This posting is submitted to honor the birth of another great American, El-Hajj Mailik El- Shabazz, more commonly known as Malcolm X, on May 19, 1925. Malcolm X’s influence upon this author is remarkable. Malcolm represents an example of overcoming adversity and challenges and striving, through faith, to make your own personal contribution to the greater society.
To the ill-informed and/or the ignorant, Malcolm represented hate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Malcolm was an American-Muslim who cared about the advancement and human rights of African-Americans or, Americans of African origin. Malcolm used faith to guide his own life and the lives of others who came to be influenced by him. More frequently than not, Malcolm leaned not to his own understanding of the world, but instead, to his understanding of world events and the role that faith played in understanding world events, in coping with history and in fostering racial progress for African-Americans.
Malcolm asked the international community to consider its assistance to African-Americans in their struggle for rights in America. Unfortunately, his plea represented, at least, the third time that the international community failed to provide meaningful support to a direct plea for help from African-Americans. Despite a life filled with tragedies, this may represent the greatest tragedy Malcolm faced. According to Africaonline.com:
During the summer of 1964 [Malcolm X] formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Inspired by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) made up of independent African states, the OAAU's program combined advocacy for independent black institutions (e.g., schools and cultural centers) with support for black participation in mainstream politics, including electoral campaigns. Following the example of Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X planned in 1965 to submit to the United Nations a petition that documented human rights violations and acts of genocide against African Americans. His assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in New York—carried out by gunmen affiliated with the NOI—intervened, and the OAAU died soon after Malcolm X was laid to rest. (http://www.africanaonline.com/malcom_x.htm)
Malcolm X, like Dr. King after him, surrendered his life to the struggle for African-Americans’ human rights in this country. While Malcolm was able to influence others abroad, neither he, nor African-Americans, could look to the international “legal” community for support in the struggle for humanity and against inhumanity.
Recently, the United States Mint unveiled coins that commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the desegregation of Little Rock High School, in Arkansas, as a result of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. (http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/index.cfm?action=press_release&ID=775)
This symbolic measure does nothing to address the greater challenges that America faces in 2007. It is significant to note that the reality is that when that school was integrated, the nine African-American girls and boys who went to school there by court order were threatened and assaulted by local white adults and children. They required the United States National Guard in Arkansas to protect them from Americans, just because they decided to learn in the same place where whites learned. To that extent, the coin represents yet another glossing over of American history. (Perhaps a more accurate coin would show an American adult spitting at one of the children as she tried to enter the school or, perhaps an American with raised fist and clinched teeth and another screaming at a child as he tried to enter the school.)
In 2007, the violence African-Americans face—the inhumanity—is less physical than in the time of Malcolm X and The Little Rock Nine. Today, our challenges are that Americans are still polarized by race; that the struggle that American violence now manifests itself more verbally than physically (perhaps first verbally, then, through law, physically, if necessary), whether the issue is whether Barry Bonds used steroids (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2861930), whether our Supreme Court claims that our Constitution is “color blind”
(http://lawsonlawllc.typepad.com/my_weblog/critical_race_theory/index.html)
or whether Don Imus did anything worthy of censure.
In 2007, we can still draw upon Malcolm’s wisdom of June 28, 1964. That speech could just as well be made today:
… our African brothers have gained their independence faster than you and I here in America have. They’ve also gained recognition and respect as human beings much faster than you and I. … And in a short time, they have gained more independence, more recognition, more respect as human beings than you and I have.
And you and I live in a country which is supposed to be the citadel of education, freedom, justice, democracy and all of those other pretty sounding words.
Happy Belated Birthday, Malcolm and thank you.