*Question: Can I get in "trouble" for posting this, even though I link to actual article?*
Malcolm X: Down for the cause before the cause 40 years after the messenger’s exit, the message still resonates
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 11:35 a.m. ET Feb. 18, 2005
When
Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) was shot to death at 3:10 p.m. on
Sunday, Feb. 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, he was
perceived as a pariah of the still-burgeoning drive for equality in
America — monitored by the police and the government, marginalized by
more mainstream civil rights figures, vilified as a danger to the
nation.
What a difference two generations makes — and doesn’t make.
Even
now, 40 years after his untimely death, many of the issues that
dominated the life and career of Malcolm X remain — like the man
himself — at the forefront of African-American life, and American life
in general.
Today, he inspires black
America in particular even as he haunts America in general with a
message still seen as hostile, a message that’s spanned five decades
and galvanized younger generations more powerfully, in many ways, than
more centrist civil rights leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr.
From the still-robust sales of his
1965 autobiography to the adoption of his image and oratory by a
generation fired by hiphop, the power of Malcolm X has only increased.
The
40th anniversary of his passing comes in an America that has changed,
and not changed, in its reception to both the messenger and his message
— a nation sometimes angrily sensitized to Islam, Malcolm’s adopted
faith.
Power of the word
It’s
that power of Malcolm X — not just the power of one’s personal
transformation, but also the ability to communicate that transformation
to a wide audience — that’s evident in his book “The Autobiography of
Malcolm X.â€
 |
Ballantine Books
By the late 1990s, almost 3 million copies of “The Autobiography†had been sold worldwide.
|
“The
Autobiography,†a work whose blazing candor and unflinching
self-examination has inspired books from Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on
Ice†to “Monster,†the autobiography of an L.A. gang member, remains a
seminal American work.
By the late 1990s, almost 3 million copies had been sold worldwide, according to the Malcolm X Center at Columbia University.
In 1999, Time magazine selected the book as one of the top 10 nonfiction works of the 20th century.
Embracing a native son, or not
Even
as Malcolm X has attained broad recognition in the wider American
culture, aspects of his identity are still problematic. The state of
Nebraska, where Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925, has wrestled
in recent years with that recognition.
The
Nebraska Hall of Fame, established in 1961 to officially recognize
prominent Nebraskans, boasts a range of public figures, including
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather; anthropologist Loren
Eiseley; Gen. John J. (Black Jack) Pershing, commander of American
Expeditionary Forces in World War I; and William Frederick Cody, the
frontiersman and adventurer more widely known as Buffalo Bill.
 |
Chad Rachman / AP
A
statue of Malcolm X stands behind two of his daughters Ilyasah, center,
and Malaak Shabazz at a book signing for ‘Growing Up X’ at the Audubon
Ballroom, in April 2002 in New York.
|
How
the incendiary presence of Malcolm X would figure in that pantheon of
Nebraskans, and whether to embrace him as a native son, has been a
matter of debate for the state’s Hall of Fame Commission. Malcolm X was
considered but rejected by the commission in April 2004.
A
bill currently in the statehouse would seek to have ethnic and gender
diversity as factors for consideration. The bill also changes the
selection process by requiring public hearings.
“When
you consider the makeup of the people on the commision — older white
people — the likelihood is not the greatest,†said state Sen. Ernie
Chambers of the chances for Malcolm’s inclusion.
“Nebraska
is a white-dominated, extremely conservative state,†Chambers said.
“Most of the people in the state don’t know anything about Malcolm, and
some of those who do have more erroneous information than accurate
information.â€
Chambers, who is Nebraska’s only African-American state legislator, said the matter is now on an indefinite timetable.
If inducted, Malcolm X would be the first African American to be so enshrined.
MSNBC link
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