“The ballot, the bullet and the imminent destruction of the white race: The intersection of eschatology and politics in the rhetoric of Malcolm X” M.A. Thesis
History: American Studies University of Amsterdam T.I. Snijders
10092749
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
I. From Nat Turner to the Nation of Islam: 5
The long and storied history of African-American eschatology
II. The Nation’s theology: 13
Rewriting black origins while holding white America to account
III. From conciliation to confrontation: 20
Eschatology in Malcolm’s rhetoric
IV. Malcolm after Mecca: 31
A ‘new’ message echoes the old one
V. Malcolm’s legacy: 37
Another reinvention?
Conclusion 48
Introduction
Today, Malcolm X is remembered as a civil rights icon, synonymous with his eviscerating screeds against America’s racial injustice. He is considered the inspiration of black power, black pride, ‘black is beautiful’. His face adorns walls far beyond his native Harlem and his name can be heard in hip-hop lyrics by artists from Kendrick to Kanye. If Martin Luther King’s greatest achievements for African-Americans came in the legal and political realm, Malcolm X can be credited for his contributions to the ‘inner emancipation’ of African-Americans, as one scholar described it.1 His message of black self-determination and assertion carried great appeal to those disaffected with oppression and the slow pace of racial progress. Yet in this perception of Malcolm X, his most radical beliefs are often overlooked.
Malcolm was a minister in the Nation of Islam and from the late 1950s until his departure from the group in 1964, its public face. This African-American Islamic sect preached a type of black liberation that went far beyond other efforts toward emancipation. Its theology held that the white race was wicked, created by a mad scientist thousands of years ago. In its apocalyptic visions, whites faced certain destruction as a direct result of its crimes against the African people of the world. In this political eschatology, an apocalyptic vision of the end-of-days was held up to compel society to act and avert disaster, thereby bringing about much needed change.
For my purposes here, I will not attempt to rewrite Malcolm X’s biography or even attempt to reconstruct his motives. Rather, this thesis examines the intersection between eschatology and politics in Malcolm’s public rhetoric. It places his speeches, writings and public remarks in the rich historical context of African-American eschatological rhetoric and aims to show how these doomsday visions are appropriated. Moreover, it seeks to illuminate how themes of divine judgment ultimately serve social and political means. Contrary to other analyses of Malcolm’s rhetoric, this paper does not consider his theological views separate from his political perspectives on race. Rather, it argues that they are inextricably linked, with one directly informed by the other.
Firstly, I will offer a concise history of eschatology in African-American rhetoric, in which America’s salvation is presented as contingent upon racial redemption. Figures from Nat Turner to Frederick Douglass have employed the notion of an imminent apocalypse on earth to spur their audiences into action. Where do Malcolm and the Nation fit in and how
literally should these types of ominous warnings be taken? Secondly, I will elaborate on Malcolm’s rise to prominence as a spokesman for the Nation and his incorporation of the group’s eschatology into his speeches. How explicit was he in his warnings of America’s demise? What rhetorical purpose did his ominous visions serve? In paragraph III, I will examine Malcolm’s pivot toward political speech. Were his religious beliefs no more than a persuasive political threat? Or did he really believe a violent confrontation was inevitable? Paragraph IV and V will deal with Malcolm’s rhetoric after his departure from the Nation and his legacy. Did his eschatological themes outlive his time with the sect?
As Malcolm has given hundreds of public remarks and interviews throughout his public career, the source material is naturally incomplete. Still, this thesis will draw on a broad range of material in an attempt to offer new insight into his rhetorical style and substance.
I. From Nat Turner to the Nation of Islam:
The long and storied history of African-American eschatology
To African-Americans, eschatological themes were never limited to theological philosophy, but closely related to the every-day reality of oppression and inequality. In this paragraph, I will elaborate on the role apocalyptic visions play in black rhetoric from the nineteenth century onward. More specifically, I will focus on how they were employed to inspire action.
When Nat Turner led a slave revolt in 1831, his motives were profoundly religious. Turner, a Baptist preacher, had deeply immersed himself in Christian theology and had come to consider himself a prophet. After being imprisoned, he laid out his motives and beliefs to attorney Thomas Ruffin Gray, who wrote them down in The Confessions of Nat Turner. In the account, published after his execution, Turner explained how his birth had been predestined and how he had communicated directly with God.
These visions were apocalyptic in nature and to Turner, became a justification for rebellion. “And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me--For as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew--and as the leaves on the trees bore the impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens, it was plain to me that the Saviour was about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgment was at hand”, Turner expressed to Gray.2 In his revelations, judgment day was a reckoning of race relations. “I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened--the thunder rolled in the Heavens, and blood flowed in streams”, he stated.3 At the same time, it is likely Turner mulled the practical aims of a slave revolt. He himself may have been primarily fulfilling an apocalyptic prophecy as revealed to him, but his fellow rebels arguably were in pursuit of a more earthly liberation. After all, careful planning preceded the revolt.
Turner also referred to a conversation with one of his fellow slaves, in which he attempted to persuade him to participate: “I [...] asked Will how came he there, he answered, his life was worth no more than others, and his liberty as dear to him. I asked him if he
2 T.R. Gray, The Confessions Of Nat Turner, The Leader Of The Late Insurrection In Southampton, Va. (Baltimore, 1831) 10, 11.
thought to obtain it? He said he would, or loose [sic] his life. This was enough to put him in full confidence.”4
Did Turner believe rebellion was his apocalyptic world view come to life? Or was it in part born out of the conviction that he could liberate himself and his fellow slaves in the short term? Turner’s statements and actions lay bare a tension between the arcane workings of a religious eschatology and the more mundane and immediate implications of a rebellion.
That same tension can be found in David Walker’s Appeal, a radical anti-slavery document first published in 1829. It too addresses black oppression in an apocalyptic fashion. In this tract, to the ‘coloured people of the world’, Walker foretells the end of days in the United States as a direct result of its crimes against African-Americans.5 Lamenting their plight, he writes: “(...) we, (coloured people of these United States,) are the most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began’’.6 A substantial part of the text is devoted to making dire predictions about the consequences of America’s racial attitudes. He wrote, ‘Americans, unless you speedily alter your course, you and your country are gone!!!!!!! (...) I call God-I call angels-I call men, to witness that your destruction is at hand, and will be speedily consummated unless you repent.’7
Drawing historical parallels, Walker argued that blacks in America had to live under worse conditions than the Israelites of ancient Egypt or the Roman slaves. A more direct comparison is made between the contemporary United States and Spain, both of which practiced slavery at the time and Walker emphatically described as Christian nations. Slavery, the ‘source from which most of our miseries proceed’ and ‘that curse to nations’ in Walker’s words, will lead God to bring destruction upon slave societies. Referring to the civil conflict of Spain (and Portugal), Walker argued: “Though others may lay the cause of the fierceness with which they cut each other's throats, to some other circumstance, yet they who believe that God is a God of justice, will believe that SLAVERY is the principal cause.”8
Here, Godly destruction of the United States and other slave nations serves as a warning. They could yet be redeemed, if only they rejected slavery. Thus his eschatological
4 Ibid., p. 12.
5 Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious
Myth (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982), 213.
6 David Walker, preamble to Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles (1829). 7 Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, 44.
assertions that America or individual Americans would surely perish in the absence of repentance, amount to a contingency. The prospect of redemption offers an escape from the impending doom and an incentive for change. The apocalyptic nature of Walker’s Appeal serves as a last warning to underscore the necessity of reform. As with Turner’s motives, the vague and theoretical cosmology of annihilation is followed by an argument for earthly and tangible progress.
Some historians see in the Appeal an early form of black nationalism, pointing to issues like racial oppression, land reparations, African-American self-governance, racial pride and criticism of capitalism, which can be found in the Appeal and would later feature prominently on the black nationalist agenda.9 Still, this view minimizes the aspect of reconciliation in the tract. Appealing to a white audience, Walker wrote: “I say let us reason (...) I speak Americans for your good (...) Throw away your fears and prejudices then, and enlighten us and treat us like men and we will like you more than we now hate you. Treat us like men (...) and we yet, under God, will become a united and happy people.”10 This leads Wilson Moses to consider him a part of the jeremiadic tradition. Moses defined Walker’s nationalism as striving to be part of the American nationality, rather than seceding from it.11 Tahbiti Asukile reflected on an argument originally made by Sterling Stuckey, who viewed Walker’s writings as fundamentally nationalist. Others however, have criticized this perspective as diminishing the role that the ideal of integration played in Walker’s views.12 Apocalyptic as his views may have been, they included a path to redemption.
The fusion of past, present and future is a constant refrain within African-American eschatology. As Eboni Marshall Turman wrote, a black vision of the end-of-days was not limited to the afterlife.13 After all, to black Americans, death was never solely a faraway hypothesis, but a constant existential threat in the present. Thus to blacks, any imagination of the end-of-days was inextricably linked to life here and now. In his book Black Theology and Black Power, James H. Cone summarized this interplay: “Black Theology refuses to embrace
9 Thabiti Asukile, ‘The All-embracing Black Nationalist Theories of David Walker’s Appeal’, The
Black Scholar 29 (1999): 16.
10 Moses, 46. 11 Moses, 46.
12 Asukile, ‘Black Nationalist Theories of David Walker’s Appeal’, 19.
13 Eboni Marshall Turman, ‘Heaven and Hell in African American Theology,’ in Oxford Handbook of
African American Theology, ed. Anthony B. Pinn and Katie G. Cannon (Oxford: Oxford University
an interpretation of eschatology which would turn our eyes from injustice now. It will not be deceived by images of pearly gates and golden streets, because too many earthly streets are covered with black blood.”14
Truman referred to the Negro spirituals to underscore how visions of the afterlife are related to the present in the African-American experience: “Nowhere is this exposition of heaven and hell, as a distinctly African American affirmation of the “terrible right to live” in the historical now in binding relationship with what is to come, more prevalent than in the Negro spirituals.”15 In these songs, heaven is not just featured as a place beyond space and time, but can be held up as an immediate escape from an unbearable oppression. Death and the afterlife offer ‘struggle, survival, and radical liberation’ in light of horrible oppression. Thus slaves sung “O Freedom! Oh Freedom, I love thee; And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave, And go home to my Lord and be free.”16 The mere presence of heaven as an idea offered refuge from the present oppression, in the form of slavery or Jim Crow. Though the idea of heaven could offer hope to blacks who had very little else to hold on to in the face of suffocating racism, the metaphysical musings of Christianity could also seem painfully out of place.
As Cone wrote: “To be sure, we may “walk in Jerusalem jus’ like John” and “there may be a great camp meeting in the Promised Land,” but we want to walk in this land....We want to know why Harlem cannot become Jerusalem and Chicago the Promised Land? What good are golden crowns, slippers, white robes, or even eternal life, if it means that we have to turn our backs on the pain and suffering of our own children?”17 Martin Luther King, himself a Christian minister, interestingly touched on that same tension between earthly challenges and the promises of a hereafter: “It’s all right to talk about “long white robes over yonder,” in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here! It’s all right to talk about “streets flowing with milk and honey,” but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God’s preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to
14 James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (New York, 1997). 15 Ibid., 255.
16 Ibid., 256. 17 Ibid., 255.
do.”18 In other words, yes, eschatological visions that offered redemption through life after death could offer hope and refuge. But what was the value of faith, when it did nothing to improve black life on earth? Thus, King and Cone both argued that visions of Christian eternity should inspire to bring about change in the present.
As Derek S. Hicks noted: “Eschatology is not merely a notion connected to African American Christian faith. Rather, considerations about the end times and eternity take on prominence in black culture as African Americans make sense of their social and political experiences in a society of domination.”19 For many African-Americans, the ‘Jeremiad’ offered a powerful rhetorical device to condemn the oppression of black Americans, while invoking a sense of national identity and mission to inspire a change of course. Originating with the first settlers to arrive in New England in the seventeenth century, this type of sermon castigated human evils and warned of the Godly punishment to come. The Puritans were inspired by the European Jeremiad, but added some distinct elements of their own. They spoke of themselves, the emigrants, as a chosen people with a sacred mission or ‘errand’.
Having twice failed to establish an American utopia before, the settlers fused the gloom of the Jeremiad with the firm belief that in the end, success was inevitable. Thus their colony was part of a biblical and historical design. As Sacvan Bercovitch argued, this shift from mere denunciation to providence was the crucial distinction between the European and American Jeremiads.20 Inherent in every Jeremiad was the paradoxical relationship between the prospect of complete doom and the notion that it could be averted by human intervention.
This type of narrative would become a staple of American rhetoric and would be reappropriated to advance many different causes. Among them was the aim for racial equality in the United States. The African-American Jeremiad juxtaposed the reverent perception of the American self with the horrors inflicted on the African minority. Like the Puritans and other white Americans before them, they too presented America as a chosen nation, with a unique mission in the history of the world. In advancing their cause,
18 Derek S. Hicks, ‘Eschatology in African American Theology’, Oxford Handbook of African-American
Theology, ed. Anthony B. Pinn and Katie G. Cannon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 247.
19 Hicks, ‘Eschatology in African American Theology’ (2014), 242.
abolitionists and advocates of desegregation and black liberation, admonished the United States to change course in order to live up to its covenant.
As David Howard-Pitney argued, the black Jeremiad served as a rhetorical tool against all forms of racial injustice, until and throughout the twentieth century.21 The example of Frederick Douglass shows us that jeremiadic pleas for equality certainly were not limited to abolitionist texts. In the prewar period, Douglass had often employed the American promise to denounce slavery, but his pleas for equality did not cease when Emancipation became a fact. When the Supreme Court ruled that anyone born to slaves could not be recognized as an American citizen in its landmark Dred Scott case (1857), Douglass invoked themes of the Jeremiad to condemn the decision. As Pitney noted, his speech in reaction to the ruling followed a familiar pattern of promise, declension and prophecy.
Characterizing slavery as anathema to the universal right of self-liberty and referring to a ‘national conscience’, Douglass reckoned that “God does not mean that we shall go to sleep and forget that we are a slave-holding nation.”22 Douglass spent most of his speech elaborating on the political system and its faults, though an allusion to imminent Godly judgment is also made: “If these shall fail, judgment, more fierce or terrible, may come. The lightning, whirlwind, and earthquake may come. Jefferson said that he trembled for his country when he reflected that God is just, and his justice cannot sleep forever. The time may come when even the crushed worm may turn under the tyrant’s feet.”23 Again, there is a connection between eschatology and politics. An apocalyptic narrative is set forth only to advance a more practical argument; that abolition is inevitable, but those in power in the United States must act to realize it.
Only if they fail to do so, will an end-of-days scenario come to fruition. Douglass invoked the theme of biblical punishment, but is nonetheless quick to emphasize more imminent, realistic dangers, primarily resistance by the slaves themselves: “Goaded by cruelty, stung by a burning sense of wrong, in an awful moment of depression and desperation, the bondman and bondwoman at the south may rush to one wild and deadly struggle for freedom. Already slaveholders go to bed with bowie knives, and apprehend
21 D.H. Pitney, ‘The Enduring Black Jeremiad: The American Jeremiad and Black Protest Rhetoric, from Frederick Douglass to W. E. B. Du Bois, 1841-1919’, American Quarterly 38 (1986), 481. 22 Pitney, ‘The Enduring Black Jeremiad’, 484.
death at their dinners. Those who enslave, rob, and torment their cooks, may well expect to find death in their dinner-pots. The world is full of violence and fraud, and it would be strange if the slave, the constant victim of both fraud and violence, should escape the contagion. He, too, may learn to fight the devil with fire, and for one, I am in no frame of mind to pray that this may be long deferred.”24
After Emancipation, he drew on the same themes to advocate full equal and civil rights for African-Americans. Despite being witness to secession, civil war, reconstruction and subsequent segregation, he refused to let go of the optimism so characteristic of the Jeremiad. If America’s enduring racism would not be halted, it would surely ‘bring a national punishment’, but he expressed confidence that America would one day begin “the redemption of the world from the bondage of ages”.25
The concept of eschatological destruction in connection to black oppression would later form the theological basis for a number of small, but close-knit Islamic sects. Their message was primarily directed at economically disaffected inner-city African-Americans. Drawing on the apocalyptic warnings of the Jeremiad, but shedding its hopeful and conciliatory tone, the Nation catered primarily to inner-city African Americans. Themes of economic independence, cultural self-assertion and divine punishment for America’s racial crimes had great appeal for many economically disaffected blacks in America’s largest cities. Predominant among these groups was The Nation of Islam, which thrived in the 1950s and 60s with just that kind of appeal.
Themes of reckoning and final judgment have been a staple of African-American rhetoric in works from Nat Turner’s Confessions to David Walker’s Appeal. Warnings of destruction to come in relation to America’s race problem, have been a refrain in that rhetoric. These warnings almost always offered an escape from demise, especially in the so-called Jeremiad. Disaster could be averted, if only people were willing to act to bring about change. To African-Americans, eschatological themes of life and death weren’t just limited to the religious realm. On the contrary, they were quite immediate, as the afterlife was an ever-lurking presence in black lives. In the early twentieth century, several small black Islamic sects gave this rhetorical tradition its own rendition. They also connected the end-of-days to race relations in America, but stripped the rhetoric of its hopeful tone and notions of
24 Douglass, Dredd Scott speech. 25 Pitney, 486.
American destiny. Salvation was still possible, but contingent upon repentance by white America, which would inevitably be brought to reckoning.
II. The Nation’s theology:
Rewriting black origins while holding white America to account
Originating with earlier black Muslim sects in inner-city America, the Nation of Islam (NOI) rose to become the most successful of its kind. The Nation’s following was small, but ardent. Its theology sought to rewrite black history and castigated white America for its sins against the black minority. To blacks in large cities, who faced racism as well as dire economic conditions, the group held great appeal. It preached economic self-sufficiency while inspiring a sense of black pride and self-assertion. Moreover, the NOI went further than other African-American religious groups in condemning white oppression.
The story of the Nation of Islam begins with Wallace D. Fard, a peddler who preached a peculiar version of Islam among African-Americans in Depression-era Detroit. Fard asserted that they should not be considered American negroes, but were members of the lost tribe of Shabazz, stolen from Mecca and enslaved. He argued that African-Americans should reconnect to their Islamic and Arab roots. In his racial philosophy, whites were cast as the antagonists and it was up to the ‘Moslems’ to ‘murder the devil’. Together, black Americans constituted the ‘Lost-Found Nation of Islam’.26
Its theology held that thousands of years ago Yacub, a mad black scientist, created the white race. It caused the Black race, the earth’s ‘Original People’ to go to sleep and become docile and subservient. Now the time had come for them to be awakened. Reappropriating Ezekiel’s wheel from the Torah, Fard told people of a giant ‘plane-like’ wheel, a small planet, made so it could one day destroy the earth, which was inhabited by the enemies of Allah. According to one calculation, that day would have been in 1914, but Elijah Muhammad, the Nation’s longtime leader, later put ‘The Fall of America’ at 1965 or 1966. Blacks would then rule the world as a chosen people, replacing the dominance of white civilization. As Eric Sundquist wrote, The Nation preached an apocalyptic salvation of the black race, but the notion of Exodus and a ‘chosen people’ were turned upside down: white supremacy would be replaced with black supremacy.27
After Fard inexplicably disappeared, Muhammad took over the leadership of the organization, functioning as its religious leader, ‘Messenger of Allah’ and even self-styled prophet. Still, to the outside world, it was not him, but rather one Malcolm X who served as
26 Manning Marable, Malcolm X. A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking Press, 2010), 84. 27 Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 130.
the public face of the group. As its most renown minister, Malcolm had gained prominence as a gifted orator and an avid missionary for the sect. African-American eschatology, a transcendental vision rooted in the earthly present, was a mainstay of his rhetoric. Malcolm was not pinning his hopes on any pearly gates, though, but rather on an apocalyptic happening that would liberate blacks on earth.
In his speeches, he castigated black and white Christianity alike, claiming black preachers consistently lied to African-Americans. He forcefully rejected the notion that there was some kind of Promised Land awaiting black people in the afterlife, or even on earth. Many African-Americans had doubts about such a vision. After all, it did not appear to come any closer for those who had endured slavery and second-rate citizenship.28 Malcolm effectively exploited the skepticism toward Christian eschatology in favor of the Nation of Islam. At a rally in Philadelphia, he stated: “the enemy tells you to go to church, any church because he has the preachers there to tell you lies. There is not a heaven in the sky and you are living in hell, so if you died and went there you wouldn’t know anything about it. Hell is right here in North America”.29
The Nation’s theology was also heavy on the concept of prophecy. Fard had confided in Muhammad that he was Allah in human form. Malcolm had claimed he had seen an apparition of Fard in his prison cell. He also consistently cast Muhammad in the role of a modern Moses. In one of his columns for the LA Weekly Herald Dispatch, an African-American newspaper, Malcolm wrote: “This man [Elijah Muhammad] like Moses, just as ancient Moses did, would condemn the modern Pharaoh’s religion (Christianity), his plurality of gods (Trinity), and his slave empire (America).” Muhammad would ‘awaken’ African-Americans and lead them out of their predicament: “The world now must bear witness that this Great Awakening now going on among the so-called Negroes, due to that which is being taught by Messenger Elijah Muhammad (...) [this is] indeed the only resurrection that the Bible was ever speaking of or pointing toward.” He went on: “This Modern Moses would not teach his long enslaved people to love their enemies (the wicked white race who
28 Wayne Taylor, ‘Premillennium Tension. Malcolm X and the Eschatology of the Nation of Islam’,
Souls 7 (2005): 55.
had enslaved them), but would ask our God, the God of our foreparents, to destroy this wicked white race (...) white man’s heaven is black man’s hell.”30
Malcolm X, né Little, converted to the Nation of Islam after he had learned that his entire family had joined. Around this time, Fard had already disappeared and so Malcolm maintained a correspondence with Muhammad. In his biography of Malcolm, Manning Marable wrote that he converted a number of his fellow inmates, though it is unclear what part the Nation’s peculiar theology played.31 It was presumably the emphasis on black pride and empowerment that helped sway his fellow prisoners, just as the lure of the NOI to Malcolm had at first been secular.32 It was the anti-white message that resonated most. His second motivation wasn’t of a religious or spiritual nature either, but rather personal as Malcolm hoped that a conversion would keep the Little family together. However, Malcolm did claim to have had some sort of vision in his prison cell one night. He saw a man, which he later concluded must have been Fard.
The Nation viewed the world as divided, between Asiatics or Asiatic blacks (‘Negro’ converts) and whites. For the United States, this meant segregation between black and white, as a physical return to Africa was impossible. As total segregation was also unlikely, the Nation advocated that African-Americans should totally retreat from active civic life.33 Against the back-drop of the Depression, narratives of black empowerment had a powerful attraction to African-Americans, many of them further marginalized by a lack of opportunity.
As the New York minister for the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X had found his platform. His rhetorical gifts, telegenic appearance and inexhaustible ambition fueled his rise to become the public face of the organization. One incident in particular contributed to Malcolm’s prominence. In 1957, when Johnson X Hinton, a fellow Nation member, was beat up by the police and arrested, Malcolm went to the police station and demanded to see him. Moreover, he asked for Johnson to receive medical treatment. As negotiations with the police unfolded, a crowd of thousands gathered before the police station in support,
30 Malcolm X, Los Angeles Herald Dispatch, October 10, 1957. 31 Marable, Malcolm X, 94.
32 Ibid., 78. 33 Ibid., 89.
As U.S political institutions could never be fair to African-American citizens, Muhammad considered any political engagement such as voter registration and mobilization to be a waste of time. Followers were advised not to participate in the democratic process in any way.
attracting considerable media attention. From that moment onwards, Malcolm himself had become a recurring media presence as a voice of the black Muslims and the African-American community at large.34
Soon, Malcolm was preaching the NOI’s beliefs to audiences far beyond its ranks. His remarks were starkly different in tone from those of civil rights leaders. Following Muhammad’s lead, he referred to whites as ‘devils’ and spoke of the imminent destruction of the white race.35 As his interests started to transcend the religious tenets of the Nation, Malcolm waded into America’s racial politics. In a way, his speeches were a darker variation of mainstream African-American rhetoric and eschatology, including the Jeremiad. In other ways, Malcolm’s rhetoric was very much distinct.
Firstly, Malcolm often told of the doom threatening American as a direct result of its racial injustice. The white race, if not the whole world, would be destroyed by Ezekiel’s Wheel. Other variations of this destruction include some sort of other cosmological happening or a violent race-war. In true jeremiadic fashion, Malcolm always offered a way out. If the imminent apocalypse was to be averted, America would have to come to terms with its pervasive racism. In this way, Malcolm undermined his commitment to the idea that the end was near, as the Nation’s religious tenets would have it. His dire warnings were usually diluted by elaborations on how catastrophe could be averted. These remedies mostly took the shape of immediate political or social action.
Enclosed in the eschatological principles was the notion of black supremacy. As the Nation’s theology would have it, only black people were descendants of Allah. After the demise of the white race, they would reign instead. One way to avert the American end-of-days was the creation of a separate black state, something Malcolm consistently advocated for in the name of Muhammad. As he preached in ‘The Black Revolution’, a 1964 speech: “God wants us to separate ourselves from this wicked white race here in America because this American House of Bondage is number one on God's list for divine destruction today. I repeat: This American House of Bondage is number one on God's list for divine destruction today.”36 This state would either be in Africa or in the U.S. Thus America would either have to finance a mass transit to Africa or it would have to facilitate a separate state on American
34 Ibid., 127.
35 Malcolm X, ‘The Black Revolution’ (Speech, April 8th, 1964). 36 Malcolm X, ‘The Black Revolution’ (Speech, April 8, 1964).
soil for its black population. Malcolm: “[Elijah Muhammad] says that if the American government is afraid to send us back to our own country and to our own people, then America should set aside some separated territory right here in the Western hemisphere where the two races can live apart from each other, since we certainly don't get along peacefully while we are together.”37
The notion of separation by returning to Africa was not new. It had been a part of African-American rhetoric since the late 18th century and initially appealed mostly to free blacks, whose status as free men in a slave-holding country was uncertain. The thought of resettling the African-American population took its most concrete form with Marcus Garvey and his pan-African movement. Garvey, a Jamaican, had come to the United States in 1916, seeking to expand his United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), an organization aimed at the emancipation of people of African descent everywhere. By the early 1920s, Garvey had attracted a mass following among African-Americans.38
His international convention, where African delegates from all over the world gathered to discuss the conditions of the African diaspora, brought 25,000 people to Madison Square Garden in 1920.39 His message had great appeal among African-Americans, especially in cities. The black community in the United States had suffered from an economic downturn and grew increasingly disaffected with its second-rate citizenship. To put words into action, Garvey had founded the Black Star Line in 1919, a shipping line that transported goods and passengers to and from Africa. It was the purest expression of Garvey’s ideals of black self-rule and economic independence; A black-owned business which could literally bring African-Americans and other members of the African diaspora, ‘home’.
Garvey, above all, preached the gospel of black self-assertion.
Upon founding the Black Star Line, he said: “The Eternal has happened. For centuries the black man has been taught by his ancient overlords that, "he was nothing, is nothing and never shall be anything". We black folks believe so much in the omnipotence of the white man that we actually gave in all hope and resigned ourselves to the positions of slaves and serfs for nearly five hundred years. But, thank God, a new day has dawned and all
37 Ibid.
38 John Henrik Clarke, ‘Marcus Garvey: The Harlem Years’, Transition 46 (1974), 15. 39 Clarke, ‘Marcus Garvey’, Transition 46 (1974) 17.
black men of the twentieth century see themselves the equal of all men.”40 Garvey had given the notion of separation a practical form. On the return to Africa, he asserted: “I trust that the Negro peoples of the world are now convinced that the work of the Universal Negro Improvement Association is not a visionary one, but very practical, and that it is not so far fetched, but can be realized in a short while if the entire race will only co-operate and work toward the desired end.”41 He envisioned a separate state as an achievement to be reached without any white assistance. Seeing African-Americans as African rather than American, he stated: “It is only a question of a few more years when Africa will be completely colonized by Negroes, as Europe is by the white race.”42
It was this type of language that offered many African-Americans a welcome contrast from the moderate and intellectual black leadership of figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, who sought to advance the black cause primarily by empowering the African-American elite. Garvey’s message was for the masses: “Up, up, you mighty race! You can accomplish what you will!”, he liked to say.
In a way, the same antithesis can be seen in Malcolm’s position toward Martin Luther King decades later. The success of the mainstream civil rights movement sometimes fell short in reassuring blacks that better times were ahead. Malcolm similarly tapped into African-American discontent with the pace of racial progress. Like Garvey, he too emphasized the importance of black self-reliance. It is no coincidence that Malcolm was raised in a Garveyite household, where themes of black independence and self-sufficiency shaped his perspective.43 In the message of the Nation, Malcolm found many of the same appeals to black self-respect and community. As Marable writes, its program was similar to that of the UNIA, but contained a revolutionary element, propped up by an apocalyptic vision.44
Garvey’s message revolved, not around how the black minority could advance with the help or consent of whites, but rather what could be achieved without them. The Nation, with Malcolm as its spokesman, went even further, incorporating the notion of retribution
40 Marcus Garvey, ‘Negroes of the World, The Eternal has happened’ (Speech, New York, December 3, 1919).
41 Marcus Garvey, ‘Editorial Letter’, Negro World, Vol. XII, No. 10 (1922). 42 Garvey, Negro World.
43 Marable, 20. 44 Marable, 89.
towards the white majority. At the core of his message was black empowerment, mixed with whites paying their dues. In Malcolm’s words, that meant either that the white race would face sure destruction, or would have to avert such a scenario by paying off its debts to the oppressed.
Herein lies the distinction between Malcolm and other African-American orators and their eschatological views: the notion that racial justice didn’t just mean that blacks gained equal rights and equal treatment, but that whites would have to pay their debts for having denied them that equality for centuries. It isn’t hard to discern a direct link between his racial views and the Nation’s theology, which pervaded his rhetoric. In his eschatological warnings of an apocalypse, the white race pays the ultimate price. In his advocacy of a separate state, white America would have to pay for its creation, sometimes literally. In his variation on the Exodus, oppression doesn’t just make way for liberation, it makes way for supremacy or at the very least, retribution. This black self-assertion can also be considered the root of black pride and awareness. It also explains why Malcolm flirted with the notion of violent self-defense. Despite the contradictions in Malcolm’s views, he never strayed far from this refrain. Liberation was not enough. To Malcolm, whites would have to face some type of reckoning. That could mean destruction, separation or a constant reminder from blacks to whites of the latter’s collective racial guilt.
III. From conciliation to confrontation: Eschatology in Malcolm’s rhetoric
Malcolm’s rhetoric can be placed in the tradition of African-American eschatology and appeals to black self-assertion and –sufficiency. In this chapter, I will elaborate on the style and substance of his race-infused eschatological visions. His speeches and public remarks evolved over different stages of his public career. Still, as we will see, they also proved in many ways, to be remarkably consistent.
In 1962, at Harlem’s Mosque No. 7, Malcolm elaborated on the Nation’s cosmology in a speech entitled ‘Black Man’s History’. Only if blacks separated themselves from whites, they could be salvaged: “Once the American so-called Negroes have been awakened to a knowledge of themselves and of their own God and of the white man, then they're on their own. Then it'll be left up to you and me whether we want to integrate into this wicked race or leave them and separate and go to our own. And if we integrate we'll be destroyed along with them. If we separate then we have a chance for salvation.”45 Malcolm’s eschatology, like that of other African-American leaders and movements, can be traced back to the tenets of Christianity regarding the end of days.
Yet, their apocalyptic warnings can feel somewhat ad-hoc compared to the scenarios Malcolm lays out in great detail. His eschatology is firmly rooted in the Nation’s cosmology, wherein the destruction of the white race on earth functions as its logical conclusion. Though he cites white ‘wickedness’ as a cause of an all-encompassing punishment, judgment would become a fact regardless. After all, if the Nation’s theology was to be believed, it was the culmination of a process spanning thousands of years.
In a 1963 speech, he warned the United States that it would pay dearly for its racism. At the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, he stated: “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that there is but one God whose proper name is Allah, and one religion, the religion of Islam, and that this one God will not rest until he has used his religion to establish one world -- a universal, one-world brotherhood.” As always, Malcolm pays homage to Muhammad, in whose name he claims to speak. He then offers a vision of destruction, followed by Islamic salvation. He continued: “But in order to set up his righteous world God must first bring down this wicked white world. The black revolution against the injustices of the white world is all part of God's divine plan. God must destroy
the world of slavery and evil in order to establish a world based upon freedom, justice, and equality.” His words are prophetic and determinist, although as we’ll later see, Malcolm wasn’t always consistent on that front. Malcolm: “The followers of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad religiously believe that we are living at the end of this wicked world, the world of colonialism, the world of slavery, the end of the Western world, the white world or the Christian world, or the end of the wicked white man's Western world of Christianity.”46 Thus Malcolm paints a picture of global harmony, but only after the current world order, in which whites reign supreme, is destroyed.
Interestingly, though, Malcolm also appropriated the type of warning found in a more traditional fashion of African-American eschatology, like the Jeremiad. In the same speech, he implies that this catastrophe could be averted, if America repents for its sins against the black race: “Can America escape? Can America atone? And if so how can she atone for these crimes? In my conclusion I must point out that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says a desegregated theater, a desegregated lunch counter won't solve our problem. Better jobs won't even solve our problems. An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor. He also says that a better job, a better job in the white man's factory, or a better job in the white man's business, or a better job in the white man's industry or economy is, at best, only a temporary solution.”47
He concluded his remarks by advocating the Nation’s aim of a separate, independent black state: “[Elijah Muhammad] says that the only lasting and permanent solution is complete separation on some land that we can call our own. Therefore, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that this problem can be solved and solved forever just by sending our people back to our own homeland or back to our own people, but that this government should provide the transportation plus everything else we need to get started again in our own country.“48 He deftly explained the difference between segregation and separation in a 1963 appearance at Michigan State University: “A segregated community is a Negro community.
46 Malcolm X, Speech in Harlem (New York, 1963).
47 Malcolm X, Speech, ‘God’s Judgment of White America’ (New York, December 1st,1963). Malcolm followed this speech with a question-and-answer session. In response to a reporter’s question on the assassination of president Kennedy ten days earlier, Malcolm had remarked that the ‘chickens had come home to roost’. The NOI subsequently suspended Malcolm, although tensions between Muhammad and his most famous minister had been simmering long before Malcolm’s inartful comments.
But the white community, though it's all white, is never called a segregated community. It's a separate community. In the white community, the white man controls the economy, his own economy, his own politics, his own everything. That's his community. But at the same time while the Negro lives in a separate community, it's a segregated community. Which means it's regulated from the outside by outsiders.”49
Malcolm’s immediate alternative to total destruction was an African-American separate state. He referred to integration as a ‘temporary solution’ for America’s race problem. Still, with that, he implied that there was a political solution to be contemplated. Thus, his eschatological and cosmological determinism make way for a practical argument, including literal demands made on behalf of the African-American minority.
Malcolm continued: “This government should give us everything we need in the form of machinery, material, and finance-enough to last for twenty to twenty-five years until we can become an independent people and an independent nation in our own land.” If Malcolm had thought about the actual policy implications of establishing a separate state, then surely the end-of-days could not have been nigh? He then goes on to say: “He says that if the American government is afraid to send us back to our own country and to our own people, then America should set aside some separated territory right here in the Western hemisphere where the two races can live apart from each other, since we certainly don't get along peacefully while we are together.”50
Garvey had advocated separation so as to never be dependent on whites again. Malcolm had the same aim, but notably saw a role for whites to pay for their crimes against the black minority; either by financing the return to Africa, or to make space in the United States for a separate African-American state. He reiterated his practical views toward separation in an interview at UC Berkeley in October of 1963. When asked about the link between Zionism and the African separatist movement, Malcolm responded: “[Elijah Muhammad] is asking the opportunity to set up an independent nation on our own continent. Let us leave America and go back home among our own people on our own land and set up an independent society. All he says this government which made us slaves should supply the transportation for us to get back home and give us all the machinery and the tools necessary for us [...] till the soil. And establish our own agricultural system to feed and cloth
49 Malcolm X, Speech at Michigan State University (January 23, 1963) 50 Malcolm X, Speech at Harlem Abyssinian Church (1963).
our people, our own economy. And in some way become an independent people among our own people on our own continent. Zionists should never criticize us.”51 Though he is adamant here about a return to Africa, Malcolm’s visions of a separate state tended to alternate between a state on the ‘home-continent’ and one on American territory.
In the 1963 speech in Harlem, Malcolm embraced an apocalyptic vision, only to concede part of its deadly fatalism to a very practical and immediate advocacy for change. In that sense, Malcolm strayed from the Nation’s detailed end-of-days philosophy to pressure American society into correcting its course. Embracing a more traditional and practical eschatology, Malcolm assured his audience that it was not yet too late for the United States. In a sign of contradiction, he describes godly punishment as inevitable, while at the same time offering an escape in order to advance his more immediate cause. Malcolm:
“And in my conclusion I repeat: We want no part of integration with this wicked race of devils. But he also says we should not be expected to leave America empty-handed. After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming. A bill that is owed to us and must be collected. If the government of America truly repents of its sins against our people and atones by giving us our true share of the land and the wealth, then America can save herself. But if America waits for God to step in and force her to make a just settlement, God will take this entire continent away from the white man. And the Bible says that God can then give the kingdom to whomsoever he pleases.”52
This extract neatly sums up Malcolm’s refrain when it came to the relationship between eschatology and politics. He offered a forceful rejection of the current political situation, which could never remedy Americans immorality towards blacks, followed by the warning of a looming threat, the implications of which remained vague. Lastly, God’s punishment could still be averted if only America corrected its course and granted
African-
51 Malcolm X, Interview at UC Berkeley (October 11, 1963).
52 Malcolm X, Speech at Harlem Abyssinian Church (1963). Malcolm was there at the invitation of Adam Clayton Powell, the minister for the church, leading civil rights activist and Harlem’s representative in the U.S. House. Malcolm was more respectful of Powell than perhaps any other leader of the civil rights mainstream. Though he rejected electoral politics while he was a minister with the Nation, he considered Powell one of the few effective representatives of the ‘black masses’.
Americans their own state. In any case, retribution towards whites is part and parcel of any type of black liberation.
That same year, Malcolm paid only lip service to the notion of destruction as a direct consequence of racial injustice. In a speech to a predominantly white liberal audience at the University of California, Berkeley, he propounded on the idea of a separate black state. Though rather as a result of violent insurrection than as a result of some external force ushering in the end of days. He rejected proposed civil rights legislation as a temporary solution to the race problem and a form of token integration. As his influence in the national public debate grew, his focus on the politics of race in America outgrew his religious warnings. At one point, He painted the prospect of violent insurrection:
“For thirty-three years the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has been warning us that the time would come when the white man would not have enough jobs for himself much less enough jobs for our people. So the present demand of our people for more of the white man's jobs must lead to violence and bloodshed. It may even lead to a – a bloody race war. And it is the government itself that is now pressing the people of this country into a racial blood bath.”53
To Malcolm, there was no race war – yet. Should such a scenario become a reality however, there were two possible causes. In the present, short term, the Kennedy administration would inadvertently cause a racial war as forced integration would breed white resentment. Whites would lose their homes and jobs to African-American workers and tenants, but not without sitting idly by. In Malcolm’s view, the civil rights policies of the Democrats were not in any way in the black interest. It was a ploy to win more votes, more power, without thinking about the implications and consequences of integration. Moreover, ‘civil rights’, in Malcolm’s mind, was tokenism. His allusions to white economic insecurities are salient, as earlier uses of the term ‘race war’ would tell us.
In the fall of 1919, the North American Review published an article entitled ‘Our Own Race War’. To the author, a race war was no longer theoretical, but had already become reality. This was evidenced by the race riots that took place that year in cities from Chicago to St. Louis. “For it is manifest that the troubles here have all the essential characteristics of a race war, of nation-wide extent”, he wrote. Big post-war economic and social shifts were
the immediate cause of the riots, later dubbed ‘Red Summer’, that killed several hundred blacks and a few white Americans. As Clayton Laurie wrote, “At the root of the trouble lay racism and antiradicalism, combined with the whites’ economic fears. The wartime gains resulting from the migration of blacks into the northern industrial cities created new arenas of interracial competition for jobs”54 Though Laurie refers to the article in North American Review, he does not elaborate on the notion that the riots amounted to a ‘race war’.
Still, in a 1919 report investigating racial tensions in America, sociologist George Haynes warned of just that: “V. The Danger: Disregard of law and legal process will inevitably lead to more and more frequent clashes and bloody encounters between white men and negroes and a condition of potential race war in many cities of the United States”.55 The North American Review calls it a mistake to attribute racial tensions to their location or circumstance, arguing that deeper causes are to blame: “The real cause, (...) lies much deeper and further back, in a general and permanent state of mind”.56 He offered a nuanced view of its causes, noting that there is resentment on the part of African-Americans, who are either disenfranchised in the South and systemically discriminated against up North. On the part of whites, every incident involving black Americans would be viewed through a racial prism, making incidents a source of widespread racial unrest.57
The author of ‘Our own race war’ places the United States’ racial strife in a global context, reminding his audience that if this situation took place in any other part of the world, America itself would be the first to either condemn or intervene.58 In 1964, Malcolm did the same when he spoke of ‘taking the U.S. before a world court’ in 1964. If only the struggle of African-Americans were to be considered a matter, not of (domestic) civil rights, but of (universal) human rights. It would be up to the world to pass judgment on America, rather than American ‘jurisdiction’ maintaining the racial status quo. “Let the world know the hypocrisy that's practiced over here”, said Malcolm.59
54 Clayton D. Laurie, The role of federal military forces in domestic disorders, 1877-1945 (Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, 1997), 279.
55 George Haynes, ‘For Action On Race Riot Peril’, New York Times, 5 October 1919. 56 North American Review, ‘Our Own Race War’ (fall 1919), 437.
57 North American Review, ‘Our Own Race War’, 438. 58 Ibid., 436.
59 Malcolm X, ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’, (Speech, Cleveland, OH, April 3, 1964).
This speech was held at an event organized by CORE, a leading civil rights organization. In the debate afterwards, Malcolm perfectly laid bare the shifting mood among African-Americans, who
The other potential cause of racial war was far less topical and much more a product of his philosophy: The permanent injustice of repression against blacks, having resulted in the current state of race relations, could only lead to a standoff between white Americans and ’20 million ex-slaves’.60 Thus, in his description there were but two options: “Civil war between whites on the one hand, a race war between the whites and their 20 million ex-slaves on the other hand. And the entire dark world is watching, waiting to see what the American government will do to solve this problem once and for all.”61 Here, this ‘racial dilemma’ consists of a political aspect and a racial reality that transcends time and politics. It was the specter of this scenario that he dangled before his audiences. Still, he offered an escape from such an ethnic conflict: “But the only permanent solution is complete separation or some land of our own in a country of our own. All other courses will lead to violence and bloodshed. It will lead to the destruction of America, and it will also lead to the destruction of our people who fall for it. So his message is flee for your lives and save yourselves.”62 Malcolm does not offer a concrete picture of what a race war would look like. Still, to him, the violence was at least already there on the part of whites in power.
The term ‘Race War’ was one that Malcolm had employed before. In another 1963 speech, entitled, he spoke extensively on the subject. Referencing the civil rights movement and government repression in a speech entitled ‘Race War in America’ (1963), he states: “Rather than give genuine respect and recognition to your cry for human rights, the American white man answers your non-violence with violence. He answers your prayers and your freedom song with false promises, deceitful maneuvers and outright bloodshed.”63 Thus, it is likely Malcolm somehow imagined African-Americans ceasing to turn the other cheek in the face of police brutality and other forms of repression.
How exactly this war unfolds, remains unclear, although Malcolm seemed consistent in offering some kind of mixture between the escalation of racially driven violent incidents and an all-out apocalyptic happening. That is true of this speech as well. He referred to race-based violent incidents that were already occurring in America, implying that things would grew impatient with the slow pace of emancipation. “We have a new type of black man on the scene (...) who doesn’t just intend to turn the other cheek any longer’’, he said (Marable 303).
60 Malcolm X, ‘Racial Separation’ (Speech, Berkeley, 1963). 61 Malcolm X, ‘Racial Separation’.
62 Ibid.
only get worse from there: “[Negroes didn’t throw Molotov cocktails ten years ago] It was stones yesterday, Molotov cocktails today, it will be hand grenades tomorrow and whatever else is available the next day.” Still, his tone was suggestive and lacked in specifics. Moreover, Malcolm denied issuing a call to arms: “The seriousness of this situation must be faced up to. You should not feel that I am inciting someone to violence. I’m only warning of a powder-keg situation.”64
Malcolm’s rhetoric was larded with anger and though his descriptions of a black uprising were vague, it is anger that would bring it about, if anything. Malcolm did not paint a detailed picture of what a war would look like, but he spoke consistently and ominously of the latent, but potent anger that resided in the black man. More importantly, if there was one part of the African-American minority that could bring it to life, it was the black nationalists: “And this is one thing that whites—whether you call yourselves liberals or conservatives or racists or whatever you might choose to be—one thing that you have to realize is that, where the black community is concerned, although the large majority that you come in contact with may impress you as being moderate and patient and loving and long-suffering and all that kind of stuff, the minority whom you consider to be Muslims or nationalists happen to be made of the type of ingredient that can easily spark the black community. This should be understood. Because to me a powder keg is nothing without a fuse.“65 Though the term ‘race war’ was not featured in most of his speeches or other public utterings for that matter, he used it again here. This time, in a global context: “It should also be understood that the racial sparks that are ignited here in America today could easily turn into a flaming fire abroad, which only means it could engulf all the people of this earth into a giant race war. You can't confine it to one little neighborhood, or one little community, or one little country.”66
His warnings were thus not just meant to inform the audience of immediate and inevitable violent conflict. They were always an instrument making some kind of broader argument, either admonishing his listeners to join Elijah Muhammad’s cause or America as a whole to correct its course. His sober response to a critical question from a member of the audience after the speech tells us as much: “I just want to say one more comment on his remark about me being bloodthirsty. I’m not bloodthirsty. I’m one of 22 million black
64 Malcolm X, ‘Race War in America’. 65 Malcolm X, ‘The Black Revolution’. 66 Ibid.
people in this country who’s tired of being the victim of hypocrisy by a country that supposedly practices democracy.”67 His sometimes vague warnings of a dire alternative to racial progress inevitably left his audience wondering how literally it should all be taken. The same was true of his promise of an independent state. Of the latter, the civil rights leader James Farmer would later remark: “(...) this idea [of separation] was not going any place in the black community. They might applaud it in an audience, but after the meeting was over, they would forget it until the next time they heard Malcolm.”68
Shortly after he gave this speech, Malcolm traveled to Mecca, where he experienced somewhat of an epiphany when it came to his views on race. Here he saw Muslims of all ethnicities and nationalities peacefully coexisting and was instantly imbued with values of equality and brotherhood. Malcolm may have left his most radical rhetoric behind him after he left the Nation in 1964, but his rapprochement with King c.s. did not mean he had fully endorsed the philosophy of the civil rights mainstream. Malcolm had not converted to ‘non-violence’, though he did not fully embrace a violent approach either. He no longer spoke of violent insurrection, but rejected the notion that violence against blacks should go unanswered by turning the other cheek to whites.
In a 1964 speech dedicating the founding of the Organization for Afro-American Unity or OAAU (his post-Nation platform), he said:
‘‘That's equality. If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality. If the United States government doesn't want you and me to get rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don't want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don't want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don't teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over.”69
He summarized this part of the speech using the term ‘self-defense’. Violent racist incidents would keep on occurring and Malcolm believed African-Americans had a right to respond in kind. Still, it was a far cry from his earlier warnings that these types of racial clashes could escalate wildly, causing a war or completely upending the American political
67 Ibid.
68 CBS Special Report: Malcolm X, CBS News (1992)
order. The notion of a separate African-American state had been let go. Gone were visions of America’s destruction, as African-Americans had the power to chart a democratic course for change. The white man still caught hell from Malcolm, but was no longer referred to as a ‘devil’. A threat still loomed, though, encapsulated in the coming of a ‘bullet’ and the black power slogan ‘by any means necessary’. If his message was to say ‘equality or else’, the latter part of that slogan was barely elaborated on. Just as the apocalyptic warnings he gave on behalf of the Nation had always remained rhetorically vague.
Rather, Malcolm echoed the themes of the civil rights movement and dedicated the rest of his speech to issues like education and political and social change. He urged people to get involved in the political process to better scrutinize political representatives in Congress, for instance. No longer was the aim to have a separate country for African-Americans, but rather to change the United States from within so as to achieve a state of ‘peace and security’: “we have to eliminate the barking of the police dogs, we have to eliminate the police clubs, we have to eliminate the water hoses, we have to eliminate all of these things that have become so characteristic of the American so called dream. These have to be eliminated. Then we will be living in a condition of peace and security. We can never have peace and security as long as one black man in this country is being bitten by a police dog.”70 Malcolm still condemned the United States for its enduring racist problem, but now he seemed to believe blacks had the political power to change things for the better. A separate state there would not be. Reform, not rejection, was the objective of his OAAU: “That's our motto. We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. We don't feel that in 1964, living in a country that is supposedly based upon freedom, and supposedly the leader of the free world, we don't think that we should have to sit around and wait for some segregationist congressmen and senators and a President from Texas in Washington, D. C., to make up their minds that our people are due now some degree of civil rights. No, we want it now or we don't think anybody should have it.”71
It was clear that his travels to Mecca had produced a shift in tone. In April of 1964, after he left the Nation of Islam, but before he founded the OAAU, Malcolm delivered one of his most famous speeches. In ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’, he expounded his political theory
70 Malcolm X, ‘By Any Means Necessary’ (1964). 71 Ibid.
and appealed to a sense of African-American unity. He downplayed the role that religion played in emancipation: “[You will] you catch hell whether you're a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you're educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you're going to catch hell just like I am. We're all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man.”72
His rhetoric is this 1964 speech was fiery, but lacked the bomb throwing from his days with the Nation of Islam. In ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’, Malcolm tried to reconcile black nationalism with the civil rights movement. He offered a pointed critique of America’s political system and African-Americans’ place in it. Again, America had an opportunity to correct its course. He muses about realistic scenarios like the escalation of racial incidents: “It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month.” At the same time, America’s options amount to an absolute: it’s one or the other: “It’ll be ballots or it’ll be bullets. It’ll be liberty or it will be death.”73
Malcolm proved able to adapt his message in order to appeal to a broader audience. Still, his rhetoric was nothing if not consistent. Yes, the ‘ballot’ had become a legitimate alternative to violent insurrection and other types of destruction, but the ‘bullet’ was still there, too. Not only did his speeches echo the apocalyptic warnings of days past, the notion of white repentance proved a mainstay as well.
72 Malcolm X, ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’. 73 Malcolm X, ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’.
