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I think that in his 39 short years of life, Malcolm X came to symbolize Black urban America, its culture, its politics, its militancy, its outrage against structural racism and at the end of his life, a broad internationalist vision of emancipatory power far better than any other single individual that he shared with DuBois and Paul Robeson, a pan-Africanist internationalist perspective.
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Malcolm X envisions a broad-based pluralistic united front, which is spearheaded by the Nation of Islam, but mobilizing integrationist organizations, non-political organizations, civic groups, all under the banner of building black empowerment, human dignity, economic development, political mobilization.
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Malcolm X was the national spokesperson of the N.O.I., and he wasn't represented in their own newspaper for over a year.
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Anne Romaine [ is ]folk singer and a skillful historian, even though she was not formally trained in the field [of Malcolm X].
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The Organization of Afro-American Unity was an organization that was a secular group. It largely consisted of people that we would later call several years later Black Powerites, Black nationalists, progressives coming out of the Black freedom struggle, the northern students' movement, people - students, young people, professionals, workers, who were dedicated to Black activism and militancy, but outside of the context of Islam.
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What is clear is that Malcolm X incorporated within the framework of black nationalism a pan-Africanist and internationalist perspective. In doing so, he began to reassess radically earlier positions sexism and patriarchy. He began to break with notions of sexism that he had long held as a member of the Nation of Islam, and began to advance and push forward women leadership in the OAAU.
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The NYPD was ubiquitous. They were always around Malcolm X. Whenever Malcolm spoke, there would be one or two dozen cops all over the place.
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MMI brothers were very resistant to women such as Lynn Shiflet and others who emerged as leaders within the OAAU, so one of the tensions that occurred was around gender equality and gender leadership inside of Malcolm's X entourage.
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Gene Roberts, one of Malcolm's X chiefs of security, was an NYPD undercover cop. He later went on to bigger things by being a disruptive force inside of the Black Panther Party.
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In November 1963, [Malcolm X] gives his famous message to the grassroots address in Detroit, which really kind of marks off the real turning point in his own development.
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Whiteness in a racist, corporate-controlled society is like having the image of an American Express Cardstamped on one's face: immediately you are “universally accepted.”
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The MMI brothers, who provided security for Malcolm X had been trained by Malcolm himself that inside of the Nation of Islam, whenever there is a diversion, you protect the principal. The principal, in this case Malcolm, clearly was not protected on February 21st [1965].
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[Alex] Haley felt he could make a solid case in favor of racial integration by showing what was - to white America - what was the consequence of their support for racial separatism that would end up producing a kind of hate, the hate that hate produced, to use the phrase that Mike Wallace used in his 1959 documentary on the Nation of Islam.
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What Malcolm X did not know is that back in 1962, a collaborator of Alex Haley, fellow named - a journalist named Alfred Balk had approached the F.B.I. regarding an article that he and Haley were writing together for The Saturday Evening Post, and the F.B.I. had an interest in castigating the Nation of Islam, and isolating it from the mainstream of Negro civil rights activity.
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Malcolm X had a clear vision and an understanding that we were - that he was a part of a broad freedom struggle. As his vision became more internationalist and pan-African, as he began, especially in 1964, after seeing the example of anti-colonial revolutions abroad and began to articulate and incorporate a socialist analysis economically into his program, he clearly became a threat to the US state.
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[Malcolm X] shared with Marcus Garvey a commitment to building strong black institutions. He shared with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a commitment to peace and the freedom of racialized minorities.
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I think that Malcolm X was envisioning, even while he was in the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist progressive strategy toward uniting black people across ideological, class lines, denominational religious lines, Christians, as well as Muslims, to build a strong movement for justice and for empowerment.
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Malcolm X broke with the N.O.I. in March 1964, and in that last 11 chaotic months, he spent most of the time outside of the United States. Nevertheless, he built two organizations in the spring of 1964. First, Muslim Mosque Incorporated, which was a religious organization that was largely based on members of the N.O.I. who left with him. It was spearheaded by James 67X or James Shabazz, who was his chief of staff. Then secondly was the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
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Most people who read the autobiography perceive the narrative as a story that now millions of people know, and it was - it's a story of human transformation, the powerful epiphany, Malcolm's X journey to Mecca, his renunciation of the Nation of Islam's racial separatism, his embrace of universal humanity, of humanism that was articulated through Sunni Islam. Well, that's the story everybody knows.
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I'm so familiar with what Malcolm X wrote at certain stages of his own life and development.