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All right. Well, hello and welcome back to Flipping Tables. I'm Monty, your host. Thank you to the recent people who have joined our little coven of curiosity. Thank you for those reviews for the shares of the show. It's been really cool to see this grow. It's been great to see comments and emails and people learning and talking and asking questions. I'm in a new phase of my life. As of two weeks ago, I closed my small business. I am now doing act activism and education full time. And it's been really exciting and really strange. But having a new schedule where I actually have a little breathing room is going to mean a lot more time to make more content, to make things better, kind of upgrade the shows, upgrade what I'm doing. And so just keep an eye out for those. I'll announce things specifically on the podcast, but I'll also be doing things, especially in my Instagram stories. A big thank you to Patreon members. You are the like the power behind the machine that makes all of this run. And again, again, because I don't run a small business anymore, we're going to be doing some extra stuff on Patreon starting in December. So this month, Patreon users are going to get a bonus episode that we are going to stream live. So it's going to be a podcast episode with me live on Patreon. Of course, the recordings will be there as well. We're going to do a lot of really cool, interesting history. I think I'm going to start with the Night Witches, which were the pilots of the Red army that were women who were the most deadly pilots that The Russian army had that we never hear about. And also on Patreon, we're going to start doing some things called Sunday service where we do just like a 20, a 30 minute live stream on Sundays to give people a sense of community. I'm just going to teach a lesson or talk about biblical history. The topics will change. My goal is, I know that a lot of people are feeling really alienated from their church communities in light of what's going on culturally. And a lot of people who walked away from the church still miss the community. So I'm trying to create some of that, even if it's online. And if you are in Tennessee this month, there's going to be some public speaking events as well. I'm going to be emceeing an event on December 11 and some later events. So just again, just stay posted on my Instagram as well as go to montemater.com and on the contact page you can sign up for my weekly newsletter. I usually focus on one really important news item and I give action points. I know a lot of people are like, well, what do I do? How can I help? I give a very simple action point that everybody can do and I have all of my weekly announcements there. Um, but I just wanted to say thank you for making this phase of my life possible. I am now finishing up my book proposal. There's a lot happening, so I'm still extremely busy, but because of closing my business down, I've freed up about five to six hours every day, which is nice and I'm excited to get started. But let's jump into Malcolm X today. I loved learning about Malcolm X when I was deconstructing because again, I had been told my whole life he was a radical and he was a terrorist and all the Islamophobic terminology. And the more I learned about him and the older I get, especially in the movements we're seeing right now. I get it. And I think he was unfairly demonized. I don't agree with him on everything, but I think he's a very honest reflection of what it means to fight against an oppressive system. Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, at the University Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents were Earl Little, a Baptist minister and a handyman, and Louise Little. Originally from Granada in the British West Indies, Earl and Louise's marriage had produced a large blended family. Malcolm was the fourth child of Earl and Louise together. Though Earl had fathered children previously, their home from the beginning was steeped in political identity. The Littles were ardent adherents of the ideas of Marcus Garvey. An active members organization, the Universal Negro Improvement association. Unia, Earl reported, reportedly served as chapter organizer. Louise was involved as well. And throughout this episode. When I'm using the word Negro or colored, I'm only going to use it if it's included in a direct quote or the name of an organization. I know that some people find those words offensive, as do I, because usually they're set in an offensive way. But if I'm using those, it's only because it's the name of an organization or a direct quote from one of the the characters of the members. Marcus Garvey was wildly controversial and made Littles a target. Let's talk about him briefly because it'll help give context to why the Klan was so opposed to his movement. Marcus Garvey was born on August 17, 1887 in St. Anne's Bay, Jamaica into a working class Afro Jamaican family. His father was a stonemason, his mother was a domestic worker and a farmer. From a young age he worked in printing. He became master printer and became involved in labor activism in Kingston in the early 1910s. After traveling through Central America and spending time in England, he returned to Jamaica and in 1914 founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Again that UNIA and also the African Communities League. It's often simply UNIA. In 1916 Garvey moved to United States, to New York city, and by 1917 through 1919 transformed the UNIA into a truly international movement. Throughout the 1920s the UNIA assembled what many historians call the largest mass movement of people of African descent in modern history. Garvey was a charismatic orator, an ambitious organizer and an entrepreneur and a visionary. He combined radical rhetoric with business ventures, publishing, shipping, commerce, all designed to empower black people economically and politically. Garvey's ideas came to be known collectively as Garveyism, which fused Black nationalism, Pan Africanism, economic self help, racial pride and a vision of global unity for people of African descent. Here are some of the core tenets of his teachings. He taught black pride and racial dignity. Garvey argued that people of African descent worldwide should reject the inferiority imposed on them by white dominated societies. He insisted that blackness was not a stigma, but a source of pride, history and shared identity. Global Unity of the African Diaspora Garvey envisioned all people of African descent in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa as a single family. He urged the diaspora communities to unify economically, politically, socially and transcend national and colonial borders. He preached economic self reliance and institutional building. Rejecting dependency on the white run institutions, Garvey promoted black owned businesses, cooperative economies and trade among black communities worldwide. To that end, he launched enterprises through the UNIA like the Black Star Line, a shipping company meant to link the Americas West Indies and Africa and the Negro Factories Corporation to support black industrial and commercial enterprise. He also advocated for Back to Africa and African Redemption. Garvey preached that African Americans and Afro Caribbean people should consider returning to Africa Africa, either literally or spiritually by reconnecting with their ancestral homeland. He framed this not as retreat, but as a reclamation of selfhood on African soil. He also taught the moral uplift, social solidarity and community building. The UNIA under Garvey provided cultural, social and spiritual community, including youth divisions, women's auxiliaries, social programs and even quasi religious rituals. For many impoverished or marginalized black people, the UNIA offered dignity, belonging, pride and hope. And one of the things I do want to mention this was something I learned in my, my deconstruction when you. Because to my parents credit, even though I grew up very far alt right, very white nationalist, my family would have never even dreamed of having a swastika anywhere. My grandfather who fought in both my grandfathers fought in World War II, as did my adopted grandfather and my grandmother was a wasp. Would have lost their ever loving minds if someone flew a swastika near them or someone did the Hitler salute like so. My family was not there. But there was so much ingrained racism and so many of the, you know, you hear white people give kind of these devil's advocate arguments. It's like, well, why is there a black entertainment channel? Well, why is there black pride and not white pride? Part of the reason, the main part of the reason that until recently we have like the black community or black pride is because, because they were ripped from their homelands and had their heritage and their beliefs and their rituals erased. They didn't know where they came from. There's no such thing as white pride in the sense that I know where I came from. I know that I'm of Scottish, German and Norwegian descent. I know what my heritage is. That's my heritage. And my family, especially the Scottish part of my family, very, very proud of that. But for a lot of black people, especially throughout the history of the United States, had no idea where they came from. And if they kept any of their rituals or their traditions or their religions, they had to hide it within Christianity because the goal of white colonization was to erase their individualism. So there's something that is completely different of coming together as a community because you're being discriminated against based on race and you have no idea who you are. So for those of you, if you've ever wrestled with that or you've heard that argument, that's why it's different. Because until you know, with recent, like DNA tests, there was no way for people who had been stolen from their homeland and sold into slavery to know where they came from. Now they can find out. But prior to this, all they had was their community that was being ostracized by white colonial America. So in Marcus Garvey's own words In a 1921 address, he said the aim of the UNIA was to unite the 400 million Negroes in the world for the purpose of bettering our industrial, commercial, educational, social and political condition. Garveism was not simply a political program. It was a global vision of black solidarity, self determination, human dignity and transformation. While Garvey inspired millions, his vision and methods provoked sharp criticism from within the black community, from other civil rights leaders and from the US government. The controversies fall into several interlocking categories. Obviously, he was advocating for black separatism and racial nationalism. Garvey's insistence on racial separation and eventual repatriation of the diaspora black people to Africa rather than fighting for integration and equality within existing societies, clashed with more assimilationist and integrationist leaders. So many black civil rights leaders thought it was almost cowardly to run away instead of fighting for equality here. Many black leaders believed the struggle for civil rights required working within American or Western political structures. Garvey's separatist vision was seen as retreat or rejecting progress in the West. Number two, he often demonstrated authoritarian leadership and there was problems in the internal UNIA dynamic. Despite the populist rhetoric, Garvey ran the UNIA with tight control and expected strict loyalty. He did not tolerate dissent, even on minor internal matters which created tension and led to defections. His style has been criticized as authoritarian, cult like or demagogic. He also had several business failures and legal troubles. For instance, the Black Star Line and also the fraud conviction. Garvey launched ambitious business ventures, most famously the Black Star Line, to operationalize his vision of black economic independence and Pan African trade. But the Black Star Line was plagued with mismanagement, technical problems and possibly sabotage. Its collapse, coupled with stock sale controversies resulted, resulted in the Garvey's 1923 conviction under U.S. mail fraud laws. Now, to be fair, these were pretty, pretty flimsy trumped up charges because they couldn't get him on Anything else. He was sentenced to print his prison and the legal troubles undermined his credibility. Critics, including both black leaders and mainstream media, accused him of being a charlatan or a con man. For many, the failure of his ventures exposed Garveyism as impractical at best, fraudulent at worst. He also participated in associations with white supremacists when it served his goals. One of the most contentious and morally ambiguous aspects of Garvey's political strategy was his willingness at certain points to entertain cooperation with white supremacist groups when he believed their interests overlapped, namely racial separatism. Garvey was a racial separatist, so this included overtures and reportedly meetings with leaders of white supremacists Ku Klux Klan. And Garvey made a tragic mistake in 1922 when he met with KKK leaders to reassure them that Garveyites and white supremacists shared a common goal of racial purity, that he didn't want to intermix with them and wanted nothing to do with them. Such associations infuriated many in the black community, rightly so. And among civil rights leaders who saw this as a betrayal of black dignity and an acceptance of white racial hatred for strategic expediency. And I agree with them. There was also a cultural and ideological critique, the Westernization versus African authenticity. Though Garvey championed African identity, critics argued that he paradoxically embraced Western cultural cultural trappings like classical music, Western business structures, European dress, Christian religious references, rather than emphasizing African tradition, languages, spirituality and aesthetics. Some scholars see this as evidence that Garvey's worldview remains shaped by colonial mentality while capitalizing off of claiming African authenticity. Additionally, some accused him of promoting racial purity or exclusion of mixed race and lighter skinned black people, complicating the egalitarian rhetoric of the unia. And there does seem to be a fair amount of credible accusations of colorism within the unia. There was also a lot of government surveillance, persecution, and then the eventual collapse of the UNIA influence. Garvey and the UNIA became subjects of intense federal scrutiny. Beginning in 1919, the precursor of the FBI, the U.S. bureau of Investigation carry out a nationwide campaign of surveillance, infiltration and reporting on the UNIA branches across dozens of cities. This goes back to what we see even right now, that anytime there's a group that the government doesn't like what they're teaching, they become like, they kind of like throw the terrorist word at it. We've seen that recently with antifa, which isn't even an organization. The legal prosecution Together with internal dissent, financial failures, and growing distrust led to the decline of the UNIA in the United States. Following Garvey's conviction and deportation in 1927, the organization splintered and lost much of its potency. Despite the controversies, Garvey's influence on black political thought, identity and global consciousness was immense. For many people of African descent in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa, Garvey represented empowerment, self respect, and the possibility of a collective future beyond the repression of white dominated societies. His vision of the Pan African unity and black economic independence inspired future generations of civil rights leaders and liberation movements, including those associated with the Nation of Islam and later the Black Power movement, and even the cultural religious movement, Rastafarians. This reminds me of the argument that you see online around misogyny and misandry. So you have, like the US Government and white supremacist groups really upset that, that this, this man is teaching black nationalism, black pride, and a rejection of white society as well as resistance to these societies as a whole. We look at the Black Panther movement and there's this claim, oh, they were this violent terrorist organization. But the reality is that movement was a very logical response to hundreds of years of white supremacy, colonialism and oppression. And so when you see these argum, you know, where these men are claiming, you know, complaining about misandry, oh, like these women hating or these men hating women. And the problem is, is that misandry is the very logical response to thousands of years of misogyny. If someone continuously mistreats you, continuously violates your trust, continuously treats you as subhuman, the logical response, like the logical predictable response, is to not like or respect them. And the other difference, and I think that this is a great parallel both between a white nationalist and a black nationalist movement and a misogyny and misandry is the proximity to harm versus the proximity to power. So we'll use the misandry example again. What does misandry cause? Well, it causes women to not like men, right? They avoid men. They might say something mean and hurt their feelings. Misogyny gets women killed. Misogyny is the guy stabbing a woman to death because she ignored his cat call. Misogyny is the husband beating his wife and not going to jail for it. Misogyny actually leads to the oppression, rollback of rights, and death of women. Misandry might cause a man to get his feelings hurt, but in the eyes of misogynists, that is the equivalent of causing them physical harm. And so when you compare the same thing so white nationalist movements versus black nationalist movement. Black nationalism is a logical response to white nationalism. Abusing them, enslaving them, raping them, murdering them. And then they want to claim upset or how dare you not want us around when there's a black nationalist movement or when black people would come together to defend their neighborhoods from violence, White nationalists would say, oh my goodness, they're so violent because you hurt my feelings. You rejected me, you called me out, you said you don't like me. You said I'm a bad person. That is the same to me because I'm so used to privilege. That is the same to me as you causing me physical harm. Harm. The arguments are very much the same where anytime the oppressor is pushed back against at all, it's, it's labeled violence. Anytime their feeling gets hurt, they equate that with violence. And also when you're used to being the oppressor, equality feels like oppression to you because you are so used to privilege and because of the hostility and danger generated by Earl Little's activism. So Malcolm's dad and being associated with this Garvey movement. The Little family did not long remain in Omaha. In December of 1926, when Malcolm was about a year old, the family moved first to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and then eventually to Lansing, Michigan. Once in Michigan, the Littles tried to establish stability, but the racism and hostility followed them. Their house in Lansing was firebombed in 1929 again by that Black Legion white supremacist group when Malcolm was roughly 4 years old. In his autobiography, Malcolm Leader recounted the horror. The house was on fire. White firemen and police arriving, yet doing nothing, standing as the house was consumed in flames. To escape that racial violence, his father built a modest four room house a couple of miles outside of East Lansing on a farm setting where the family tried to raise food and eke out a living through simpler means and just literally try to just be like not involved. We're, we're going to try to stay away from these people. We're going to try not to interact. We're going to mind our own business, which is sad in, in and of its own right that they couldn't safely be part of the community. But even moving outside of town, even trying to just remove themselves from the situation, was not enough for white supremacists. In 1931, when Malcolm was 6, his father Earl died under circumstances that Malcolm and his family believe were no accident. Officially, the death was recorded as a streetcar accident. Ear girl's body was found across streetcar tracks it is very, very likely that he was murdered by white supremacist groups. But in the view of Malcolm and his siblings, the official verdict rang hollow. Given the violent threats and the racial hostility the family had endured, they believed that white supremacists, likely members from groups such as that splinter faction known as the Black Legion, had murdered him. I just want to say really quick, I find it ironic that they call themselves the Black Legion. You would think it would be the White Legion because they're so obsessed with their own mediocre whiteness. I just found that interesting. As Malcolm would later write, that moment marked the beginning of a psychological collapse. He said, quote, some kind of psychological deterioration hit our family circle and began to eat away at our pride. End quote. With Earl gone, the family's economic security vanished. Louise struggled to provide for her eight children. And in the depths of poverty, within limited options and the Great Depression, she sometimes turned to desperation. Malcolm remembered in later life that his mother boiled dandelion greens, gathered from the street to try to feed her children with them. The pressure and despair wore on Luis. By the end of the 1930s, after years of hardship and torment from welfare officials who would demonize her and abuse her children, she suffered that mental breakdown and was committed to a psychiatric hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Once she was institutionalized, the children were dispersed. Siblings were separated and sent to foster homes or relatives across the Midwest. Malcolm, along with several of his brothers and sisters, lost not just their parents, but their home, their community, and their sense of security. In that moment, the house of the Littles, already battered by arson, threats and forced moves, collapsed completely. For Malcolm, his childhood ended. Despite the trauma, Malcolm exhibited intellectual promise in the unstable circumstances in junior high in Mason, after living with a foster family, he excelled. He was academically strong and was even elected class president. Still, that success exposed the deep structural racism of his society. Malcolm later recalled that his teacher, while encouraging white students of lesser ability to strive for professional careers, bluntly told him that law was not a realistic ambition for a black kid, suggesting he should instead become a carpenter. The moment marked a turning point. He realized that no amount of academic achievement would overcome the racial barriers erected by a society built on white supremacy. And so, so true. Like so many of these stories we see where black men and women are required to do two to three times amount, the amount of effort they are required to outperform, outwork, outdo, and they are still considered less than. And I think of this with, you know, because this has been, you know, a big talk this fall with Charlie Kirk and his black pilots coming comment where? And obviously Charlie Kirk was a white supremacist and a racist piece of garbage. But he's like, well, if it's a black pilot, I'm going to wonder if he's qualified. Even though all pilots have to have the same qualifications, the same certifications, like they. There are regulations that apply to every single pilot. But he still, even though a black pilot would meet or excel those requirements, would still be like, he's not as qualified as a white dude. Like, what, what illogical argument of. I'm just gonna assume because this person's white that they're qualified. I don't know if you ever did group projects in high school or college. It was always, I'm a throw shade, I'm gonna do it. This is my experience. I'm gonna speak, I'm gonna say, this is my experience. May not be everyone else's experience. It was always the white dudes that were popular in school or jocks that were the laziest, most unqualified in those classes. I hated having any of those fuckers in my group projects because they wouldn't do anything. And it fell to everyone else, mostly me, to do all the work for them. And they went through like all of their education that way. They were the most mediocre performers. But because of who their dad was or cause they were a white guy, they were given so much extra grace than everyone else was. Whether you were a woman or a person of color, we all had to work twice as hard as they did. And black women have to work four times as hard as any of the rest of us to get the same kind of credibility. So comments like that just show, like, how ingrained white supremacy is this assumption that we assume that a white man is more qualified because of something that he was born into that he didn't earn. Right. You don't pick how you're born. He didn't earn it and he also can't change it. Like it's, it's just, it's so illogical. And it's funny to me how I see those subtle things growing up that I. That you don't understand when you're a little kid. But how there was. There was this assumption of excellent excellence and qualification for white people that was never, ever extended to black people. So in effect, Malcolm's school years, rather than liberating him, deepened his alienation. He said he felt like a, quote, pink poodle, a mascot among white classmates, accepted only as long as he was small, compliant, and not threatening. Even when respected by his peers, he was aware of being treated as a novelty rather than as a full human being equal in worth. And that line right there, as long as he was small, compliant and non threatening. I see so much in our society today how, how especially white white supremacists and Christian nationalists treat people of color but also treat women in general, right? Like you're fine and we'll accept you into our movement, but you gotta sit down, be pretty, shut up and obey. Hate it. Nope, I'll pass, thank you. Gradually disillusioned, Malcolm left school. He felt there was no future for him within a system that valued his labor but denied his dignity, that allowed black faces but rejected black aspirations. This decision to quit school marked another turning point. A psychological shift towards bitterness, mistrust and a sense of abandonment by white Americans. America. By the time Malcolm approached adolescence, his identity was shaped less by stability and more by rupture. The loss of a father, the institutionalization of a mother, the scattering of siblings, the destruction of a home and the constant threat of racial violence all left their marks. At the same time, the early ideological environment established by Earl and Louise, the values of self respect, racial pride, resistance to white supremacy, global consciousness via Garveyism and the unia remained latent and waiting. They would show up for him lately later. That duality, trauma and ideological inheritance formed the psychological and moral soil of Malcolm Little's early years. He learned early and viscerally that being black in America meant vulnerability. He also learned that dignity, self definition and community were not gifts bestowed by a racist society, but values to be defended, claimed and sometimes struggled for. When he was in his mid teens, he eventually moved to Boston to live with his older half sister Ella. Due to his parents, radical for the time, ideas of black Americans deserving equal treatment as Americans and human beings. Malcolm was raised with the belief that the liberation of the mind was the key to liberation of the body. Louise, his mother in particular, imparted the value of knowledge and education, refusing to bow to the inferiority complex that ravaged the black community. She shunned the terms Negro and colored and taught Malcolm and his siblings that the power of non reaction to the N word was their strength, which was obviously thrown around freely at the time in their direction. And I love that, I love that she refuses to accept these words that are, that are trying to like, make her feel inferior and teaches her children, no, we're not responding to that, we're not engaging in that and, and giving them this sense of self worth. This approach would have been appreciated as a beacon for nonviolence who would later become one of Malcolm's ideological rivals. Malcolm arrived in Boston around 1941 to live with Ella. Her home was in Roxbury, near Dudley street, the center of black life in the city. In his autobiography, which is my. My dominant source for this episode, Malcolm recalls that his neighborhood was the first place he saw black people in their own environment. At first, he worked mundane jobs, shining shoes, carrying trays, running errands in bars and dance halls. But those spaces gave him intimate access to hustlers, gamblers, pimps and musicians. Among the most formative places were the Roseland state ballroom and the Harlem Cafe and later the jazz clubs of the south end. They were not merely entertainment spaces. They were ecosystems of shadow economies where money changed hands off ledger reputations were currency and elegance massed exploitation. It was in Boston that Malcolm adopted the Persona Lansing Red that would later became known as Detroit red. He modeled himself after the figures he admired, men whose power came not from institutions but from charisma, threat, confidence and cash. He began selling small quantities of marijuana to musicians who played late sets and needed to stay awake. He learned the numbers racket, an illegal lottery that circulated in the black community long before the state formalized gambling. He observed how pimps controlled women, how fences move stolen goods invisibly through the economy, and how status was earned by risk and displays. Zoot suits, conch straightened hair, shadowy hats and fast speech. While not yet a hardened criminal, Malcolm was now living with street logic, immediate gratification, fast money, moral flexibility in a world that had denied him structure and stability. His real transformation came when he moved to Harlem, New York, around late 1942. There, he said, I was at home. Harlem was larger, sharper and more dangerous than Boston. Here on Lenox Avenue, which is now named Malcolm X Boulevard Boulevard 125th street and 1 35th street, he entered a world of organized vice, prostitution, drug dealing, gambling houses, stick ups and backroom transactions that never touched police records. He worked in several well known establishments, including Smalls paradise, one of the most famous jazz clubs in the world. He sold marijuana to musicians and patrons, moved betting slips for numerous bosses, shined shoes for visiting celebrities, and served as a lookout or a courier for hustlers who trusted his speed and discretion. He was not merely adjacent to crime. He was integrated into its economy. Economy. Malcolm's criminal portfolio grew quickly. He graduated from petty hustles into pimping, introducing women to sex, work and collecting payment from their clients. He learned the psychology of control, how Fear, charm, and manipulation could operate simultaneously. And he saw how poverty made people vulnerable to exploitation and how wealth in Harlem flowed not from stability, but from calculated lawlessness. And one of the things that, again, I think that we learn as we get older, you know, there's again, this. This whole thing of. Of the. The white nationalist, Christian nationalist movement will demonize, you know, oh, well, they were criminals. Well, you should have just obeyed the law. And if you haven't seen it yet, I wish I could remember the name of it. But the Hulu TV show about the Wu Tang Clan. Anyone who knows me, I'm a huge Wu Tang Clan fan. And they really break down their lives. And when you see. Growing up in these environments where you're surrounded by violence, you're surrounded by poverty, people are trying to feed their kids, and you see it play out in real time, it kind of becomes this thing of, well, no wonder. Like, how could you not? If you see an opportunity for fast cash. And again, not saying any of it's right, but I'm saying that there's a huge ecosystem built around specifically poverty, where, if your option is, I can work a day job where I'm not going to make enough money to feed myself and pay rent, or I can work with these guys over here and I can make enough money to pay my rent tonight. Those are extremely compelling circumstances. And I think. I think when we look at crime, and I'm not even going to get into privatized prisons, which is just crazy. But for profit prisons is just a human rights violation, in my opinion. But we cannot address conversations around crime unless we're willing to address conversations around poverty. Malcolm's rise was steep, and so was his fall. After conflict with a Harlem drug supplier, he returned to Boston, but with greater ambition and a lot less moral breaks. He assembled a burglary team that targeted wealthy homes in Beacon Hill and Back Bay neighborhoods whose wealth contrasted sharply with the poverty of Roxbury, where he lived. Sorry. Roxbury. His partners were also hustlers with specialized skills. Shorty Jarvis was a safe man and his closest companion, Rudy, was a seduction thief who robbed wealthy white women. I'm seeing a crime show episode there, Sammy. Quote, the pimp was a fence and an underworld broker. The crew broke into upscale residences, stole jewelry and valuables, moved them through Boston's criminal circuit. Mal Malcolm studied layouts, casing houses while working as a waiter in downtown hotels. His intelligence, later lauded as revolutionary, was in this period, applied to criminal logistics. This period was intense, profitable, reckless, and short lived. Malcolm later Described himself as, quote, high all the time on power, women, weed and speed. It was the height of Detroit Red's life and the brink of his destruction. In January of 1946, law enforcement caught up with him. He and Shorty were arrested. Two white female accomplices confessed under questioning, testifying against the young men. Race played a role. White men who committed similar crimes often received lighter sentences. But Malcolm received eight to 10 years in state prison. Entering Charleston State Prison and later Norfolk Prison colony. The street life ended abruptly. Detroit Red died there. Malcolm X would later be born. Malcolm, who would later reject this entire phase of his life. He called it wasteful, degrading and spiritually numb. Yet it was foundational in Boston and Harlem. He learned how power functions outside of the law, how class and race shape opportunity, how charisma, intelligence and discipline can move people, how systems exploit the poor and how the poor adapt to that. Inmate number 22843 was booked and photographed in prison on February 27th of 1946. And before we get into his time in prison and his conversion to Islam, it's time for our first of two mid show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be an accomplice on patreon@patreon.com Monty Mater. This episode is brought to you by Ground News. I love the alerts from Ground News because between the breaking news page and my customizable for you page, I often see headlines might have otherwise missed. That helped me get a clearer picture of the whole story. Last month, Pete Heath said, quote, kill them all in response to two survivors clinging to a, quote, suspected narcotics boat who were then in short order executed. There has been no evidence that any of the boats off the coast of Venezuela had drugs on them. Nobody was arrested. Nobody was given due process. Some were confirmed civilian fishermen. These are war crimes. This is murder. The Trump administration has said it's about drug. Drugs. Well, I mean, mostly. But many Central and South American leaders have said it's about something else entirely. Oil. Venezuelan oil. Matter of fact, Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican representative from Florida, said in a live interview that going into Venezuela was going to generate, quote, billions for U.S. oil companies. No comment about drugs. No comment about democracy. The entire conversation was about oil. Then, as this is all happening, the headline I would have missed without ground newspaper popped up in the midst of all this. As the murders are happening off the coast of Venezuela. The conversations about drug trafficking. Trump pardoned convicted drug trafficker and former Honduran leader Juan Orlando Hernandez Hernandez. Was sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to distribute more than 400 tons of cocaine and related firearms offenses into the U.S. he was convicted, sentenced, serving jail time. He just got pardoned. Pardoned by Donald Trump. Clearly it's about drugs. Cue like the dramatic eye roll. This is why laws matter. This is why Mark Kelly and other Democratic vets telling the military to not obey illegal orders is so important. But without that notification from Ground News I wouldn't have gotten an even more full perspective of this story. I would have had my opinion that this is about oil and not drugs. But that headline was confirmation. You can do the same customizing your own for you page and never missing an alert by subscribing to ground news news.com tables for 40% off their vantage plan. It comes to $5 a month. And welcome back. Hope you enjoyed those ads. Hope you find something interesting that you can use. Let's get back to Malcolm X. Malcolm entered prison wholly unprepared for the stark reality that lay ahead. He was 21 years old, hardened by street life, addicted to hustling, and motivated by survival rather than ideology. His mind, as he later wrote, was quote, caged long before my body ever was. End quote. Yet it was behind bars that the man who would become Malcolm X was born. His transformation from Detroit red the hustler to disciplined thinker to devoted follower of Elijah Muhammad remains one of the most dramatic intellectual metamorphoses in American history. He describes this early period as one dominated by rage, profanity, and a hard facade developed from years in Boston and Harlem underworlds. He argued constantly with guards, mocked chaplains, and viewed religion, Christianity especially, as hollow moral decoration. His literacy was shallow, vocabulary untrained and intellectual. Common confidence underdeveloped. Malcolm's transformation to Norfolk prison colony marked a turning point. Norfolk was radically different from Charleston. It held a library of tens of thousands of books, supported debate clubs, educational programs and programs for self directed learning. Malcolm, in his autobiography, describes discovering a new world inside the library, one where the boundaries of his vocabulary became a barrier. He could physically feel his transformation began with reading and man, do I support every prison having a library library and prisoners getting educational opportunities. That I think is the number one way. One of the, I mean maybe not the number one way, but like one of the best ways to help people give themselves a better future. So much of the dumb shit we do is from lack of education and lack of opportunity. I so support this when I, when I'm, when I'm super, super rich, I'm going to sponsor libraries. He copied the entire dictionary page by page to rebuild his language from scratch. I want to say that again. He copied the entire dictionary so he could rebuild his language from scratch. He read history, philosophy, linguistics, religion, sociology and economics. He can see he consumed W.E.B. dubois, H.G. wells, Herodotus, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Gandhi and the life of Frederick Douglass. He studied black history, obsessively writing to the Library of Congress, requesting materials. The reading stripped away the illusions. In his autobiography, Malcolm writes, quote, for the first time I might life. I looked back into history and I saw the white man as the devil. End quote. If you hear that and it makes you upset, calm down, calm down. There's an arc here. There's an arc here. And honestly, Malcolm's again, hatred towards white people and Christianity. Do not blame him. I do not blame black people that have animosity towards a white person or towards Christianity, especially because Christianity was twisted and used as an excuse to subjugate and abuse them. I do not blame them. When I think of about, if, if I was born black, I.
