No Malcolm X = No Martin Luther King

[Mrs Magpie]

I talked to my mum about this tonight and asked her for her memories of the time as mine were through the eyes of a child. I grew up in a multi-cultural household (lodgers from all corners of the earth right through my childhood) and she says that the main stuff being talked about was African and Caribbean independence as the Americans we knew were all white stateless people because of the Vietnam war. She says that as far as American Civil Rights went it was King and Stokely Carmichael plus musicians such as Nina Simone that had the biggest impact on the household. Malcolm X came later.

 

[ska invita]

It's undoubtable he would have been around and would have been somebody, but the question I was asking was wether he would be able to have become such a powerful figure in American history without the militants who went before him?

Its too speculative/subjective a question to give a 'this is the truth answer to' - but undoubtedly it all adds up.

Another interesting question is how much was the civil rights movmenet dependant on the incredible elquence and personality of MLK - would it have been as succesfull without him? I think not.

Although instinctually I don;t think we need leaders, a charismatic figurehead has a huge impact on mainstream perception.

The fact that MLK was utterly unwilling at first to become this figurehead may have something to do with it. It took a lot of convincing to get him to do it, and all along he did it as a necessary burden, rather than as a ego-trip.

My guess would be that the formula No Malcolm X = No Martin Luther King is not true. In a struggle as broad as this one, there are always going to be voices with different opinions and there had to be a Malcolm.

I don't think that Malcolm opened a door, that if left closed, Martin couldnt have opened himself

 

[Barking_Mad]

Gandhi was a huge influence on MLK and he was influence in turn by Tolstoy, who was influenced by his own take on Christ's teachings.

 

[soulman]

I had to do some research a few years back about them both and interestingly MLK became a lot more radical toward the end of his life than he's known for. He was a vocal opponent of the war and increasingly critical of the financial system...

It was claimed he was moving beyond the constraints of race and towards a radical class based critique of capitalism...

 

[Kid_Eternity]

It was claimed he was moving beyond the constraints of race and towards a radical class based critique of capitalism...

Yep...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

It's undoubtable he would have been around and would have been somebody, but the question I was asking was wether he would be able to have become such a powerful figure in American history without the militants who went before him?

The problem with the theory, is that Malcolm X didn't really 'go before' King, as these timelines will attest:

http://afroamhistory.about.com/cs/malcolmx/a/timeline_mal_x.htm

http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs216.html

 

[belboid]

It was claimed he was moving beyond the constraints of race and towards a radical class based critique of capitalism...

he was, of course, shot when he appeared at a rally in support of striking dustmen. he was also distancing himself frm the democratic party, seeing it as far too supine

it isn't true that MX got less n less radical before he died. he broke with the idea, first, that only black men could be true muslims, and there is a lot to suggest he was breaking with the idea that one needed to be a muslim at all. By the end of his life he was condemning US imperialism as that (and not as 'the actions of the white devil' or somesuch), and spoke of how the only white people who treated blacks as equals were socialists. He linked racism with capitalism - "show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a racist," Thats not to say he had become a socialist revolutionary by any means, he still thought you needed to unite all black people first. But he most definitely did not become less radical, quite the opposite really.

With or without him, MLK would still have been a very major figure tho

 

[ymu]

The civil rights movement was most effective when violence was committed against their members - the Montgomery bus boycott, testing the voting rights act by having blacks registering to vote in the South.

This is where non-violent movements are most effective - violent responses by the state massively increase public support. Which is, of course, why said state will often attempt to provoke violence at peaceful demonstrations. Having said that, I agree with those who have already pointed out that the non-non-violent strategies are also critical to success. I can't think of any successful movement which did not utilise both violent and non-violent tactics.

It got real results when the media - and so the general public - were made very aware of the prejudice from the violence of the racist Southern whites.

Once the media exposed this prejudice, the government was forced to act and enforce the constitution as they saw fit.

When Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he said "I've just handed the South to the Republicans for the foreseeable future." The law wasn't meaningfully enforced in the South until Nixon (196. Black Americans had voted majority Democrat since Roosevelt (they've voted ~90% Democrat since Nixon) - so when black voters in the South registered over-whelmingly as Democrats, white racists flooded into the Republican party.

This was the cornerstone of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" - arguably initiated by Goldwater in his failed 1964 Presidential bid - securing racist "Dixiecrat" votes for the Republicans. He turned the US into a two party state, where previously there had been four (liberal/conservative Republicans and Northern/Southern Democrats) and painted the electoral map almost entirely red. (And was a massive, if largely unacknowledged in public, influence on Reagan's disastrously successful electoral strategy amongst previously apolitical evangelicals).

 

[Kid_Eternity]

he was, of course, shot when he appeared at a rally in support of striking dustmen. he was also distancing himself frm the democratic party, seeing it as far too supine

it isn't true that MX got less n less radical before he died. he broke with the idea, first, that only black men could be true muslims, and there is a lot to suggest he was breaking with the idea that one needed to be a muslim at all. By the end of his life he was condemning US imperialism as that (and not as 'the actions of the white devil' or somesuch), and spoke of how the only white people who treated blacks as equals were socialists. He linked racism with capitalism - "show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a racist," Thats not to say he had become a socialist revolutionary by any means, he still thought you needed to unite all black people first. But he most definitely did not become less radical, quite the opposite really.

With or without him, MLK would still have been a very major figure tho

I think, if I'm remembering this right, they met a couple times in their last years to talk about some kind of joint work. Imagine if they'd lived...

 

[belboid]

there was talk of co-operation in the south, linking up with civil rights groups, including a visit to Selma. Dunno if those meets including MLK or not (& it'd be there final months rather than years, MX was still lambasting the civil rights movement for ot tackling issues on the north pretty much until he came back from his 'world tour')

 

[butchersapron]

there was talk of co-operation in the south, linking up with civil rights groups, including a visit to Selma. Dunno if those meets including MLK or not (& it'd be there final months rather than years, MX was still lambasting the civil rights movement for ot tackling issues on the north pretty much until he came back from his 'world tour')

By this point MLK had already bureaucratically cut people like Robert F Williams out of the mainstream of the Civil Rights movement. I guess Malcolm was just too large a figure for him to be able to do that to though.

 

[warey74]

malcom x the most radical of all

Just a quick point first of all.
The film Malcolm X was a very very poor rendition of the book. the book is awe inspiring.

But in terms of malcolm X and MLK. MLK was establishment. His calls for pacificist resistance and his christian background meant that any change was within bounds that where tolerated by America then and now.

If you look at the historical roots of the Black slaves in America, they were 30% Muslim and 70% animists. They were forcefully converted to Christianity over time. We know this through historical documents and some great biographies of black slaves at the time. Because of the nature of their capture the west african muslims were literate and far more educated than the white slave owners at the time.

And so MLK was part of that , acceptance of a people forced into a religion and cut of from their historical roots.


Malcolm X was the complete opposite. he used the name X to designate that his ancestoral name was stripped of him and that his roots and legacy lay with a different culture and people.


At the beginning Malcolm X was part of the Nation Of Islam. An organisation that taught that white people were a scientific experiment and the work of the devil.

As time went on he embraced islam, that advocated brotherhood based on Belief and not race.

This was far more threatening to the establishment. The implications of a black population identifying with their historical roots and connecting with the huge world wide muslim population was a direct threat to Americas "be what you want , but within bounds".

This is why he was assasinated, and this is why his legacy is far more powerful than that of martin luther king


Some good articles can be found here
http://muslimwiki.com/mw/index.php/History_of_Islam_In_America

 

[Fedayn]

There's an argument to be had here about the useful myth of the wholly peaceful civil rights movement wiping out the memory of grouip like Deacons for Defence and Robert F. Williams to the advantage of the current staus quo.

Not to mention the leftist politics that both Malcolm X and MLK had begun to espouse near the end of their lives. Malcolm X was, unlike his time in the NoI, talking to and with revolutionary/Leftist groups about common goals. Something he would never have done whilst in the NoI. MLK was in Atlanta to support striking black refuse workers and in the period preceding had publically stated that maybe America need to move to a democratic socialist system.

 

[butchersapron]

There's an argument to be had here about the useful myth of the wholly peaceful civil rights movement wiping out the memory of grouip like Deacons for Defence and Robert F. Williams to the advantage of the current staus quo.

Deacons for Defence Leader Robert Hicks has just died.

Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81

It was his leadership role with the Deacons that drew widest note, however. The Deacons, who grew to have chapters in more than two dozen Southern communities, veered sharply from the nonviolence preached by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They carried guns, with the mission to protect against white aggression, citing the Second Amendment.

Dr. King publicly denounced the Deacons’ “aggressive violence.” And Mr. Farmer, in an interview with Ebony magazine in 1965, said that some people likened the Deacons to the K.K.K. But Mr. Farmer also pointed out that the Deacons did not lynch people or burn down houses. In a 1965 interview with The New York Times Magazine, he spoke of CORE and the Deacons as “a partnership of brothers.”

The Deacons’ turf was hardscrabble Southern towns where Klansmen and law officers aligned against civil rights campaigners. “The Klan did not like being shot at,” said Lance Hill, author of “The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement”(2004).

 

[Refused as fuck]

Did I imagine this or was there at some point going to be an "uncovered lost chapter" from Malcolm's manuscripts (post Hajj) talking about organising on class lines being published?

 

[ericjarvis]

As I understand it, Malcolm X and MLK were really just the public figureheads of a much wider movement. I would probably credit the SNCC and CORE with doing the real work of changing civil rights in America. MLK was not much of a leader, in all reality, but he was an amazing speaker and as the public face made the cause more tenable to the general public. Malcolm X and the militant wing of the movement often did more harm than good but certainly made significant changes in the North, where the SCLC didn't have much effect.

At the end of the day people like history made by heroes, icons we can worship. The reality is there was more of a consolidated effort of thousands which made the real impact.

Precisely.

That's not to say that Malcolm X and Doctor King weren't important in a way, but they were important for riding and steering the wave and not for causing the movement to happen.

It's like Ghandi and Indian independence. The British Empire was collapsing anyway. Ghandi didn't cause India to become independent. What he did though was to significantly reduce the amount of bloodshed involved in the process. Likewise Martin Luther King probably made a difference to the political acceptance of the civil rights movement, whereas without Malcolm Shabazz and Eldridge Cleaver it would have had a far less coherent political core amongst those most vehemently demanding change. Things would have been different without them. There would still have been a partially successful (as in it won the legal battles, but has still to win real equality) civil rights movement, just a different one.

 

[ernestolynch]

All you white liberals deliberately ignore the BPPSD. Don't like us Maoists?

 

[butchersapron]

Did I imagine this or was there at some point going to be an "uncovered lost chapter" from Malcolm's manuscripts (post Hajj) talking about organising on class lines being published?

Can't say i ever heard that myself. Would support his real life actions at the time though.

 

[Refused as fuck]

Can't say i ever heard that myself. Would support his real life actions at the time though.

Perhaps I dreamed it.

 

[butchersapron]

Did I imagine this or was there at some point going to be an "uncovered lost chapter" from Malcolm's manuscripts (post Hajj) talking about organising on class lines being published?

The missing Malcolm

 

[Kaka Tim]

I'm not sure about MLK being 'safe', 'white freindly' or 'moderate'. To a pro-segregation southern establishment he was anathema.
Actions like the boycotts and voter registations were radical actions which the protagonsits knew would provoke a violent repsonse.
A significnet level of overt violence by the civil rights movement would have been massively coutner productive as the southern black communties would have suffered a nightmarish wave of oppression and violence in a white backlash - and what they provoked through NVDA was already bad enough.

Also - as has been pointed out - King became increasingly radical through the 60s and was definitely on the FBIs shit list.

Malcolm X was operating in a different context in the north and this created a different approach from black people trying to take on a racist power structure. Also many of the ideas - rather then the tactics - of Nation of Islam, Ellijah Mohammed et al were always going to alienate a lot of support and solidarity from wider american society.

 

[trabuquera]

I've read several memoirs / accounts of the period by African American writers and cultural figures (maya angelou etc) which - to paraphrase 'cos I'm remembering vaguely - contained reports of street conversations which went roughly "well, yeah, Malcolm and the Muslims TALK a great game, but you don't see them down there in the South getting their heads kicked in, do you?" Despite the apparently more radical ideology of Malcolm (tho the ideology of the black Muslims is a whole debate in itself as to how far it's really revolutionary or more reactionary in many areas ...)

To claim that no Malcolm would mean no MLK is to get both chronology and ideological development ass backward imo.

 

[butchersapron]

Malcolm X was active in the NOI from the late 40s onwards, well before King became active - when King was still in his teens in fact.

 

[Refused as fuck]

The missing Malcolm

Cheers!

 

[butchersapron]

Cheers!

Manning Marable who did that interview and wrote the book it was about that book died last week, just before the book was published. Definitely one of ours.

 

[pk]

And look at the Nation of Islam now - they've actually started Scientology courses en masse... fucking bonkers Farrakhan leading them all into the teachings of drug-addled racist L Ron Hubbard.

You couldn't make it up!