Today is Malcolm X’s birthday.  He would’ve been 88.  I wanted to take a moment to remember his contribution to the American civil rights movement.

Most people view Malcolm X as a manifestation of one side of the two biggest prongs of the civil rights movement.  On the one side, you had the likes of Martin Luther King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the NAACP, who preferred legislative engagement and non-violent resistance.  On the other side, you have Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party, who did not preach violence, but nonetheless asserted a right for Black citizens to defend themselves against any aggression, whether from private or official in nature.  Mixed somewhere in-between, you have folks like Stokely Carmichael and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, which began as a community organizing outfit, but later became “radical,” protesting the Vietnam War and later changing its name to the Student National Coordinating Committee before falling out of existence in the 1970’s.

Malcolm X’s primary contribution to the civil rights movement was to give a voice to the frustration felt by every Black American during the 1950’s and 60’s.  He saw that the White stranglehold on the levers of power persisted despite years of non-violent struggle.  He saw that even moderate White liberals who claimed to support racial equality often wavered and waffled when it came to political action on behalf of the Black community.  His resistance to integration was scary to those who believed that it was a necessary step for racial progress.  But his resistance was based on a life lived in perpetual witness of constant indignity and political disappointment.  He also saw the contradictions that were constantly played out in the “White media,” as where the Nation of Islam was consistently accused of preaching racial hatred.  His infamous response before a crowd in Los Angeles in 1962 still resonates today:

Who taught you to hate the color of your skin?  Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair?  Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips?  Who taught you to hate yourself, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?  Who taught you to hate your own kind?  Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to, so much so that you don’t want to be around each other?  No, before you come asking Mr. Muhammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God made you.

Malcolm’s response does not directly address the question of whether the Nation of Islam preached hate, but rather points out a fundamental problem with the question itself.  The question assumes, firstly, that there was no institutional aggression against Blacks, when clearly there was.  That institutional aggression was based in part on the legacy of Black inferiority that still infected American culture in the 1950’s and 60’s, which is what makes Malcolm’s response relevant.  Moreover, the question also assumes that like acts are being treated alike.  When Whites asserted the right to defend themselves from aggression, no unusual violent motivations were imputed to them.  But when Blacks asserted the same right, they were accused of inciting racial hatred and advocating violence.  Malcolm believed it was reprehensible to live in a world where Whites were free to use violence to defend themselves and their families, but Blacks must remain committed to non-violence.  Malcolm believed that this was simply a further perpetuation of the inequality of condition that defined race relations in America in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Even those sympathetic to Malcolm X don’t necessarily agree with everything he said.  But you don’t have to agree with all of it to recognize its importance.  Even when he was wrong, Malcolm X was still giving voice to the frustrations of countless Black citizens who were consistently abused in both private and official relations.  He is, unfortunately, unduly vilified in many “main stream” history textbooks, despite being an important voice in the civil rights movement.  His ideas had an enormous impact on public discourse.  He is worth remembering, worth listening to, and worth reading, especially for those who have not been exposed to his work.