for at least three reasons. First: Marable speaks from within the movement with the legitimacy of being a Black Studies professor at an Ivy League school. This reverses the “street cred” marshaled by Spike Lee for his 1992 film Malcolm X. Many have learned from Marable and, given his recent death, are not open to deep and
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1 This is an Anti-Duhring moment for the Black liberation and social revolution forces, as it’s a matter of fundamental issues. Eugen Duhring was a leading German academic who published more than 10 books from the 1860s to the 1880s. He promoted a version of socialism while attacking Karl Marx. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-D%C3%BChring) Marable is a leading academic who has published many texts, while following social democracy toward a reformist path and not the Marxist-Leninist tradition for social revolution. Past his book on Malcolm X, we need a review of Marable’s entire body of work.
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revealing criticism. But this cannot serve our movement. Silence never trumps critique. As on Malcolm, so on Marable on Malcolm.
Second: The rulers are making the Marable argument their own, as are the reigning Black public intellectuals, namely Henry Louis Gates, Mike Dyson, Cornel West, Peniel Joseph, Nell Painter, etc. It is unprecedented for a book on a leading revolutionary nationalist to be positively reviewed in the main English language capitalist media in the world – New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Guardian (UK), Financial Times (UK), and so on. Reviews are in all the major European languages as well. They hyped the book into the New York Times hardback non-fiction bestseller list for five weeks: April 24, #3 on the list; May 1, #6; May 8, #13; May 15, -#16; and May 22, #34.
But third and most important of all is the fact that the issues are fundamental and involve both what we think and how we think. This is my main concern. Elijah Muhammad wrote several books on “How to Eat to Live.” Now we need to focus on “How to think to Live!” And by live, I mean to affirm our radical Black tradition, to critique and resist all forms of oppression and exploitation, and to chart a path of social justice toward social transformation.
We need to consider perspective, philosophy, and politics in critiquing Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Our concern is to probe past the specific inaccuracies, innuendos, and judgmental conclusions to get at the basics of how to think to live.
Perspective
First, the question of perspective: Whose eyes do we use to see? Whom do we intend to hear us? One of the great paradigm shifts of Black Studies is to reclaim and reorient the relationship between Black intellectuals and their community. We began to speak to and with each other without necessarily seeking the approval of white authority. We sought peer review from each other and the brothers and sisters off campus. We wanted to understand each other and map our agreements and disagreements, find the intertextuality of our traditions (meaning Black Liberation Theology, Womanism, Nationalism, PanAfricanism, and Socialism), and base our understanding on the dogmas and debate of these traditions.
Marable says this of his collaboration with his Viking editor: “Kevin and I communicated almost daily, discussing various versions of chapters, in the effort to build a narrative to reach the broadest possible audience.” (Marable 2011 p. 492; unless noted all page numbers are from this book)
This explains why he regards the Organization of African American Unity (OAAU) as “controversial” (p. 2) and not merely what it was, an attempt to bring the united front strategy of the Organization of African Unity to the Black liberation movement. Who considered it controversial? He refers to alleged “anti-semitic slurs” (p. 246) without putting this in the context of a necessary struggle against Zionism and the relative power of Black and Jews in New York City. He regards the surveillance of the state as legitimate rather than as flawed disinformation spread to discredit and disorient. No serious Black liberation perspective would allow this.
On the one hand, Marable contributes interesting summations of Harlem (p. 51-64) and Islam (p. 79-86), but he is noteworthy for not engaging any of the major writers who have done serious research which has resulted in viewpoints different from his own. A good example of this is Bill Sales’ work on the OAAU, listed in the bibliography but not engaged in the text. Nor does Marable engage the primary references used by Sales, notably the main state surveillance of the OAAU. And the same goes for James Cone and his definitive comparison of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Both Sales and Cone were members of the Malcolm X Work Group, a collective of intellectual activists working collaboratively on research about Malcolm X and holding important symposia in 1987, 1988, and 1989. (http://www.brothermalcolm.net/2003/aamx/index.html)
Perhaps the most cold-blooded negation is his statement that Malcolm has to be resurrected for Black people, where most certainly he should have said most white people. Black people have never forgotten Malcolm X, and certainly the state and white intellectuals haven’t either. He was more of an icon in the Black radical tradition than even Martin Luther King, Jr. The primary reference for this can be found in the website BrotherMalcolm.net, where there are lists of schools, parks, cultural events, academic lectures and many other things named after Malcolm in communities all over the world. Included are the proceedings of the historic 1990 international conference on Malcolm X, “Radical Tradition and Legacy of Struggle.” (http://www.brothermalcolm.net/sections/malcolm/index.html)
Perhaps the most egregious omission in this regard is the failure to mention Preston Wilcox. Not only had Preston been a professor at Columbia University, but he was the founder of the Malcolm X Lovers Network. As a community-based archivist, for decades he sent out mailings of the news clippings and ephemera he collected at the community level, flyers of events, petitions, documentation of naming ceremonies, debates and lectures, conferences, etc. He was a long time resident of Harlem and left his papers to the Schomberg Center. (http://www.nypl.org/archives/4078) To ignore Preston Wilcox is to show no respect for the Black community and its community-based intellectuals who have always kept the memory of Malcolm alive.
The perspective of Marable’s book is not the Black studies approach of respecting our own tradition. Instead it gives credence to such as the Bruce Perry book on Malcolm (1991), which was written as a police agent’s attack filled with lies and innuendo. What was Marable thinking? Or not thinking?
Philosophy
Now let us take up issues of philosophy. Here I want to focus on two questions: what is real? And how does reality change? In other words, this is an investigation as to whether Marable uses a dialectical materialist philosophy in this book. How was Marable thinking?
First, what is dialectical materialism? Materialism is a philosophical position that affirms the existence of the material world outside of and independent of our consciousness, hence we must be in the world and engage it in order to come to any understanding of it. This means that when you want to speak about the world you have to provide material evidence so that others can evaluate whether and how your words correspond with material reality. Dialectics is about the nature of reality, that everything is in motion, and this motion reflects the conflicting tensions between contradictions.
Most things have many contradictions, but in general there is always a principle contradiction that dominates the identity of that reality. External contradictions are the conditions for change, but internal contradictions are the basis for change. So to understand something we have to include both the external and the internal contradictions as part of our analysis. This is a philosophical approach that is essential for understanding the complexity of the world, human society, and of course important historical figures.
In sum, we can say that philosophy is not (and should not be portrayed as) a mystery but something that all of us can master. This is clearly a different approach to philosophy than the archaic approaches usually associated with philosophy as an academic discipline. For our purposes here, there are two fundamental philosophical questions:
1. How do we know something? This gets at our grasp of material reality. We all think we know some things so how do we know what we think we know?
2. And, so what? How does our understanding capture the nature of reality such that we understand the motion of how things change, how change comes about?
In this regard, Marable sets a high standard for this book:
My primary purpose in this book is to go beyond the legend: to recount what actually occurred in Malcolm’s life. I also present the facts that Malcolm himself could not know, such as the extent of illegal FBI and New York Police Department Surveillance and acts of disruptions against him, the truth about those among his supporters who betrayed him politically and personally, and the identification of those responsible for Malcolm’s assassination. (p. 12)
First, when you apply the revolutionary mandate “no investigation, no right to speak,” the book comes up short for a lack of evidence. Why not provide the source and let the reader be the judge? Here are some examples of statements with no evidence presented in the 63 pages of footnotes:
1. Page 12 – “55 year old audio tapes” are cited as having been reviewed by Marable but no additional information is given like number of tapes, dates, etc. Good scholarship requires documentation of evidence so it can be checked by others.
2. Page 22 – “Amy Jacques Garvey…may have been involved in Eason’s assassination,” a statement based on the conjecture in a secondary source
3. Page 36 – “He may have also believed that his mother’s love affair [was] a betrayal of his father.” Here Marable is practicing psychoanalysis without any data to back this conclusion.
4. Page 123 – He states of the Nation of Islam (NOI) membership, “until 1961, it would expand more than tenfold, to…seventy-five thousand members.” Again no source (NOI? FBI?) so why should we consider this a fact?
5. Page 137 – “James Warden…son of a labor organizer who may once have been a member of the Communist Party.” He interviewed Warden on three occasions, so why no indication of the source of this? Exactly what was said? James Warden, now Abdullah
Abdur Razzaq, stated during the Malcolm X Museum forum on the book, held at the Schomburg Center on May 2011, that he was totally misquoted in the book, and he has the transcripts of his interview to prove it. Wassup?
6. Page 147 – Referring to his wife Betty: “Malcolm rarely, if ever, displayed affection toward her.” But then on page 180 Marable writes: “Malcolm conveyed his love for her.” Which is it? And without evidence, how can we believe the amateurish psychoanalysis he presents?
7. Pages 174-175 – “a fire broke out in Louis’s home…most NOI members believed (Ella) Collins was responsible.” Again, no evidence.
8. Page 247 – Elijah Muhammed “interpreted the [Autobiography] as evidence of Malcolm’s vanity but [decided] at least temporarily, to cater to this.” Here Marable’s father-son Freudian analysis about Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X remains speculative without even a footnote that exposes the intellectual framework for such an idea. This idea is at least more responsibly argued in Wolfenstein (1981).
9. Page 256 – Regarding Malcolm’s analysis of the 1963 March on Washington, Marable writes that his “version of events was a gross distortion of the facts – yet it contained enough truth to capture an audience of unhappy black militants.” (Note the lower case b.) Does Marable think his assessment is so self-evident that it needs no support? Who is he writing to?
10. Page 266 – Regarding the notion that Malcolm was romantically involved with a woman whom Elijah Muhammad got pregnant: “no one else – not even James 67X – has made such a claim.” So why such a big deal out of this sexual controversy on at least five different places in the book?
11. Page 268 – “nearly every individual he trusted would betray that trust.” Again, such a global statement without proof can only sow the seeds of distrust in the movement and go against those living who were close to Malcolm.
12. Page 284 – “There is evidence that Malcolm may have met with the leaders of the Communist Party’s Harlem branch…” Now, while this is perfectly possible, why no documentation of the evidence? And what about Bill Epton? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Epton)
13. Page 294 – “…it is likely that no more than two hundred members in good standing quit the sect: less than 5 percent of all mosque congregants.” Why use the pejorative word “sect” for the NOI? And, again, what is the source of these numbers?
14. Page 423 – “Sharon 6X may have joined [Malcolm] in his hotel room.” Again, a damning statement with no evidence whatsoever.
15. Page 469 – “The organization’s archival heritage…were [sic] largely destroyed, and a new memory, branded by orthodoxy, was imposed.” What is the source for this? There are several organizations who claim to have the archives, so why does Marable think they are gone? And who imposed what new memory? While many may believe this, a serious work of scholarship would provide some kind of proof.
So the basic trend of these 15 points tells us that this is a poor job of empirical scholarship. Moreover, only about 20% of the 63 pages of footnotes come from primary sources. The rest of the footnotes come from published work based on others peoples’
research. And Marable hardly ever engages the serious scholarship of others, and fails to give any credit to his first project director who guided the day-to-day research effort, Cheryl Greene – not even a mention in the acknowledgments.
Marable states in the acknowledgments, “Elizabeth Mazucci was largely responsible for building the Malcolm X chronology…” In fact, the first chronology on his Columbia University website was lifted entirely from our BrotherMalcolm.net site without any attribution. I had to protest to Marable, and when I got no response from him I wrote to the Columbia administration. The page was taken down, but no one gave me the courtesy of a response.
Marable then reposted the chronology with a new format and a couple of new dates added, but still with no acknowledgement of sources. Marable and I were among the five founders of the Black Radical Congress, but this was hardly the move of a comrade, or a brother, or an honest scholar.
The overarching philosophical error in this book is suggested by the title, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. There are two incorrect aspects to this fundamental idealist error. First, Marable discounts Malcolm’s own autobiography, writing, “In many ways, the book is more Haley’s than its author’s: because Malcolm died in February 1965, he had no opportunity to revise major elements of what would become known as his political testament.” (p. 9)
I was at the 1992 Knoxville, Tennessee auction of the papers from the Haley estate and reviewed the documents such as the final copy edited by Malcolm, and the missing chapters. After but a quick scan I don’t believe there is any basis for this authorial challenge, which seems like just another attack on Malcolm X. (http://www.brothermalcolm.net/sections/haley/haleyestatemx.html)
The Autobiography was not a life invented by Alex Haley. The documents in question were purchased by Detroit attorney Greg Reed, and we await their release for a closer examination. (http://www.thetruthtoledo.com/story/2011/052511/reed.htm) Reed also has obtained a trove of documents recovered from the papers of a former member of the NOI in Detroit that will increase the archives we have. (http://www.chicagodefender.com/article-8667-early-nation-of-islam-documents-found-in-detroit.html)
Second, Marable suggests that Malcolm opportunistically invented and re-invented himself as a form of self-promotion, “to package himself to maximum effect.” (p. 10) He thinks the process was based on intentional agency by Malcolm X himself. Does consciousness determine being, or does being determine consciousness? Marable takes the first approach, while I suggest a materialist perspective that follows this observation by Karl Marx: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm) We must look to the concrete circumstances of Malcolm’s life and how the interplay of external and internal forces played out in his dialectical transformations.
There is no evidence that Malcolm deliberately reinvented himself. Rather, as with anyone who matures, the stages of Malcolm’s life can be understood as resulting from the dialectic of his consciousness and his concrete experiences. His ideas about himself and the world were negated by his experience, compelling him forward, even against his will at times.
He was a youth believing in and wanting to be part of society, but the negation of dominant society by his father and his mother, and then the negations of Malcolm by his teachers and his foster home experience all made him reject mainstream aspirations and pulled him into the street and being an outlaw. As an outlaw, the state negated him and put him in the joint, where he continued being a satanic character.
In opposition to this negation, his family and fellow prisoners then provided support and a path into a new form of consciousness and being. He cleaned up and began to recapture consciousness, to follow the path of his father and family. As Malcolm Little he was in small Midwestern towns (Omaha, Milwaukee, East Lansing). As Detroit Red, he was in large East Coast cities (Boston, New York, Washington DC). What was a constant was his eagerness to learn and achieve, first as an affirmation of society, then when negated as a negative force in society.
Once Malcolm X joined the NOI, led by his family members, he combined the lessons of both earlier stages of his life and built its membership up by going among the gangsters, the negated and most oppressed, and raising them into the lifestyle that his parents taught him and Elijah Muhammad reaffirmed—all of them moral, disciplined, and proud people.
And at least three more forces changed Malcolm X. First, he was appointed by the NOI to become National Minister and travel the county at the same time that the national freedom movement was reaching its peak in terms of consciousness and mobilization. He read and engaged with activists. While he changed many, he was also changed. Second, the police attacked and killed members of the NOI (especially in Los Angeles – see http://www.flickr.com/photos/24756454@N00/296103239/) and Malcolm was ready for action that far exceeded what the NOI was prepared to do. Third, the world situation was ablaze with armed struggle for national liberation, from Vietnam to Africa, Cuba and Latin America. He followed these movements very closely. His three great Detroit speeches from 1963, 1964 and 1965 make this very clear. (http://www.brothermalcolm.net/aug04index.html)
His final break with the NOI was conditioned by these external factors and two more factors internal to the NOI. One was Elijah Muhammad violating his own moral teachings regarding adultery. Two was Malcolm’s direct violation of the central leadership’s order of silence on the Kennedy assassination. Elijah Muhammed negated himself; Malcolm, having internalized the external political forces acting on him, negated the order of silence.
Malcolm’s new status free from the confines of the NOI was reinforced by his continued movement into Sunni Islam via his Hajj and his continued movement into world revolution by extensive trips abroad in Europe and Africa. My argument is that Malcolm’s life is not a self-invention process intended through Malcolm’s agency, but a global process that summed up the journey so many were to make from the oppressed, through the street, to Black self-determination, to revolutionary. This is the dialectical materialism of social change in the late 20th century, and on that basis people held and hold Malcolm in the highest regard and lived and are living the life he epitomized.
Politics
Now we come to politics, and the strategy and tactics advocated by Malcolm X. Strategy is the long term view of how to seize power and transform society, making clear what forces in society can be counted on and what forces one will have to fight. Strategy also focuses on the goals of a struggle. Tactics are the methods used in the day-to-day struggle in which a lot of flexibility and innovation is needed in the tit-for-tat encounters with the enemy and in mobilizing the masses of people. Tactics are subordinate to strategy, and can’t be equated or one confuses the zigzag of the struggle with the goal and basic plan for mobilization, organization, and victory.
On a global level, Marable gives us a clue of how he invents his own Malcolm X. He states:,“The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, was in many ways a fulfillment of Malcolm’s international vision.” (p. 485) This is ridiculous. Malcolm X would have condemned the Durban meeting just as he did the 1963 March on Washington. Apparently the writer of the epilogue of Marable’s book forgot what the writer of chapter four had written: “Black American leaders, Malcolm now urged, must ‘hold a Bandung Conference in Harlem.’” (p. 120) Durban was a conference in which the imperialists were trying to assert their hegemony over anti-racism and decolonization. Bandung was a Third World gathering to plan unity and resistance in opposition to the imperialists. (Compare Wikipedia’s descriptions of each meeting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Conference_against_Racism_2001 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian%E2%80%93African_Conference.)
Malcolm X never believed an honest discussion could be held with imperialists. He would have predicted what actually happened in Durban: the US imperialists blocked any open debate in order to defend their client state, Israel.
On Malcolm X’s political thinking, Marable writes: “ Despite his radical rhetoric, as ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ makes clear, the mature Malcolm believed that African Americans could use the electoral system and voting rights to achieve meaningful change.” (p. 484) Here Marable refuses to embrace the dialectical thinking of Malcolm X. First, Malcolm’s thinking was grounded in the radical Black tradition. See what Frederick Douglass wrote 100 years earlier in an article titled “The Ballot and the Bullet”:
If speech alone could have abolished slavery, the work would have been done long ago. What we want is an anti-slavery government, in harmony with our anti-slavery speech, one which will give effect to our words, and translate them into acts. For this, the ballot is needed, and if this will not be heard and heeded, then the bullet. We have had cant enough, and are sick of it. When anti-slavery laws are wanted, anti-slavery men should vote for them; and when a slave is to be snatched from the hand of a kidnapper, physical force is needed, and he who gives it proves himself a more useful anti-slavery man than he who refuses to give it, and contents himself by talking of a “sword of the spirit.” (1859, reprinted in Douglass 1950, p. 457-458)
The ballot or bullet theme in Black radicalism is in fact a fundamental tenet of American politics. It was part of the ideological rationale for the American anti-colonial war of liberation from England. It was stated in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, 235 years ago. Read the full text (http://tinyurl.com/decl-of-ind) if you want to understand the tradition on which Malcolm X stands—a radical American tradition.
Malcolm’s “Ballot or the Bullet” speech was part of his Spring 1964 offensive. It is important to be clear on the historical context in which he was giving political leadership. Forces that preceded and surrounded him undoubtedly impacted his thinking:
1. The increasingly militant struggles in the South, especially those led by Medgar Evers after the brutal murder of Emmett Till in 1955.
2. Robert Williams and his Monroe, North Carolina armed self-defense strategy as summed up in his book Negroes with Guns (1962). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Williams)
3. The armed group Deacons for Defense and Justice formed in Louisiana in 1964 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice)
4. The Revolutionary Action Movement, a group led by Max Stanford, who went on to influence the development of the Black Panther Party. This was the only other organization that Malcolm X joined. (Stanford 1986)
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. Vice President and then President L. B Johnson consolidated his own leadership by staying the course and supporting major civil rights legislation, so the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law on July 2, 1964. During the summer of 1964 SNCC led the civil rights organizations that had formed into a coalition called COFO in 1962 for a major offensive in Mississippi. This was the Mississippi Summer Project. Hundreds of activists poured into the state and confronted the heart of racist state power.
The House passed the bill in February 1965, but a Senate filibuster held it up. The Senate filibuster ended on June 19. Three movement activists (Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner) were martyred by assassination in Philadelphia, Mississippi on June 21. Out of the Mississippi Summer Project came a political party, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). (It was the MFDP that brought Fannie Lou Hamer to Harlem in 1964 where she appeared on a platform with Malcolm X.)
From the local precinct level to a delegation going to the national convention, the MFDP fought the racist party organization that excluded Black people. The main civil rights leaders tried to get the MFDP to accept being seated at the convention without voice or vote. The MFDP, with SNCC, rejected this as a sellout. In the meantime, the bullets kept flying:
1963 June Assassination of Medgar Evers 1964 Jul Rebellion in Rochester, New York Aug Rebellion in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1965 Feb 21 Assassination of Malcolm X Aug Rebellion in Watts, Los Angeles 1966 Jun Black Power slogan emerges in militant march in Mississippi Jul Rebellions in Cleveland, Ohio, and Omaha, Nebraska Oct Black Panther Party is organized in Oakland, California 1967 Jun Rebellion in Detroit Jul Rebellions in Newark and Plainfield, New Jersey Oct Assassination of Che Guevara 1968 Apr Assassinations of Black Panther Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rebellions in Chicago and more than 100 other cities Jun League of Revolutionary Black Workers is organized in Detroit 1969 Dec Assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton
In 1965-66, the struggle was developing. The defeat of the Watts rebellion led to the ideological advance of the Black Power slogan, and the new revolutionary organization called the Black Panther Party, followed two years later by workers throwing up a new revolutionary force on the factory floor called the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The US armed forces put down major urban rebellions, and assassination of Black radical leaders continued.
The 1964 presidential campaign brought forward the ultra-right in the form of Barry Goldwater. By 1966 Black Power emerged as a key ideological slogan. Electoral victories led to the first major Black Mayors of Cleveland, Ohio and Gary, Indiana. By 1968, things got even more extreme when Alabama governor George Wallace, the nation’s leading segregationist politician, ran for president and won the Indiana primary! Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 and 1972, but was run out of office in disgrace in 1974. A struggle for power was taking place.
Malcolm X laid the basis for understanding these events: the Senate filibuster and racist state power; the murders and the unity between the Klan and the government; and the emergence of Black Power in both electoral and more militant forms as well. This was indeed the ballot and the bullet, 20th century edition.
The analysis that Malcolm laid out in his Spring 1964 speeches amounts to a theory of the US racist capitalist state that is based on finding a strategy to fight against it. First, the power of the US ruling class as based on southern fascism, versus a Black united front. Then, armed self defense for Black liberation as self determination versus that racist state power.
Marable advances an argument that separates Malcolm from his legacy, a legacy that was in fact us, the Black liberation movement. But no activist in that movement who was in motion at the time will believe his argument. It flies in the face of our experience.
Why this book, at this time?
We have reviewed Manning Marable’s book on Malcolm X as far as perspective, philosophy, and politics. But we still have an outstanding question – why this book, at this time? President George W. Bush was a right-wing standard bearer. We took to the streets to fight his policies. The resistance to the imperialist war on Iraq and then Afghanistan produced a major antiwar movement with heightened consciousness that developed faster and with a sharper focus than the movement against the Vietnam War. But now we have the Obama moment. Barack Obama is a Black face on US imperialism. While he has escalated Bush’s war, and extended it into Libya, we have no antiwar movement challenging Obama’s legitimacy. The ruling class is using a Black man to advance the cause of neoliberalism. They are concerned more about banks “too big to fail” than unemployment and the suffering of the masses of people.
Maybe I should say Obama is our man doing their work. We voted for him but he lacks the guts to fight for us against the rulers and generals who govern. He seeks to compromise with right-wing Republicans and Democrats captured by the fascist Tea Party that holds 10% of the seats in Congress.
Rather than give us the Malcolm X of the Detroit Speeches, the Malcolm X we love and respect, Marable tries to cut him down to size with unsubstantiated arguments under the guise of trying to humanize Malcolm X. In summary, Marable gives us a perspective that is outside of the Black Studies tradition in his attempt to sell books to a wide American book-buying public.
Marable gives us a philosophy that is mechanical and not dialectical, idealist and not materialist. And he attempts to turn Malcolm X into a social reformer rather than the revolutionary that he actually was. In short, Marable fabricates a Malcolm X who would not take militant and revolutionary action against the global war, poverty, and degradations of today. That’s why we have to speak up: to respect our legacy and affirm our future.
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