Malcolm X Deserved the American

Malcolm X Deserved the American Postage Stamp

Most Negro parents in those days would almost instinctively treat any lighter ones better than they treated the darker ones..." The Autobiography of Malcolm X (p. 4).

The 22nd postage stamp in the Black Heritage series features a photograph of Malcolm X whose "controversial ideas," according to the United States Postal Service (USPS), "sharpened America's debate about racial relations and strategies for social change." The USPS Web site narrative goes on to mention that while at one time in Malcolm X's life he was the "most visible" spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, later he broke away from the group. Malcolm X "disavowed his earlier separatist preaching," the USPS explains, and, the Web site continues, Malcolm supported policies that reflected a desire for integration rather than separation.

It is necessary to mention that the USPS could hardly be expected to offer a postage stamp during the Black Heritage series that honored a man or movement whom the federal government believed to have been dangerous, anti-democratic, or simply too militant. The Black Panthers did not get a postage stamp, one notes, for obvious reasons; and it is therefore not surprising that the USPS felt the need to mention that Malcolm "disavowed" his earlier "separatist preaching" albeit this paper will take the position that he didn't so much "disavow" his militancy as he just evolved into a less strident public position.

Meanwhile, it is true that prior to his assassination, Malcolm X did indeed mellow his previously more militant public stance on the black struggle - from separatist rhetoric to an apparent desire to lend his celebrity to the Gandhi-inspired strategies of Dr. Martin Luther King. But this paper will point out that Malcolm X (notwithstanding some of the assertions and revelations made in the autobiography he co-wrote with Alex Haley) remained convinced that self-determination for people of color was a better path to dignity and freedom than attempting to change the existing system of justice (through direct action and legislation), which Dr. King and others sought to do.

In fact, Malcolm certainly deserved a postage stamp in the Black Heritage series for his impact on the aspects of the African-American movement that he participated in, whether he was more flexible regarding the civil rights issues in the later stages of his 37-year life or not. But clearly he was more flexible in those waning days of his short life. Indeed, three weeks prior to his assassination, Malcolm X was in Selma, Alabama, joining Dr. King, civil rights activist John Lewis, and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the march for voting rights and the struggle for justice in a South that was still under the dark cloud of Jim Crow in too many communities.

Historian and Columbia University professor Manning Marable, among the most respected chroniclers of Malcolm X's life, has been working for the past ten years on a new biography about the slain African-American leader called Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Marable is the founder and head of "The Malcolm X Project" at Columbia University; in a May, 2007 interview with "Democracy Now" journalist Amy Goodman, Marable quotes Malcolm as telling Coretta Scott King why he came to Selma. These quotes are pivotal for those who are not aware of Malcolm's change of heart from militant black separatism to an urgent and fervent desire to unify the myriad movements for black justice.

As Marable explained to Amy Goodman, Alex Haley, co-author of the Autobiography of Malcolm X, took a strong integrationist position regarding justice and the rights of black people, but Malcolm was a "committed internationalist at the end of his life, but he was also a black nationalist..." much more so than a civil rights activist.

That having been said, Malcolm did make this statement to Coretta in Selma: "I am not here to disrupt the effort to register African-Americans to vote or to mobilize against structural racism in the heart of the Black Belt." Rather, he said that he was in attendance because "...I want to lend my support to the struggle and the fight of Dr. King." Lending support didn't imply joining fully in the movement, of course; but the fact that Malcolm was present in turbulent Selma, where many vicious crimes against innocent demonstrators were committed by law enforcement (and broadcast on television for the world to see), shows that Malcolm respected what Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement was doing.

What Marable takes from the quotes of Malcolm is that although Malcolm was "...deeply committed to broadening the basis of the black freedom movement beyond the principles of integration and nonviolence of King," he didn't want to "destroy or disrupt the legitimacy of King's role" in the movement to improve the lives of African-Americans. Marable also told his interviewer that while Malcolm was the first African-American leader to come out against the Vietnam War (he spoke out against the war in 1963; Dr. King took his stand against America's involvement in the Vietnam war in 1967), that doesn't mean he was changing from an activist in the Nation of Islam (NOI) to a more generalized critic of American society.

It just reflected the fact that Malcolm saw a country that was drafting young black men into the U.S. Army to go halfway around the world and fight and kill Vietnamese people, and yet Malcolm was also a witness to the lack of jobs, the lack of available quality education, the lack of justice for the same young black men in Harlem, and he had no choice but to raise his voice against that paradox.

The tendency of those folks who respected and admired Alex Haley (who wrote the Color Purple), and hence were impressed with Malcolm's autobiography, was to believe that Malcolm was "...a kind of evolving integrationist," professor Marable stated. But wait; "that's just false," Marable states. The correct way to view Malcolm was as a great, strong, charismatic "internationalist" leader, Marable continues. "But he was also a black nationalist, in the sense that he fought and died for the concept of self-determination for the people of African-American descent in this continent and fought for the right of that population to determine for itself what it wished to become," professor Marable asserted in the interview. "It was Malcolm X who said that we had to go beyond civil rights to human rights," Marable continued. And it was Malcolm X who said that the issue of racism shouldn't be taken to the U.S. Congress, but rather to the United Nations; and Malcolm X was the black leader - Marable asserted in his interview - who was "the forerunner to the explosion of the black liberation struggle throughout the globe..."

What was the original purpose in collaborating with Alex Haley on his autobiography? Manning Marable said it was Malcolm's intention and objective to "re-ingratiate himself with the Nation of Islam," to "win back the good graces" of Elijah Muhammad by showing the world (through the autobiography) "...the emancipatory power of the vision and the creed of the Nation of Islam."

But Haley's agenda was different from Malcolm's agenda, according to Marable. Haley "despised Malcolm X's black nationalist creed...he was a Republican." And so that is the implied reason (Haley's lack of total objectivity in co-authoring Malcolm's book) that Marable feels the need to write the book he is working on, to set the record straight. "Malcolm want[ed] to be directly involved in the leadership of the black freedom struggle, the civil rights movement," Marable said during the interview. He went to Saudi Arabia and Ghana, then returned home and apologized to James Farmer (head of CORE, the Congress on Racial Equality), "a man he had bitterly debated."

These incidents that Marable describes are all valid reasons for Malcolm X's image being portrayed on a U.S. postage stamp. The Marable information clearly shows that Malcolm was trying to build a broad-based black united front, but shortly after his death (February 21, 1965) Doubleday canceled the contract on the autobiography Malcolm co-wrote with Haley. Subsequently, Grove published the book, and yet several chapters were taken out of the book, and sold in an auction to an attorney in Detroit; Marable was given 15 minutes to look through the chapters and he said Malcolm was trying to find a way to bring blacks together in a huge rally, similar to what later was called the "Million Man March." Those missing chapters, according to Marable's interview with Democracy Now, were partly due to Haley's editorial decisions following Malcolm's death.