The evolution of Malcolm X

“It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against White, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.”

Malcolm X

Malcolm X spoke these words on Feb. 18, 1965 at Barnard College in New York, three days before he was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He was clearly developing a world view of the struggle compared to when he first gained prominence within the Nation of Islam.

He had always supported the Black liberation struggle which included holding fundraisers during the early days of the civil rights movement for the Monroe NAACP, which came under governmental attack for arming itself against white supremacists and crony racist cops in Monroe, N.C. Robert Williams, a Black revolutionary, was a leader of this NAACP chapter. The documentary “Negroes with Guns” chronicles his pioneer role in advocating armed self-defense for Black people facing racist repression.

The government and big business tried to discredit Malcolm X by portraying him as being violent. However, Malcolm would take every opportunity to expose the brutal and reactionary tendencies of the ruling class, its government and repressive forces—whether legal or illegal.

He once remarked, “…But also I’m a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are Black people. I’ve never heard anybody go to the Ku Klux Klan and teach them nonviolence, or to the (John) Birch Society and other right-wing elements. Non violence is only preached to Black Ameri cans, and I don’t go along with anyone who wants to teach our people nonviolence until someone at that time is teaching our enemy to be nonviolent.”

In his last year of life, Malcolm X traveled extensively, through North and Western Africa, the Middle East, France and England. His travels brought him to the conclusion that the struggle for civil rights should be extended to the struggle for human rights and tied to liberation struggles around the world.

Malcolm was beginning to link racism to capitalism and see that, just as oppressed nationalities determine their struggle against the oppressing class, there was a much larger, multi-national working class struggling against the capitalist rulers.

He was also becoming an internationalist and was seeking to unite the struggle of Blacks in this country to the African liberation struggles, and the struggles of the entire Black diaspora.

Malcolm commented, “I used to define Black nationalism as the idea that the Black man should control his community, and so forth. But when I was in Africa in May, in Ghana, I was speaking with the Algerian ambassador who is extremely militant and is a revolutionary in the true sense of the word and has credentials as such for having carried on a successful revolution against oppression in his country.”

“When I told him that my political, social, and economic philosophy was Black nationalism, he asked me very frankly: Well, where did that leave him? Because he was white. He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all appearances, he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory of Black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where does that leave revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries dedicated to overturning the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary.

“I’m against every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color....As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”