Dan Snow's History Hit - The Life of Malcolm X

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

Born Malcolm Little in 1925, Malcolm X would become human rights activist— a prominent African American minister and figure during the civil rights movement. As a spokesman for the Nation of Islam until 1964, Malcolm X was a vocal advocate for Black empowerment, Black nationalism and the promotion of Islam within the Black community. After Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965, his posthumous autobiography popularised his ideas of Black pride, Black dignity and the importance of political activism.Peniel E. Joseph is an American scholar, teacher, and public voice on race issues. Professor Joseph joins Dan on the podcast to discuss Malcolm X’s leadership of the Nation of Islam, comparisons made to Dr King, and his crucial legacy in the fight for social justice and equality.Produced by Hannah WardMixed and Mastered by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

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Malcolm X, often seen as the opposite of what Dr King, Martin Luther King Jr. stood for. And yet, as you'll hear in this podcast, the truth is far more subtle, as ever, far more interesting. I'm joined by the very brilliant Professor Peniel E. Joseph. Professor Joseph is an American scholar. He has a professorship at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. And he makes the bold claim, which I've been spending a lot of time on YouTube since then, of saying Malcolm X was a better orator than Martin Luther King. Fascinating stuff.

Huge, if true. If you want to go and listen to other podcasts about the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, please go and check out History Hit TV. We've got lots and lots and lots of podcast episodes about that. We've got some TV shows about that. It's like an Audible and Netflix all rolled into one of history. If you follow the link in the description of this podcast in the notes beneath the pod, you will get taken straight there and you get two weeks free for start today. Works anywhere in the world. USA, Canada, New Zealand, Ethiopia,

UK. Everywhere. Everywhere. Maybe not North Korea, everywhere else. But before you do that, here is Professor Joseph on Malcolm X. Enjoy. Professor, thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast. Oh, my pleasure, Dan. Great to meet you. Tell me about the little boy first who would go on to become the legendary Malcolm X. Where is he from? Well, he was born on May 19th, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska.

And he was a precocious little boy. He was the son of two Black political activists. His father, Earl Little, was an itinerant Baptist preacher who was also a farmer and also a supporter of Marcus Garvey, who was the Jamaican Black political activist who started a group called the Universal Negro Improvement Association. They're very famously known for this back to Africa idea about buying ships and sending Black people back to Africa. But they were doing more than that.

They were trying to get Black people to organize, build businesses, take pride in being Black, discover more about Black history. And since Garvey was from the Caribbean, what was so interesting is that Garvey's a Pan-Africanist, meaning he believed that people from the Caribbean, from Africa, United States, all over the world had this shared connection with Africa. And so all the Black people, irrespective of where you were from, should know about

Africa and African history. So Malcolm's early life is sort of a very politicized life. His mother, Louise Norton Little, is from the Caribbean. She teaches all of the kids how to read. He's part of a family of seven, and he's going to be one of the babies in that family. He's got two older brothers, and his father has three other kids from a previous marriage. So Malcolm is the kind of precocious kid who, before his father passes away at six, he accompanies his dad to different UNIA meetings. He's very loquacious, very verbal. He reads at a very, very early age.

And Malcolm is light-skinned with freckles. So Malcolm's father is very, very dark. His mother was very, very light. She could pass for white. He comes to think that he's favored by his father because of his light skin and is able to do certain things. So Malcolm Little, there's a happy-go-lucky side, but the family is also at times terrorized by racists because they are a Black family that move to predominantly white sections of town, wherever they go, whether it's Omaha, Nebraska, they're in Wisconsin for a time, and then they settle in Lansing, Michigan. And Earl Little does this on purpose. He moves to predominantly white areas on purpose. You might say, well, why does he do this? He says, one, Black people have a right to live wherever they want to live. But two, he says he's checked. And when he goes to the white part of town, he's able to get more land, a better house, and better amenities than the black part of town. And he believes that him and his family deserve that.

But then having the temerity to try and live among white people, is that responsible for the tragedy that overtakes the family? Yeah, it's the temerity to live among white people, is that responsible for the tragedy that overtakes the family? Yeah, it's the temerity to live among white people. And also, he's an activist. Earl is an early anti-racist. And this is extraordinary because this is 1925, 1926, 1927. This is not the age of Black Lives Matter, right? And so when we think about this period, Earl and his wife, Louise Norton Little, they are anti-racist activists at the precise moment when the Ku Klux Klan is making a massive resurgence in the United States. And when I say massive, I mean massive. The new Klan is founded in 1915 in Stone Mountain, Georgia. And that's the new Klan, the revival of the Klan. The original Klan is founded in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee.

And what is the Klan? The Klan is a white terrorist, white supremacist organization, but it's more than that. It's also a white nationalist organization. It's anti-Semitic, it's anti-Catholic, it's anti-Black, of course. And it becomes respectable in the 1920s. By 1925, in August of 1925, 40,000 Klansmen marched in Washington, D.C., some with hoods on, some without. And so when we think about the Klan of the 1920s, you've got future judges who belong to the Klan, future politicians like West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who belonged to the Klan, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. These are all people who were part of the Klan. So the Klan is a big deal. And so when we think about it, Earl Little is this

anti-racist social justice activist at the exact moment where white supremacy is sort of cresting in the United States in a big way. And in a way where it doesn't just impact what we think of as, in quotes, poor white trash, which itself is a racist term, poor white trash. It's not trailer park people. It's not poor people. It's everybody. And so he's really caught in that vice. Elites are part of the Klan or sympathetic to it, and so are grassroots ordinary white citizens. And what happens to him? Well, Earl is going to be murdered by white supremacists in Lansing, Michigan. His body, he's going to be pushed into a streetcar, and his body is almost severed in half when

Malcolm is six. So he sort of leaves to go get some money for some chickens he sold to someone, goes to town, and is killed. And really, that's going to set Malcolm up for the next six years, the fracturing of Malcolm X's family. So this happens when Malcolm is six in 1931. six in 1931. And by the end of 1938, Malcolm's mother, Louise Norton Little, is going to be institutionalized in Kalamazoo, Michigan, at a state psychiatric hospital where she's going to spend mostly the rest of her life. And in between, they never get paid out the $10,000 life insurance policy on the father. Their land is taken away from them. Malcolm and his brothers are going to be, and his sisters are going to be scattered to both family, but also

be put in foster care. Malcolm's going to be put in foster care with a white family in Mason, Michigan. And then really by the time his mother is institutionalized, that's where we're going to see sort of the entree of East Lansing red and Detroit red. Malcolm is sort of this juvenile delinquent as this hustler from the ages really of 12 to 20. It's such an interesting kind of decapitation strategy. It reminds me of the Belgians in the Congo. You identify leaders, charismatic figures, and just kill them. Just make sure that they and their families just like atomized, denied a voice, literally in this case, by my murder. Absolutely. And Earl was a

huge leader, but Earl was also a big physically imposing man on top of it. So not only was he this outspoken figure, he was a figure from rural Georgia who was darkskinned, did not have much of an education. Earl was not literate the same way his wife was. Earl was very intelligent, but really learned from listening to people. And it was really his wife who's reading the UNIA newspaper, Negro World. And his wife actually, Louise Norton Little, writes for Negro world. So she's unbelievably literate and this brilliant woman who after a time has seven kids with Earl, and then she's engaged after Earl's death and has an eighth child, Robert, and her fiance jilts her after the pregnancy. And that's really what sets her. There's an emotional breakdown. And it's also

the stress of keeping all those kids together. And, you know, Malcolm, what's so interesting, Malcolm is somebody who helps to exacerbate that stress. He's just a little boy, but he starts going around with his brothers, at times stealing things, at times getting into trouble. And so there's a huge family decline. But what's so interesting, as we'll see when Malcolm goes to prison and he's introduced to the Nation of Islam, there's a kind of muscle memory that happens where the Nation of Islam and the order of the Nation of Islam and the wanting to read and better oneself, he remembers. And the person he remembers is Earl. So on some levels, Barack Obama reminds me very much of Malcolm X. And what I mean by that is this.

Malcolm is always in search of his father. When historians really tease out the relationship and look at his father, his mother, and him, he's going to spend much more time with his mother before her institutionalization. His mother literally teaches him how to read. But the person who becomes this icon is his father, who he doesn't spend as much time with, and his father dies. Same thing happens to Barack Obama. He really literally only has one memory of his father when he's about 10, 11 years old, coming back to visit him in Hawaii. And then by the time he's at Columbia University, his father dies in a car accident in Africa. And so that's why he names his memoir, Dreams of My Father. In Malcolm's case, Elijah Muhammad becomes the father figure

Malcolm felt that racism, white supremacy robbed him of. And so it's very interesting, this focus on these father figures who they were both denied a chance to have access to. Tell me about how he discovered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and who he was. Well, Malcolm's going to discover Elijah Muhammad through his siblings. So when we think about Malcolm, Malcolm's coming from a large family. So his own family with his mother and Earl, there's seven kids. He's one of seven. Earl had three children, including Malcolm's older sister, Ella Mae Collins, before marrying

Malcolm's mother, Louise. And then there's another child, Robert, who's Malcolm's youngest brother. So Malcolm is coming from literally, he's part of a family of 12, right? And so when we think about his siblings, he's going to see that there's some older siblings, including Ella Mae Collins and younger, who write to him from prison and tell him and introduce him to Elijah Muhammad. And Elijah Muhammad is part of the fervent of, in the 1930s, Great Depression era activism that is happening. He's born Elijah Poole in 1897 in Georgia. He used to be part of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. He is a brilliant organizer, but he's not educated formally. He's not going to be this hyper articulate. He's really part of the Black quotidian. And he joins a group called the Nation of Islam, which was first introduced in 1935

in Detroit and parts of Chicago and other places, the lost foundation of Islam by a peddler named W.D. Farad, who said he was from the Middle East, and most historians will say he was actually from New Zealand and was in the United States. And people don't know much about him before or after he leaves, but he introduces this idea of the Nation of Islam with Black people as Afro-Asiatic people who are really meant to rule but have been oppressed by white supremacy because of sins from their past, right? So the Nation of Islam is going to have its own philosophy, its own mythology, like any religion. This idea of a Black scientist named Yaqub who invented white people, and white people are sort of genetically predisposed to committing acts of evil against Black people.

When you think about the Nation of Islam, it's really like any religion. When you think about Mormonism, when you think about Christianity, when you think about what people talk about as Orthodox or Sunni Islam, it just has its own religion. Elijah Muhammad does not claim to be a deity. He claims that W.D. Farad was connected to a deity or sort of the apparition of God himself. And all Elijah Muhammad is, is the messenger. He's the messenger. And so what's so interesting about the Nation of Islam is that it provides a context for Black people who are interested in dignity, a way to

grasp for that dignity. It provides a context to say that Black people are worthy, have a worthwhile history, as long as they get together and organize themselves. Just quickly, we talked about his petty criminality. Is there one thing in particular he ends up in prison for, for a particularly long time? Yes. Part of this, Dan, is because he's part of an interracial group of burglars at a time when there's Jim Crow racial segregation. The young Malcolm Little has a white girlfriend, and they are stealing from homes in Boston around 1945. He's got another friend who's African-American named Shorty Jarvis, who also has a white girlfriend. And so by the time they're caught, and they're really caught because Malcolm tries to sell

a stolen watch to a pawn shop broker. By the time they're caught, both their own defense attorney and the prosecutors tell them they shouldn't have been messing with those white girls. And so they're really sentenced to 11 years in prison. Malcolm's sentenced to 11 years, and he's going to end up serving just under seven years in prison. So from 1946, and he's going to be paroled in 1952, August 7th. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Malcolm X. More coming up.

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but also the minister of a mosque in Harlem. Is it fair that we tend to sort of, it's our kind of lazy historical cliches, that we set him up as a counter example to Dr. King? The idea of peaceful overcoming of white supremacy and racism, and that we see Malcolm X as the opposite of that. Is that fair? And was it something that became obvious at the time? as the opposite of that. Is that fair? And was it something that became obvious at the time? I don't think it's fair. But I think at the time, there was no sort of framework to understand what both King and Malcolm were doing, right? So I think that King is coming out of the Montgomery

bus boycott, nonviolence. To show you how lazy American journalists are, they call King the American Gandhi because that's the only thing that they can relate to. They say, oh, oh, so you're like Gandhi. And he's mentioned Gandhi, nonviolence, right? King is much more complicated than Gandhi, just like Gandhi was very complicated. And then with Malcolm, Malcolm comes into the public's imagination, the white public's imagination in 1959 via the future 60 Minutes icon Mike Wallace and the African-American journalist Louis Lomax and a documentary called The Hate That Hate Produced that is broadcast in June of 1959 over five consecutive nights on local television, but then becomes sort of this national sensation. And Mike Wallace is the host of that, the hate that hate produced. And Mike Wallace sort of frames the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X as reverse racist. That doesn't work in the Black community. The documentary helps them become very successful and helps the

Nation of Islam really have about 50,000 members from really around 500 when Malcolm first joined in prison. So it has a positive effect in the Black community, but it has a negative effect in the mainstream community. So you get this whole sword and the shield, this whole American dream versus nightmare polarization and framework. I should ask, when does he take the name Malcolm X rather than the name he was born with? Well, he's going to take that in prison. So X for the Nation of Islam is a sign that Black people were so marginalized during racial slavery that they actually took the surnames of those who purported to be their masters. And that Elijah Muhammad is not wrong. Black people from West Africa were not called Smith and Johnson and Jackson. They just weren't. And so that's what Malcolm tries to tell when he's speaking to audiences. He says, you don't even know who you

are. You laugh at us in the nation of Islam for calling ourselves X, but you're not Johnson or Jefferson or Lloyd. You're not any of that. You just don't know who you are. And then you laugh at us, those of us who are seeking the knowledge of ourselves, right? So it's very interesting in that sense that there are aspects of the Nation of Islam, people can say, wow, that's out there. What were you doing? Then there are other aspects that are very, very clear and very, very sort of common sense and very basic that they sort of teach Black people who are called Negroes in the 1950s and people of color how to be Black. When people say, well, what is Malcolm X's biggest influence? I would argue is that he

really transformed Negroes. And not just in the United States, I think in the UK, and we know there's a Black Power movement in the UK. And globally, he taught Negroes, and not just in the United States, I think in the UK, and we know there's a Black Power movement in the UK, and globally, he taught Negroes how to be Black, which is really extraordinary. What did he want to achieve? Malcolm is arguing for what he calls Black radical dignity, and King is arguing for Black radical citizenship. And over time, they come to converge. But this idea of dignity is very, very important. So Malcolm argues that dignity is the end of world white supremacy. He thinks about dignity externally and internally. One, he's an anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist. So Malcolm looks at both the racism and the segregation in the United States, but also what's happening

globally in the Middle East, in Africa, Latin America, Asia, as this idea of sort of worldwide supremacy, this idea of Western civilization and Western culture that is made up from the backbreaking labor and super exploitation of Black people globally and people of color, the so-called third world. So one, when he thinks about dignity, he's talking about ending these external structures of violence and institutional racism. But he also, and this is where Malcolm's very much different from King, Malcolm routinely castigates Black people for not believing in themselves and their history. So it's interesting. Malcolm's father was a Baptist preacher. Malcolm is a Muslim minister, but if you ever hear him speak, and I think Malcolm X is a better speaker than Dr. King,

and I think Dr. King is one of the all-time world-class speakers. So King is sort of this Nobel Prize-winning standard, And I'm saying Malcolm's actually a better speaker. Why is he a better speaker? I think he speaks in the Black quotidian call and response of the church in a way that's more effective and more grounded than Dr. King. And part of the reason why he's more effective than King is that Malcolm does not have to go through formal education, which I think defeats all of us. I'm saying this as somebody with a PhD from an American university. I think formal education defeats all of us because it gives us these rules that people

like Malcolm X, who are autodidacts, don't follow, right? So King followed all these rules, Morehouse College, Crozier Theological Seminary, Boston University, and he takes on the cloak of white Western erudition, where Malcolm has got an eighth grade education, but he's brilliant. I think Malcolm X was a genius. And when you think about his platform, the dignity aspect is saying that Black people for too long have been believing the stories that white racism tells them about themselves.

They believe there are people without a history. They believe that they don't have any dignity. They don't want to go to Africa. They think something's wrong with Africa because of all the Tarzan movies. Africa has been lampooned, right? So Malcolm is saying, before we can get access to citizenship, Black people have to believe in themselves. And so when you think about his platform, his platform is a platform. He says it's Black nationalism. And when you think about Black nationalism, this idea of unity, self-determination, and the cultural politics of race. When you think about Black nationalism, historically, it's different from white nationalism in the sense that it's an

anti-racist nationalism. And in that sense, Black nationalism is very much like Irish nationalism and other nationalisms that have been critics of white supremacist nationalism. When you think about Irish nationalism and Sinn Féin, right, it's very much this idea that, no, the Irish are human beings, right? And just because we are not British does not mean that we can't live with dignity. And so when we think about Black nationalism, and it's important to say that in the global context we live now, Black nationalism is not about Black supremacy, just like Irish nationalism is not Irish supremacy. It's saying, no, the Irish are people who deserve dignity and their own homeland. And

sometimes it's hard to explain that to people, Dan. So when you think about dignity, he means dignity as Black people understanding their self-worth and their humanity without, and here's his criticism of Dr. King, although he's going to converge with King later on in this, he criticizes King for wanting external validation and recognition of Black humanity. That's his criticism. So sometimes Malcolm boils it down to saying, these folks are cowards. Why are you putting young women and children in harm's way? That becomes a kind of masculinist rhetoric that he uses. But what his biggest beef with King is that King is looking to white people for validation in a way that Malcolm is not.

Over time, Malcolm is going to come to see, no, we need citizenship, too. But dignity is the prerequisite of citizenship. I guess white validation, including the Nobel Prize, right? So Malcolm X didn't win a Nobel Prize. Yeah. When Dr. King wins the Nobel Peace Prize, they're both overseas. And Malcolm tells reporters that he would never accept a peace prize in a time of war. And what he means by that is that there's a race war happening globally. Talk to me about the mid-60s.

Talk to me about how the Jared Gover, how how the U.S. government, how the white government responded to this man. Well, Malcolm is going to be under government surveillance. He's going to be harassed. The Nation of Islam is going to be at times arrested and on trial in many multiple cities, Rochester, Buffalo, Queens, Los Angeles. Malcolm's going to go on a crusade against the criminal justice system starting in 1962 after Ronald Stokes, a friend of his, is shot and killed by the Los Angeles police for being in a Muslim mosque, which was their own mosque. The police come and raid the mosque, think they're stealing something, and shoot Ronald Stokes in the back. So, you know, when we think about Malcolm, what Malcolm is doing in the early 1960s, he's the

second most popular college speaker on college campuses. Number one is Barry Goldwater, who's the Arizona senator, arch conservative, who runs for president in 64. And so when we think about Malcolm, he's really preaching this philosophy of Black radical dignity. Malcolm, people call him a racial separatist, but it's not the right way to call Malcolm. Malcolm says that he's all for racial integration if Black people didn't have to march and rally for integration. He says it many, many times to Bayard Rustin, to James Farmer, to different civil rights activists. He says, why are you marching to be integrated when there was the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments? He's talking about the Reconstruction Amendments that really,

there should have been no modern civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, because it was settled through the 13th Amendment ends racial slavery. The 14th Amendment is birthright citizenship. 15th Amendment is Black male voting suffrage, which eventually becomes white female voting suffrage in 1920, and then Black women through the Voting Rights Act in 65. So Malcolm's always telling civil rights activists, I'm not the separatist. White people are the segregationists. But what Malcolm says is that because they are segregationists, Black people with dignity say they're going to separate. So we have to understand Malcolm was never a person who said

he just wants all Black neighborhoods for the sake of having all Black neighborhoods. He's saying you can't live with dignity in a society and send your five-year-old children to a public school where they're going to be picketed with white mob violence. Right. And I think that's completely reasonable and much different from saying, oh, my gosh, Malcolm X was a racial separatist and he just was as bad as that. No, not at all. But Malcolm understood the history of racial slavery in the United States had continued by other means through this evolutionary process. And people called it Jim Crow. But that euphemism of Jim Crow really ignores the violence, the theft of Black wealth and economic opportunities. It ignores the way in which when we think about public school segregation and housing segregation, this was also the exploitation of people's futures and their future earnings and production and power.

So Malcolm is very, very interesting in the way in which he's willing to speak unvarnished truths. And King is going to follow his lead by the late 60s, 65 to 68. Toni Morrison calls it unspeakable, unspoken truths. And that's what Malcolm is willing to do. So Malcolm is both going to be this hugely controversial figure, but there's part of white America that's very fascinated with Malcolm. He's so good on television. Like I said, better than King on television, because he goes back and forth with you. He's unbelievably, not just articulate, but unbelievably eloquent. And he's unbelievably ready with the quips. He's ready with the quips at any second. And also white people find him, and everybody did, very, very charming. There are great stories about him in Esquire and Ebony and Playboy magazine where people are doing profiles on Malcolm. And when white people see him, he's so, so receptive to chat with them, to talk to them about his

whole platform, his whole program, and how they come away just like saying, wow, what's just an unbelievable person you are. And I didn't think you would be like this. He's got a terrific sense of humor. So he's much different than people might think he was in person, right? And again, you know, we think about the UK, one audience in the UK that sees this on the BBC Live is the Oxford University debate by 1964. Once Malcolm leaves the Nation of Islam, very much settles into a human rights philosophy

where he says he wants to partner with anybody, no matter what their skin color, as long as they want to change the miserable condition on the face of this earth. He gets the standing ovation. But remember, Malcolm is debating the Barry Goldwater line. Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Malcolm is saying he agrees with that, but for different reasons. Goldwater used that term to defend racial segregation and white economic and political nationalism. Malcolm uses that term, extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, to talk about a global human rights movement to smash white supremacy.

So it's really interesting and extraordinary who Malcolm X is. He was obviously a threat because, tell me about February 1965. February 1965, he's actually barred from France. There's a point where he is in the UK. He visits the UK quite an extraordinary number of times. He's in Smethwick in the UK. He's in Birmingham in the UK, right before he dies, two weeks before he dies. And he's obviously in Oxford. He's part of a new organization called the Organization of Afro-American Unity. At this point, the Nation of Islam really has a death sentence out for Malcolm. Malcolm has left the Nation of Islam. He's been kicked out ostensibly

for saying the chickens have come home to roost after President Kennedy's assassination, November 22nd, 1963. In reality, he's kicked out because he's in a power struggle with Elijah Muhammad. The Nation of Islam, which he's turned into this multi-million dollar apparatus, wants to get rid of Malcolm because they have a culture of corruption. They're making a lot of money and he's rocking the boat. And in turn, he finds out about Elijah Muhammad's extramarital affairs, children out of wedlock. And he starts telling that to key ministers, including Louis Farrakhan, Louis X at the point then,

to see if he can get people to rally around him. They don't rally around him. He's kicked out and he, for the next year, is doing his own independent organizing through the Muslim Mosque, Inc., an organization of Afro-American unity. Very important to say, all throughout 64, Malcolm is traveling to Africa, to the Middle East, meets up with prime ministers, presidents, royalty. Malcolm has a office at the United Nations.

an office at the United Nations. And when we think about Malcolm by 65, he's a man who is really Black America's unofficial prime minister. He's greeted as a prime minister wherever he travels globally, right? In the United States, though, he's still trying to organize local Black people in Harlem, and he's going to be assassinated February 21st, 1965, in Washington Heights at the Audubon Ballroom. And it's really going to be a mixture of Nation of Islam assassins, NYPD, who are part of Malcolm's entourage and have infiltrated his entourage, the Special Bureau of Special Services Unit. And also there's a Black FBI agent and informer who are there. So it really is when people talk about, oh, was there a conspiracy to kill Malcolm X? Yeah, there is. All a conspiracy is, is two or more people who gather together to commit a crime.

We've turned it into something different because of the Kennedy assassination and different stuff. But was there a conspiracy? Were there two or more people from different organizations trying to kill Malcolm X? Yes. One of the organizations was the Nation of Islam. One of them was the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. And another was a special unit of the New York Police Department. And we have the documents, Dan, to show all of this. So it's important for us to understand that when people say a conspiracy is not some far-fetched thing. It's just two or more people who get together to actively plan a crime. And that happens all the time, just so people know. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Decades later, how do you think about Malcolm X and his vision? What has happened since his death, his murder? Try and sum it up for me. In 2025, it's going to be 60 years since his assassination.

His legacy has just grown since his assassination. Malcolm's unapologetic criticism of white supremacy, his unapologetic love of Black people, his personal sincerity, political integrity, really animate the movement for Black lives globally, the Black Lives Matter movement. It animates all these different social justice movements we've seen in the 21st century. in the 21st century. Malcolm was one of the first activists to really call out white supremacy in the modern era in a really vocal way, in an eloquent way that people really responded to. He also is somebody who called out Black people globally to really believe and embrace political self-determination. So Malcolm is both an advocate, but he's also a critic. He wanted Black people to accept and embrace their humanity in a way that they, quite frankly, had not in his time, right? Which is one of the reasons they call themselves Negroes. He wanted Black people to be better than both their conditions, but also better than what they aspire to be. And he connected that

to going to Africa and connecting it to really the kind of education he had gotten through Earl Little and Marcus Garvey and this idea of Pan-Africanism. And then finally, when we think about Malcolm X, Malcolm X is going to be one of the most important policy advocates and political and intellectual leaders in the 20th and 21st century. His policy advocacy was to really end a racist criminal justice system. So Malcolm, before the movement for Black Lives, is really meeting with different police chiefs and police heads and talking about police brutality in New York, in Los Angeles, right? Malcolm becomes a voting rights champion with the ballot or the bullet

speech. And this is where we see he converges with Dr. King. By 1964, he's talking to Robert Penn Warren and he tells Robert Penn Warren, the author, that him and Dr. King have the same goal and their goal is human dignity. They just have different methods. Malcolm listens to Dr. King, December 16th, 1964, in New York City at the Harlem's 369th Armory after Dr. King gets the Nobel Peace Prize. Malcolm listens to a whole speech next to future ambassador Andrew Young. And Andrew Young talks about in his memoir how excited he was, and he was a friend and fan of Malcolm X. And then finally, Malcolm meets up with Coretta Scott King right before his death, February 5th, 1965, in Selma, Alabama. He's going to meet with Dr. King. Dr. King's in prison. He eventually meets with Coretta Scott King. They both give speeches at the Brown AME Chapel,

and he tells Mrs. King that he wants to help her husband, that he's a fan of her husband. He admires her husband, and he wants white people to see that there's an alternative if Dr. King's methods aren't successful. So when we think about his legacy, it's Malcolm's legacy that turns King into what one of King's biographers calls a pillar of fire the last three years of King's life. King between 65 and 68 is not the King that we memorialize. That's the king of the March on Washington. 65 to 68, King no longer is on speaking terms with the president of the United States. King comes out against the war in Vietnam, April 4th, 1967. King is an anti-imperialist, a critic of racial capitalism, a critic of colonialism, the Poor People's Campaign,

a critic of racial capitalism, a critic of colonialism, the Poor People's Campaign, and King becomes one of the most vociferous critics of white supremacy. It's Dr. King in 1967 who's telling audiences that the biggest threat to American democracy is white racism, and that white racists then say that Black people don't want peace, but there's no peace because the chaos that white racism has unleashed on the society. This is Martin Luther King Jr. So Malcolm's impact is on King. It's on his time, but it's also on our own. Yeah, it sounds to me like white racists causing chaos in American democracy sounds pretty contemporary there, Professor.

It's frustratingly familiar. pretty contemporary there, Professor. It's frustratingly familiar. And I think Malcolm called us to this moment as well, because I think the early king wants a rapprochement. Malcolm says you can't get that rapprochement without a reckoning. So Malcolm wants racial truth, justice, and reconciliation. Societies always want the reconciliation without the truth and the justice part. And I think Malcolm called us to this moment. Well, that was really thought-provoking, and it transformed the way that I think about him.

So I'm very, very grateful, Professor Joseph. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Dan. It's been a pleasure. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks, you've made it to the end of our episode. Congratulations, well done you.

I hope you're not fast asleep. If you did fancy supporting everything we do here at History Hit, we'd love it if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give it a rating, five stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Thank you very very much indeed that really does make a huge difference it's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account so please don't ever do that can seem like a small thing but actually it's kind of a big deal for us so i really appreciate it see you next time

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