Loading summary
Transcript65 lines
- [00:00]
Degree Original Cool Rush Advertiser
We all love a legendary comeback. And Degree Original Cool Rush is back and better than ever. Cool Rush isn't just a scent. It's a movement, a fan favorite that delivers bold, fresh vibes and all day sweat protection. Whether you have a man that spends hours in the gym, heads into the office early, or is just trying to stay fresh on a long day, Cool Rush has their back. Head to your local Walmart or Target and grab Degree Cool Rush, the fan favorite scent from the world's number one antiperspirant brand.
- [00:30]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk, crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:54]
Ashley D. Farmer
Of $45 for 3 month plan. $15 per month equivalent required New customer offer first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. Seemintmobile do.
- [01:03]
Matt Elton
Hello and welcome to Life of the Week, where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures. From ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors to daring 20th century spies, Malcolm X was one of the most influential and sometimes divisive figures figures of the US Civil rights movement. In this episode of our Life of the Week series, Ashley D. Farmer tells Matt Elton about his life, times and legacy and highlights some of the figures who shaped his worldview.
- [01:44]
Interviewer
Ashley we are here today to talk about Malcolm X, his life, his times, his interior life, and I suppose some of the people who shaped him and his worldview. Before we get into all of that, what are the pertinent things that you think we need to know about the lives of Malcolm's parents in the years before their son was bor.
- [02:01]
Ashley D. Farmer
That's a great question. So Malcolm's parents are really interesting people in their own right. They met at a black nationalist meeting, a meeting of a man named Marcus Garvey, who created the Universal Negro Improvement association, which we often shorten to the UNIA in Montreal, actually. So his mother, Louise, was a very interesting woman. She spoke multiple languages. She had traveled from the Caribbean to the States. She had worked before she met Earl. His father. His father was someone who was interested in kind of black radical ideals. And they really were a couple that came together over a meeting of the minds about black liberation and the future of Black folks in America and around the world. So it's really a situation where Malcolm and all of his siblings were really primed to be politically active, primed to be people, citizens of the world, people that understood what was happening, not just with black folks in America, but everywhere, and to really stand up for injustice. So if you really think back to Earl and Louise, their political leaders, the fact that they were part of this great movement of Marcus Garvey's unia, it's kind of no wonder that you end up getting somebody like a Malcolm X. By the time that he is born.
- [03:15]
Interviewer
And he is born on the 19th of May, 1925, what was life like for him and his family and for others like it in the United States in the first sort of five years of his life?
- [03:25]
Ashley D. Farmer
So 1925 was a really interesting time to be born in the United States. On the one hand, you were part of a new generation of black folks who had been born into freedom that had not really known slavery and how. Had a different sense of how you should be respected, what your role as a citizen was, what your role as a person and who you could be in the world. But it was also one that was plagued by Jim Crow. After the end of radical reconstruction in America, which ended in 1877, we went through something which many of us call the nadir. It was a low point in black history. This meant the rise of black disenfranchisement. This meant the rise of racial violence, largely in the form of lynching. Most black folks were sharecroppers, meaning that they were kind of tied to the land in which they might have formerly worked and in this kind of debt peonage system where they could not ever get out of debt for the amount of crops they were growing to and the amount of crops that they were selling. And segregation pervaded every walk of life. I'm talking post offices, I'm talking public parks, I'm talking libraries, certainly schools everywhere. So it was a difficult time to be a kid. Now, that being said, it was also a moment that we know as a renaissance. Most of the time, people associate this renaissance with Harlem, but in many cities across the nation, black folks were coming into their own gathering in urban centers. They were celebrating their culture. They were celebrating their music. They were writing new books all about the black experience. So it's kind of this interesting melange of things where there's the worst of racism happening, but also these really great opportunities to think through what it means to be black in this particular moment, in a very Positive way.
- [04:58]
Interviewer
It's a moment of real flux in some senses, but also things being carried over from the past.
- [05:03]
Ashley D. Farmer
Absolutely. So like I said, the racism, the segregation, the lack of schooling, the disenfranchisement was a permanent feature through mouth Malcolm X's parents life and all of his siblings and his life. But at that same time, like I said, we were through the great migration and black people really were gathering in urban centers and thinking through how to organize against, say, lynching, how to organize perhaps to think through what they might do as a separate people away from white folks. So it was a really interesting time to be alive in that moment.
- [05:32]
Interviewer
I specified the first five years of Malcolm's life in my question just then because we should talk about the events of 29th September 1931.
- [05:40]
Ashley D. Farmer
What happened on that day? Louise and Earl got up going about their day and Earl said that he was going into town. Malcolm's father, Louise begged him not to go. She had a bad feeling like something was going to go wrong. And I should give a little bit of backstory here by this point. Earl is a well known leader of a chapter of Marcus Garvey's unia, a black nationalist organization that argued for separation, for black self determination and black self sufficiency. The UNIA was very popular. It had chapters all the way around the world. We're talking South America, we're talking Africa, we're talking Europe, we're talking America. He was known in his community as somebody that was stirring up black folks to fight for their liberation and fight for their freedom. So he always kind of had a target on his back. And on that particular day, for some reason, Louise just had a weird feeling that he shouldn't go out. That being said, most of the children that were around them remember them arguing a little bit about it and then him leaving the house. And then later on that day, Louise got a knock at the door saying that Earl had been hurt. And the story as it goes, is that he was crossing the railroad tracks where there was a streetcar and he was an accident. But many people believe, including Malcolm X, that it was a white supremacist attack. Earl survived for a couple of days but eventually succumbed to his injuries. And he left his wife to care for all of her children all alone, while also being the wife or the widow of a known black nationalist. So she was kind of politically implicated, but also in dire straits economically trying to care for all of her children.
- [07:11]
Interviewer
And what happened to the family in the immediate aftermath of that tragic event? What happened to his Mother, what happened to Malcolm?
- [07:18]
Ashley D. Farmer
For some time, Louise tried to hold it together. She had a lot of children. She was not very well off, but, you know, they grew their food in their own gardens to try to help survive, but also teach their kids black economic self sufficiency. She tried to keep them in school. She read to them constantly. But eventually it was too much to bear. And after a couple of visits from cousins from other parts of the family, they agreed that Louise was in no state to take care of the children. And she was. Was actually institutionalized in a mental hospital. And this broke up Malcolm's family and his siblings, and he was actually sent to live in what was considered kind of a majority white part of town, where he thrived, actually, for a while as a student. But it really was this kind of quintessential moment where he felt orphaned in a lot of ways, because not only had he lost his father, but he really didn't see his mother very much after that.
- [08:04]
Interviewer
You've written that a chance meeting with his half sister, Ella Collins, changed the trajectory of Malcolm's life. What happened and why did it have such a big impact?
- [08:13]
Ashley D. Farmer
Sure. So a little bit of backstory is that Earl was, in fact, married before he met Malcolm's wife, and he did have children. And Ella Collins was one of the children from that first marriage. She was older than Malcolm. She was very sophisticated. She lived in the black part of Boston called Roxbury. And she was a very worldly, smart person. She came to visit the kids, particularly after Louise had been institutionalized. And this really transformed Malcolm. Malcolm had never met a black person, let alone a black woman like Ella. She knew her stuff. She had been educated. She was married to a black man. She owned a home in the black part of town. She knew about music. She knew about world events, and she took pride in being black in a way that many folks had tried to kind of beat out of Malcolm at that point. And so she realized that there was kind of a bigger world outside of where he was living in the Midwest. And she also realized that there were black people that were still championing these ideals, that Marcus Garvey had instilled a black pride, and. And he really wanted to go see the world, particularly the northeast of New York and Boston. After Ella Collins visit, with this growing.
- [09:21]
Interviewer
Awareness of the world around him, Malcolm then became involved in some less desirable acts. Can you talk us through what happened there?
- [09:27]
Ashley D. Farmer
Absolutely. So eventually, as a teenager, Ella and her husband agree to take Malcolm in and let him come live in their Roxbury Home. And this is incredibly exciting for Malcolm. He's in a big city for the first time. He's in a place where there's a different level of culture. And I mean that in the best possible way and the worst possible way. And he does eventually, by moving and hopping between Boston and New York, get involved with the wrong crowd. Eventually a group of folks that are engaged in burglaries, a group of men and women altogether. And this leads him to a life of crime. And he eventually does become incarcerated because of this.
- [10:01]
Interviewer
And while he's in prison, this is a really pivotal moment, which I want to stop and just think about a little bit, because one of the themes for a piece you've written for BBC History Magazine is the importance of women in Malcolm's life and specifically in shaping his worldview. Can you talk about the role that his sisters had while he was in prison?
- [10:20]
Ashley D. Farmer
Yeah. So his sisters were his primary contact once he was incarcerated in Massachusetts. So Malcolm was kind of lost at this point. He had lost his connection to his family. His family was actually very disappointed in him for going to prison, particularly Ella, because she felt like she had helped him. Ella was one of his first visitors, and he felt ashamed and wanted to kind of make amends and try to earn her trust and her respect back. His other sisters told him to begin to use this time while he was incarcerated to better himself. He had dropped out of school, but Malcolm was always a very bright and smart boy. And so he began taking a correspondence class in which he started learning basic English grammar. And then eventually, through the encouragement of his sisters, began to kind of read anything and everything he could get his hands on. So we're talking the Bible, we're talking Shakespeare, we're talking Asian history, we're talking African history. Anything that the library had at the jail that he could read, he did read. And he started to write to his siblings, both his brothers, and particularly his sisters, about what he was learning and his transformation. So it really is a moment where both his desire to kind of get back on his sister's good side, but also to make his sisters proud, that he tries to really engage in what we might call kind of an organic intellectualism, a way of developing himself as an intellectual. And this is really the start of where we see Malcolm as a thinker, Malcolm as a writer, Malcolm as a political theorist. So it was a really transformative moment in his life.
- [11:49]
Interviewer
And what are some of the ideas, some of the worldview that starts to crystallize for Malcolm at this point in his life?
- [11:54]
Ashley D. Farmer
That's a great question. So I would say that two things really come out of his time in prison. The first is that while he is in prison, a lot of his siblings, both sisters and brothers, join the Nation of Islam. The Nation of Islam, we should understand as a black nationalist, but also religious organization and kind of the successor to Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. That organization dissipated in the late 20s. And in the 30s and 40s, the nation of Islam, what we often shorten to the noi, became kind of the primary way black people talked about self sufficiency, self determination. It also had a Muslim bent or a Muslim kind of impetus undergirding it. So when they converted and wrote letters to him, he started to investigate the Nation of Islam and the Muslim faith and eventually converted. So that's one element that really was spurred on by both his sisters and brothers. Ella Collins, for example, his sister joined the Nation of Islam. But the second is really to understand himself as kind of a. A black global citizen. It wasn't until he went to prison that he really understood that black people existed all over the world in different forms and fashions that he began to understand, for example, things like African colonialism, where European countries had colonized African countries, but they had had their own culture, their own kingdoms, their own economic systems beforehand. So it's this really interesting moment where he gets a sort of racial consciousness, but also religious consciousness in a community that is in large part, through corresponding with his sisters and brothers in jail.
- [13:22]
Interviewer
And by the time that he leaves prison in Aug, he's changed his name to Malcolm X and he's joined the noi. How big of a moment in his life was this?
- [13:30]
Ashley D. Farmer
The NOI was transformative on multiple levels. He had a direct relationship with Elijah Muhammad, who was the head of the Nation of Islam. They wrote back and forth to each other. And I think there Malcolm found a father figure that he was lacking, somebody who not only offered some of the very same ideals that Earl, his father, had taught him, but also a level of kind of discipline and structure that he was missing as a young person. The NOI has very clear rules about how a man is supposed to act, what you're supposed to eat, what kind of behavior you're supposed to have, how you're supposed to treat women. And I think Malcolm thrived in that structure because it was something he was missing from his early life. Having lost his father so early and then his mother being taken away from him. And then he found a community through which he could meet other mic Minded black people, Right. That were interested in bettering black folks and sharing the same ideals. So it really was an absolutely transformative moment for him.
- [14:21]
Interviewer
And I wanted to talk about his relationship with one other NOI follower, specifically, which is Betty Dean Sanders. Can you talk about and her life, I suppose, at this stage and the relationship she had with Malcolm?
- [14:32]
Ashley D. Farmer
Sure. So Betty Dee Sanders was a young woman who was a nurse. She was training to be a nurse in Brooklyn. She came from a very loving home, and actually a Christian home, not a Muslim home to start. And she was hearing about Malcolm X, this fiery speaker that was giving speeches about what the NOI could do to help black folks, but also how black folks could help themselves. And eventually one day went down to hear him speak. It was at that moment that she really kind of became enraptured not only with the Nation of Islam, but also Malcolm X himself. Eventually, after a short courtship, they were actually married, and she became Betty X or his wife. And they eventually had six daughters. But what's interesting about Betty is that one, she was a very smart woman from the start. She was certainly somebody who, once she joined the Nation of Islam, she agreed to the kind of prescriptive roles given to women in the Nation of Islam. Black women were supposed to be helpmates to their husbands. The husband was the head of the family. They were to provide for him. They were to provide for their family. They were to provide for their children. But that does not mean that she was not a person of the world, that she didn't understand politics, that she didn't understand the relationships and dynamics and conversations that her husband was having. So many of us see Betty as somebody who may have been, you know, behind the scenes in terms of publicly when Malcolm was out and moving around, but as his confidant internally, as she was also somebody who welcomed many of the black freedom movement luminaries to their table. So whenever anybody came over to their house, it wasn't as though Betty shrunk into the distance. She sat and ate with her husband and these various visitors, activists, reverends, leaders, religious folk, and talked to them about the world. And this also helped shape Malcolm's worldview and helped him parse through which way forward. So she really was a really interesting character in her own right. And then after he died, she went on to go get her doctorate, actually. And so we often kind of see these women who are the wives of these movement martyrs, as kind of people that are in the shadows. But it's important to understand that Betty had her own trajectory that they had to navigate a very difficult relationship because she was smart and because she was worldly and because she had her own views of how to keep him safe and keep their daughters safe, but also not curtail her own activism. And she continued with his legacy many years after he died.
- [16:50]
Interviewer
It's a really interesting case study of the tensions and the currents going on at this moment in time and at this moment in America. How representative are do you think, these currents and tensions of the intellectual discourse that's happening around the nation at the time?
- [17:04]
Ashley D. Farmer
Malcolm really comes into his own in the late 50s and early 1960s. So although he looms large in American public memory, he was actually in the public for a relatively short amount of time, and that's something to remember. But at any given moment in American history, black people are existing along a spectrum of everything from we should absolutely separate and become our own separate people, completely separate from white folks all the way through integration. But there are times when the idea of separation becomes more prominent or more supported and times when it recedes into the background and integration comes to the forefront. What's interesting about Malcolm is he was always championing separation in kind of a black nationalist state away from white folks. But it really was after his assassination that these ideas gained a little bit more currency, in large part because after in America, we got the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights Act, a lot of life didn't change for us. Day to day life was still very hard. But that being said, he really was responsible for introducing the idea that black people had a choice of whether they wanted to continue to try to integrate into a place that he felt was uninterested in welcoming us or just establish separate structures and kind of coexist separately with white folks. And this was a revelation for a lot of black folks in the late 20th century.
- [18:27]
Shopify Advertiser
If you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know that purple shop pay button you see at checkout? The one that makes buying so incredibly easy? That's Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the U.S. sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today@shopify.com promo. Go to shopify.com promo.
- [19:00]
Rakuten Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Rakuten. If you're shopping while working, eating, or even listening to this podcast, then you know and love the thrill of a deal. But are you getting the deal and cash back? Rakuten shoppers do they get the brands they love, savings and cash back and you can get it too. Stack sales on top of cash back and feel what it's like to know you're maximizing savings. It's easy to use and you get cash back sent to you through paypal or check. The idea is simple. The brands you love pay Rakuten for sending them shoppers and Rakuten shares the money with you as cash back. Download the free Rakuten app or go to rakuten.com to start saving today. It's the most rewarding way to shop. That's R A K U t e n rakuten.com.
- [19:44]
Interviewer
To rewind to Malcolm's relationship with the Nation of Islam, We've talked a little bit about some of the tensions with the ideas that the group represented. What were the factors that eventually pushed Malcolm to go beyond the noi?
- [19:56]
Ashley D. Farmer
So Elijah Muhammad, who was the head of the Nation of Islam, appointed Malcolm X as kind of the main speaker, representative. And Malcolm X wrote through the ranks and in the late 1950s and early 1960s was going around the United States and indeed the world, championing the nation and its thoughts. That being said, all around him, a civil rights movement was happening, right? People were being killed for looking for the right to vote, for desegregating, and the Nation of Islam had a strict rule that there were not to engage in these civil rights protests. So internally, Malcolm was facing this kind of conundrum. He did not want to defy Elijah Muhammad, who was his leader and the Nation of Islam. He considered himself a follower and a disciple. However, he felt just a personal commitment to being on the front lines of fighting for civil rights and supporting those who were putting their lives on the line. He also felt that the nation could play an active role in civil rights struggles if they wanted to.
- [20:50]
Shopify Advertiser
Right?
- [20:50]
Ashley D. Farmer
They were strong, they were collective force. And if they put their weight behind some of these ideas, it would help move things along. So as the late 1950s evolve and the early 1960s, Malcolm is kind of chafing at this idea that he. He can't really speak out or join forces or, you know, represent the Nation of Islam in these major civil rights movements. By that same moment, his worldview is also broadening and he's seeing that there is more to the world of Islam and the Islamic faith. And he's also realizing that these kind of dyed in the wool black nationalist ideas of separation in America are complicated by Places outside of America, for example, Africa, where everybody's black, but people are still oppressed. Right. Or Asia. What kind of solidarity should we force? So over time, their relationship begins to erode. One of the things, though, that there's kind of two, I would say, turning points in the relationship between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X that really spelled the end of Malcolm X's adherence to the Nation of Islam. The first is that he finds out that Elijah Muhammad, who is supposed to be an upstanding person who is supposed to be devoted to his wife and is preaching the mandates of respect and fidelity and monogamy, has fathered several children out of wedlock and with young women who were his secretaries of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X had heard rumors about this for a very long time. And eventually he confronts both Elijah Muhammad, but also some of the women in question. And this kind of destroys this image of his leader that he had had for a very long time. The second thing is that Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X come into conflict over the assassination of John F. Kennedy. When John F. Kennedy is killed in November 1963, Malcolm makes a comment that it's nothing but the chickens coming home to roost. Elijah Muhammad finds not only this to be kind of incredibly uncouth or disrespectful in this particular moment, but he's fearful also of how this will portra the Nation of Islam in this moment when, you know, there's kind of this mass hysteria and fear of what's coming. When people have basically watched our president get assassinated on live tv. And he silences Malcolm. He forbids him for speaking for 90 days after this, Malcolm goes on a pilgrimage to Mecca. And in addition to going on his pilgrimage to Mecca, he also visits African countries like Ghana. And he also makes a stopover in London, as a matter of fact. And this really opens up his eyes. He realizes that his strict kind of black white binaries don't really work anymore for the world that he's trying to build. And he's ready to come back, release himself from the Nation of Islam, and build a kind of broader movement that understands black and white folks, that can be in solidarity in creating kind of a global and lasting freedom.
- [23:23]
Interviewer
And when he returns from this trip, he changes his name and starts a new organization. Can you talk us through both of those things?
- [23:30]
Ashley D. Farmer
Yes. So becomes Alhazmalik Shabazz. And this is an effort to move away from the designation of X that many Nation of Islam leaders took on and also followers took on with the idea that black folks in America don't know their rightful last names because we were brought here as slaves. So that's one thing is the kind of uncoupling of himself in the Nation of Islam through naming. The second thing is that he eventually wants to develop something called the Organization of Afro American Unity. And he wants to model this after the Organization of African Unity, a conglomeration of countries that developed in the wake of African decolonization in the 1960s, the idea of creating a unified continent. He thinks that we can create a unified space here in America amongst black people, but also is really seeking connect black people in America with black people all over the world. Right. And so his hope is, when he comes back from this Mecca pilgrimage, is to develop this organization and really welcome anybody into the fold that is honestly and openly interested in developing black freedom wherever black people are in the world.
- [24:30]
Interviewer
And you mentioned that one of the places he does visit during this period is Britain. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened when he. He did visit the UK?
- [24:38]
Ashley D. Farmer
So Malcolm X has two notable visits to Britain. The first is in December 1964, and the second is in February in 1965 and December of 1964. He actually comes at the invitation to debate at Oxford. And this is a real turning point both for Malcolm and for many people who have been following his journey in Britain. He's invited by Rhodes scholar Eric Abrams to come and debate. And what's really interesting is the kind of the subject matter of this Oxford debate is Barry Goldwater, who is a Republican nominee here in America. He has this slogan, extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation and pursuit of justice is no virtue. And so Malcolm was called to defend this statement by Barry Goldwater. But it turns into this really interesting learning experience for both Malcolm and those in Britain. So he meets with African students who are here there in London, and he learns a little bit about decolonization struggles. He also talks to students who have been part of, say, the French Algerian region resistance and talks about how do folks in North Africa, for example, who might look phenotypically different from black folks, fit into his vision of black America and black skin and white skin that he's making. And he also just learns a little bit about the struggles that blacks and immigrants are facing in England in an entirely different way. And by all accounts, most people were spellbound by the way in which he spoke and talk at that particular moment. And the BBC broadcasted it. So it was this really big moment for Malcolm to open, open up his worldview. To other people and how they're living and what discrimination looks like and internationalize his struggle. And at the same time, really, people got to get a taste of Malcolm X firsthand. The second time he comes is actually just a couple weeks before he dies. He's invited by the Indian Workers Association. So not black folks, but a part of an immigrant population that is experiencing extreme discrimination. Peter Griffiths, who is the conservative MP there, is really galvanizing white folks around the idea that they don't to want. Want immigrants there up to the point where they're trying to buy up, you know, local houses so that immigrants cannot live there. So he was invited to kind of understand what life was like for immigrants in this part of England. And Malcolm X goes actually into a pub, the Bluegate Pub, and he's not served. And he really realizes that things are just as bad, if not worse, abroad. So it's this real moment of kind of eye openingness for Malcolm. So he's to kind of create these solidarities. But it's also a moment where people feel like they have a champion and somebody from America and a real firebrand and coming there and recognizing their struggles there in England. So these were really great moments for Malcolm's political development and growth, but also for black and brown communities in England. And it's really kind of taken on so much more meaning after the fact that he was killed so shortly after both of those visits.
- [27:25]
Interviewer
And we shall return to those events shortly before we do. You mentioned just then about the fact that Malcolm was a really spellbinding, really compelling political public presence. Is there anything else about him as a man or to give us a sense of his personality that we should talk about that we haven't?
- [27:41]
Ashley D. Farmer
Yeah, I mean, I think he really loved to read, but he did not write a lot. You know, a lot of times we talk about Malcolm X as somebody who's kind of thinking in motion. So when we sit down, we certainly have the autobiography, which is, you know, which he reported to Alex Haley, which is kind of our main piece of work. And we have his speeches. But if you think we don't have these kind of masterful tomes that he wrote because he was kind of just thinking on the go. So one of the things that I think Malcolm really challenges us to do is just to think about how somebody doesn't have to constantly be kind of rewriting treaties to be one of our preeminent thinkers. And the other thing that I think is really great to think about for Malcolm is he modeled changing one's mind with new information in real time. Right. One of the things that is really interesting about the moment that we're in is that people decide that they get into an idea, a theory, a position, position, and you might get new data points, something new comes in, and that can change your mind. Right. A thinking person says, I didn't know this before, I know this now. I need to kind of revamp my understanding of the world. But I think, you know, today there's a little reticence to doing that kind of digging in your heels, even if you realize you might not be right anymore. Malcolm X is a really great example of someone that changed their mind publicly and said, you know, at first I thought this was what I believed and what this was.
- [28:55]
Degree Original Cool Rush Advertiser
Right.
- [28:55]
Ashley D. Farmer
And this was the path we should be be going. I went out into the world. I met people in Africa, I met people in the Middle East, I met people in London. I met people everywhere. And I decided that my worldview wasn't exactly right. And I'm adjusting as I go. And so I think that kind of arc of thinking, the ability to change one's mind, the ability to say, I need to revise my stance publicly, was something that we don't give him a lot of credit for, perhaps because he had such a short life. So we don't feel like we got a full. But is something that is really admirable about him and cost him some allies, cost him some friends, some argue, cost him his life. And I think that we should keep that part of his intellect and his ability to change and be open to new ideas at the forefront of our minds.
- [29:39]
Interviewer
I'm fascinated by this intellectual fluidity. Do you think, as well as telling us something about him, the man, it tells us something about the times and the society and the culture in which he lived and in which he was about.
- [29:52]
Ashley D. Farmer
Absolutely. I mean, you know, there are times when you feel like you live five years and one year, and there's times when time passes more slowly. Right. The period of time between Malcolm X got out of prison and when he was assassinated was a time of tremendous change, not only in the United States, with the kind of ascent of the civil rights movement, but also the world with kind of mass decolonization of Africa, Latin America and Asia. So Angela Davis, one of his contemporaries, often says that if folks were living in this period of the 60s, you believed revolution was around the corner because you were watching it happen every day. You know, you were watching Africans throw off the yoke of their oppressor. You were watching the Civil rights movement shift things in front of your eyes. So it was a moment when you were seeing what an openness to change could do. And Malcolm really wanted to try to bend that in a way that he thought it should go.
- [30:40]
Interviewer
And some of his views were controversial. Critics accused him of advocating violence or of calling white people the devil, for instance. What would you say, I suppose, to critics who might point out that some of his views seem discriminatory or that sometimes have perhaps a more complicated aspect to them?
- [30:55]
Ashley D. Farmer
Absolutely. So I mean, one of the things that is unfortunate about some of our most famous leaders is they're often reduced to sound bites, right? So if anybody hears anything about Malcolm X, you often hear that he was violent, that he was advocating for violence, that he was hateful towards white people. And I kind of say this as like only looking at you being a ref and only looking at the person that threw the second punch. Right. So we often talk about what Malcolm X said in response to white supremacy violence. We often talk about what Malcolm X said in response to his home being firebombed, to children being killed in the street, to black men and women being lynched. Right, to the rampant disenfranchisement. What we're missing is the other part of that conversation, or what would be their first punch, which is the systemic effort to dehumanize, disenfranchise, and sometimes even kill black people and brown people all over the world. But one of the things I wanna be clear is that Malcolm X never advocates, advocated out and outright violence. And by that I mean he wasn't telling somebody to go pick up a gun and kill another person. What he was advocating was what we call armed self defense. He was saying that if somebody comes at you with a gun or with a weapon, you have the right to have that same kind of weaponry and be in defense of oneself. And he argued that not only is this just kind of a basic kind of human right, but also one that is enshrined in our second amendment here in America as well, but seems to only apply to some folks, but not others. And so he's kind of gotten a bad rap in that sense. But again, also back to my comment earlier is that he also backed away from some of that rhetoric as he moved forward. Not necessarily because he didn't believe that people had the right to armed self defense, but he also understood that maybe some of that rhetoric was getting in the way of his truer, bigger message about solidarity, about the right of dignity to black folks, about how we want to treat each other as humans about how we want to come together as a community. So he's really a great case study in thinking through how to talk about what is actually a provocation of violence versus someone defending oneself, but also to think through messaging and how that might shift over time.
- [32:57]
Interviewer
And a thread we've been following through this conversation is the people around him who shaped his worldview, who shaped his life. Are there any figures who we've not highlighted that you think we should?
- [33:07]
Ashley D. Farmer
Yes. I mean, I really want to emphasize how many different women kind of kept Malcolm on his path along the way. We've talked earlier about his mother, we've certainly talked about his sisters. But he also was kind of buoyed and carried by a group of activists, black radical activists, that really helped broaden his worldview, got him out of trouble, gave him places to sleep, everything like that. And I want to uplift one in particular who is a woman named Queen Mother Audley Moore. So Audley Moore was born in 1898 and died in 1997. So she was around for most of the 20th century. And she was kind of a contemporary with Malcolm's parents in the sense that she was older than him and was also a member of Marcus Garvey's black nationalist group, the Universal Negro Improvement Association. She got the name of Queen Mother because she kind of became a mentor to the movement in the late 50s and early 1960s during the time when Malcolm was coming to his own. And they actually met at a rally in Harlem, and Malcolm was taken with her and she was with him and they formed a friendship and they had kind of a mentorship relationship. So when she lived in Philadelphia, when she lived in Harlem, he would come and call upon her. And instead of kind of. Of being this firebrand that was coming and talking and sparring with her. By all accounts, when he came over to her house, he sat down and kind of sat at her feet and listened. He wanted to hear about her decades in the struggle. He wanted to hear how she survived the repression that comes with being tracked by the FBI for these beliefs. He wanted to hear about her ideas about reparations, the idea that black people were owed something back pay for the atrocities of slavery that have carried on till today. And he wanted to be a student of what it meant to be. Be kind of a long haul organizer and one that worked across constituencies. And so sometimes we see somebody that's at the front of the protest, sometimes we see people that are their wives. But there were many women who kind of sustained the movement and trained the next generation. And Queen Mother Moore was one of them that Malcolm really valued.
- [35:03]
Interviewer
And as you've alluded to, on the 21st of February, 1965, Malcolm was assassinated by Nation of Islam members in New York City. Can you talk us through what happened and the events of the days leading up to that?
- [35:14]
Ashley D. Farmer
Yeah. So, you know, what's interesting, actually, is even when Malcolm was in England back in December, he had mentioned that he thought that they were going to try to kill him. So Malcolm understood that his days were numbered. He understood it in part because he had made enemies with people within the Nation of Islam. His leaving of the Nation of Islam, his calling out of Elijah Muhammad for his affairs, made him no friends within a very powerful group in America. Also, as you can surely understand, the American government did not want Malcolm X to continue to have the kind of power and sway in public, public voice that he did. So there was a concentrated effort from a lot of different parts that he should be silenced. And he knew this. He knew that there were FBI folks following him all times. There had been a firebombing of his home just a couple weeks before. So he was well aware that he was kind of a marked man and his days were numbered. He was still trying to trudge on with creating his organization of Afro American unity. He was doing a big kind of rally to launch it at the place called the Audubon Ballroom, which is a famous company kind of meeting hall in Harlem. And everybody kind of felt on edge that day. Nothing kind of went according to plan. But he did invite Betty and four of his children to come and sit in the audience to watch this particular speech he was going to give. And as the story goes, he walked out kind of abruptly. He said, as salaam alaikum, which is the greeting, you know, Muslims, they give to each other. And then there was kind of a disturbance in the back of the room. Somebody yelled, get your hand out of my pocket. And this forced everybody to kind of turn towards the bat, to kind of see the scuffle. Malcolm's attention went towards the back as well. And while everybody's looking at this scuffle in the back, folks stand up from the front rows and fire at him, you know, point blank. So he is killed in real time in front of his children and hundreds of his supporters.
- [36:59]
Interviewer
It's horrifying.
- [37:00]
Ashley D. Farmer
It's really, really horrifying.
- [37:02]
Interviewer
What was the reaction?
- [37:03]
Ashley D. Farmer
I mean, absolute pandemonium. So some folks try to grab. We think there are three gunmen. You know, they start to run some grab Some folks there are people trying to resuscitate him on the stage. And then, you know, Betty is trying to cover her children because she's not sure if they're just gunning for him or for all of them. So it must have been a really terrifying moment. You know, his funeral was an epic event. People line the streets of Harlem to say goodbye to him. And for many in America, this was a real turning point. It is a moment when they say, you know, if you're to going, going to kill somebody like him, we have to carry on his work and particularly his nationalist ideals in his absence. So it is no coincidence that he's assassinated. In 1965, we get something like the Black Panther Party. In 1966, we get the Watts Rebellion. Right. We get a movement among black arts. We see kind of a proliferation of groups and activists that are really interested in kind of carrying on his message in the absence of him. But it really was a tough turning point for folks both in the United States and outside of it.
- [38:10]
Interviewer
And we can see the direct repercussions of this tragic event spread immediately outwards through culture, through politics, both in America and around the world.
- [38:18]
Ashley D. Farmer
Absolutely. I mean, one of the things also that is really interesting, I don't know if many folks are familiar with Amiri Baraka, kind of award winning playwright, but he actually says he quits his job, he leaves his family, he goes to Harlem and he starts what we call the Black Arts movement as well. Right. So there really was a proliferation of the Black Panther Party. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale say that they were kind of students of Malcolm. They had thought about joining the Nation of Islam before he left. They kind of carry on his ideals. It really is, I would say, kind of a million little ideas and experiments growing of his ideals after the end of his life.
- [38:48]
Interviewer
And we're talking now in 2025, obviously, 100 years on from his birth. What would you say his legacy, his importance is now this year, 2025?
- [38:57]
Ashley D. Farmer
I think that's a great, great question. Some of his analyses still very much ring true about the racial dynamics, not just of America, of the world. If you listen to some of Malcolm's speeches, they sound like they could also be said in 2025. So it's a real moment to take stock at how prescient he was in his thinking and understanding kind of systematic racism. His legacy in terms of larger international solidarity is one that I think was very forward thinking, considering how connected we are globally now. You know, if you think back in 1960s, it was a big thing for somebody to leave and cross the Atlantic even by plane at that point. But now we're connected with a touch of a finger. And Malcolm saw that and understood that and was thinking that this could be an opportunity for black and brown people and their allies to really unite against what would be the white supremacist tide of what's happening in America, but also imperialism worldwide. And then I think he would also say that, you know, a lot of happening, particularly in America Day, is a product of America not listening to some of the things that they were talking about in the 60s and 70s.
- [39:59]
Interviewer
Finally, how would you like listeners to this podcast to think anew about Malcolm X or his life or his times?
- [40:06]
Ashley D. Farmer
I suppose, yeah, I would want them to take away maybe two or three key things. The first is that no person develops in a vacuum. They are the product of certainly their cultural and social circumstances, but also the people around, around them. And we're very good at giving credit to particularly male figures in these kind of leading lives. But from everybody I've talked about, from his mother to his sisters, to activists like Queen Mother Moore to his wife, Betty X, are crucial to understanding Malcolm as the person that we are today. So I would say that to understand Malcolm is also to understand the women that shaped him. Second, I would really encourage people to think of Malcolm as somebody that that was evolving when he was cut down in his prime and to understand that our historical figures aren't static and aren't soundbites. I'd encourage them to think through kind of the breadth of his speeches and particularly the speeches in his last year of life. I mean, nothing more important, honestly, than even his debate at Oxford, which is, you know, one of the few last recorded great speeches that we have to think through how somebody's can evolve in their thinking and how you might model that in your own life as well. And then finally, just to remember that usually when somebody is being labeled as kind of a firebrand or hateful or violent, to kind of widen one's frame and think through what might they be responding to that would make somebody say this and maybe try to understand it as more than just simply somebody being attacking, but also somebody that has been attacked for a long time trying to say they have the right to defend themselves.
- [41:41]
Matt Elton
That was Ashley D. Farmer, associate professor in the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She was speaking to Matt Elton. Ashley's upcoming book is Queen Mother Black Nationalism, Reparations and the Untold Story of Audley Moore, set to be published in November. Ashley also wrote a feature on the women who transformed Malcolm X's understanding of the world for the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine. You can read that now on our website, historyextra.com thanks for listening to today's Life of the Week. Be sure to join us again next time to learn about another fascinating figure from the past.
- [42:28]
Ashley D. Farmer
Foreign.
- [42:38]
Ryan Reynolds
I'm here to tell you about my podcast on BBC Radio 4, History's Toughest Heroes. I got stories about the pioneers, the.
- [42:47]
Shopify Advertiser
Rebels, the outcasts who define tough.
- [42:51]
Ryan Reynolds
And that was the first time that anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head. Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes Wherever you get your podcast.