Malcom X

Summary

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Stuff You Should Know – "Malcolm X" (March 26, 2026)

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Episode Theme: An in-depth exploration of Malcolm X’s life, activism, ideology, and cultural impact.

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Episode Overview

Josh and Chuck take listeners on a thorough journey through the life of Malcolm X, unpacking the pivotal experiences that shaped his ideology, his rise as a major figure within the Nation of Islam, his eventual split and transformation, and his lasting legacy. The episode challenges the simplified portrayals commonly presented in history classes and media, and discusses the context, nuance, and evolution of Malcolm X’s worldview.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Power of Perception: How We Learn Malcolm X (02:24–06:31)

• Josh and Chuck discuss how, as white Americans, their initial understanding of Malcolm X was limited to stereotypes: “the guy who said, ‘by any means necessary’; he was militant; he was the foil to Martin Luther King, Jr.” (03:13–03:50).
• Josh explains that researching Malcolm X led him to deeper respect, moving him beyond the “fan” label to someone worthy of intense study and admiration.
• Both hosts point to the sanitization of school curriculums, emphasizing Martin Luther King, Jr. while omitting Malcolm X and others like Marcus Garvey (05:07–05:31).

2. Early Life: Trauma and Adversity (06:36–10:59)

• Birth and Background: Malcolm Little born in 1925, Omaha, Nebraska to a black-conscious family, with parents active in Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (06:36–07:11).
• Violence and Racism: Family home burned by white neighbors; father, Earl Little, likely murdered by a Klan-affiliated group (Black Legion), with authorities calling it suicide, thus denying full insurance payout to his mother Louise (08:09–09:53).
• Family Breakdown: Mother institutionalized, siblings scattered in foster care; early criminal activity begins with petty theft to support the family (09:53–10:59).

Notable Quote:

“I don’t know when the house burned but…Malcolm was six years old and his father died, a mysterious streetcar accident…the family was convinced [it] was murder.” – Josh (08:09–09:02)

3. School, Systemic Barriers, and Disillusionment (10:59–12:30)

• Academic Promise: Malcolm excels in school, elected class president, dreams of law school.
• Devastating Racism: A white English teacher tells him to “be realistic” about his ambitions; suggests carpentry over law (11:44–12:30).
• Life-Changing Impact: Malcolm drops out, never returns to school, marking a pivotal personal and ideological shift.

Notable Quote:

“He had the rug pulled out from under him…because he was dreaming of becoming a lawyer and the English teacher’s like, ‘I think America would accept you more as a carpenter…’” – Josh (11:44–12:30)

4. Young Adulthood: Boston, Harlem, and the Hustler Years (12:30–15:54)

• At 15, moves to Boston, starts working various jobs, lands in Harlem by 17. Gains reputation as “Detroit Red.”
• Criminal activities escalate: theft, burglary, dealing, partly to feed gambling and substance habits (13:26–14:41).
• Distinction from stereotypes: Often seen as a “pimp,” but more accurately a connector in Harlem’s criminal underworld.
• Multiple arrests leading to significant prison sentence after a botched burglary; notable racial inequities in sentencing (14:41–15:54).

5. Prison: Rebirth of the Intellectual and the Believer (15:54–18:51)

• In nearly seven years in prison, Malcolm re-discovers his intellectual passion, reportedly reading the entire dictionary and voraciously consuming books.
• Letters from siblings introduce him to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam; becomes “a hardcore Muslim pretty quickly” (17:49–18:27).
• Adopts ascetic lifestyle, rejecting substances and worldly temptations.

Notable Quote:

“He became a voracious reader again in prison… eventually…the teachings of Elijah Muhammad…really transform[ed] his life.” – Chuck (15:54–16:42)

6. The Nation of Islam and Radicalization (18:51–22:50)

• Changes name to Malcolm X, rejecting his “slave name”; many in NOI do the same as a repudiation of white-imposed identities (18:51–19:17).
• Explanation of NOI theology, including the “white devils” doctrine and the myth of Jacob creating the white race—a literal teaching of the time (20:17–21:49).
• Malcolm’s critical thinking is temporarily suppressed in loyalty to NOI dogma; becomes the public face and best recruiter for the movement.

Notable Quote:

“According to Black Muslim theology…a genius named Jacob…created white people by bleaching black people…mutated them into white, blue-eyed devils…” – Josh (20:17–21:36)

7. Meteoric Rise: From Prison to Prophet (26:00–27:16)

• After parole in 1952, Malcolm rapidly grows NOI membership from 400 to 75,000 by the early 1960s.
• Recognized as a charismatic, influential figure and the effective face of the NOI, due in large part to his rhetoric and media savvy.

8. Social Impact and Controversy (27:16–34:33)

• Media brings Malcolm to wider attention through confrontational documentaries (notably Mike Wallace’s "The Hate That Hate Produced").
• Pushes boundaries within NOI, emphasizing asceticism and strict discipline—including enacting member weigh-ins and penalties (28:21–29:15).
• Starts "Muhammad Speaks" newspaper, debates at major institutions, expands NOI’s activism into public life (30:13–30:57).
• Highlights NOI’s separatism versus civil rights integrationism, and its exclusion of white (and even non-Muslim black) allies (31:00–32:15).

9. Malcolm X vs. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Media and Movements (33:11–37:03)

• The media set up Malcolm as the “pariah” to King’s “saint,” ignoring that King’s integrationist approach was far more threatening to the status quo.
• No deep personal enmity—MLK wisely avoided close association to protect his movement, but both understood the value (and danger) of their contrast.

Notable Quote:

“If you’re starting a revolution and the revolution’s goal is to love your enemy, like that’s ridiculous…all you’re doing is distracting and continuing to keep subjugated the people you’re supposedly trying to liberate.” – Josh (36:12–37:03)

• FBI and NYPD closely monitor Malcolm X, seeing him as a uniquely powerful figure (38:05–39:24).

10. The Break with the Nation of Islam (45:03–50:48)

• Resentment builds among NOI’s old guard—Malcolm’s rising star threatens Elijah Muhammad and his family’s legacy; FBI stokes dissension.
• Malcolm discovers Elijah Muhammad’s affairs (fathering children with young secretaries), shattering his faith and sparking the decisive split.
• Malcolm is suspended for controversial remarks following JFK’s assassination (“chickens coming home to roost”) (47:57–48:46).

Notable Quote:

“[Malcolm] had to compartmentalize and turn off critical thinking…He could finally grow and become…the Malcolm X he always had the potential to be.” – Josh (46:52–47:57)

11. Hajj and New Transformation (50:48–53:41)

• In 1964, Malcolm makes Hajj to Mecca, sees a multi-racial Islamic community, and embraces Sunni Islam.
• Changes name to El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; undergoes ideological shift, now willing to cooperate with white allies and participate in the mainstream civil rights movement.
• Launches Organization of Afro-American Unity, aims to globalize the black struggle, and finally meets MLK face-to-face during Congressional civil rights debates.

Notable Quote:

“He had encountered pilgrims of all colors…displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like I’ve never seen before.” – Chuck (51:28–51:51, quoting Malcolm X)

12. Assassination and Legacy (53:41–59:06)

• Malcolm’s house is firebombed (likely by NOI members), then he is formally evicted. Days later, on February 21, 1965, killed while speaking in Harlem. His wife Betty Shabazz and daughters were present.
• Three NOI members were convicted in his murder; recent exonerations highlight injustice in prosecution.
• Funeral attended by 1,500; eulogized by Ossie Davis, reflecting profound loss for the civil rights movement.
• His family, especially Betty and the daughters, become activists in their own right.

Notable Quote:

“It takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say, ‘everybody, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, I found out that’s wrong.’” – Maya Angelou (quoted by Chuck, 57:57–58:37)

13. Further Resources and Closing Thoughts (58:37–60:11)

• Recommendations: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” “Malcolm X Speaks,” the Spike Lee film, PBS’s “Make It Plain,” and Malcolm’s speeches on YouTube.
• Discussion of the critical and cultural impact of the autobiography and the Spike Lee biopic.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “You knew him as the guy who said, ‘by any means necessary’…He was, essentially, the foil to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” – Josh (03:13)
• “He was a really smart guy…charismatic from the beginning…elected class president…dreams of going to law school before his white teacher said a pretty terrible thing to him.” – Chuck (10:59)
• “He had to take parts of his brain and turn them off…to throw himself fully into [Nation of Islam teachings].” – Josh (21:49)
• “He was uncompromising in that. It wasn’t like, yeah, I mean, some of them are okay. No white people were okay in this philosophy.” – Josh (27:16)
• “A lot of that…is due to him being the face…of the Nation of Islam.” – Chuck (27:16)
• “He called the march on Washington the ‘farce on Washington’…‘Whoever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing "We Shall Overcome" while tripping and swaying along arm in arm with the very people they're supposed to be angrily revolting against?’” – Chuck quoting Malcolm X (37:03)
• “He came full circle and said…there are good white people and we can and should work together.” – Chuck (51:28)
• “He was struck down…at the time his potential was really starting to blossom. He turned into like a full butterfly for the first time, and he’s struck down.” – Josh (53:41)
• “It takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say ‘everybody, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, I found out that’s wrong.’” – Maya Angelou, quoted by Chuck (57:57)

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Suggested Listening Segments & Timestamps

• Malcolm X’s Formative Years: 06:36–12:30
• Crime and Prison Transformation: 10:59–18:51
• Rise in Nation of Islam: 26:00–30:57
• Malcolm X vs. MLK: 33:11–37:03
• Break with Nation of Islam: 45:03–50:48
• Hajj & Philosophical Transformation: 50:48–53:41
• Assassination and Impact: 53:41–59:06

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Tone and Style

As always, Josh and Chuck are conversational, relatable, and inquisitive—balancing reverence for Malcolm X’s life with occasionally light-hearted asides. They focus on complexity, using direct quotes, personal reflection, and recommendations for deeper exploration, while acknowledging their own social and generational context.

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Further Reading & Viewing (As Recommended)

• Books: "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (w/ Alex Haley), "Malcolm X Speaks"
• Film: Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X”
• Documentary: PBS’s “Make It Plain”
• Online: Videos and speeches widely available on YouTube

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For listeners seeking a deep, nuanced look at Malcolm X—his hardships, growth, radical ideas, humanity, and enduring influence—this episode delivers both the breadth and the personal dimension, enhanced by Josh and Chuck’s signature blend of historical rigor and empathetic inquiry.

Transcript

[Podcast Host (Announcer)]

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[Podcast Host (Announcer)]

welcome to stuff youf should know a production of iheartradio

[Josh Clark]

hey and welcome to the podcast i'm josh and there's chuck and jerry's here too just being quiet as a church mouse and this is stuff you should know that's cause you

[Chuck Bryant]

told her to zip it i'm just

[Josh Clark]

gonna leave that part out we're gonna get hate mail for that one i'm

[Chuck Bryant]

surprised we're just now getting to this i went through a malcolm x phase in college i wasn't one of those guys walking around georgia with a malcolm

[Josh Clark]

x hat on you weren't wearing like okay i have a great story but please go ahead

[Chuck Bryant]

it was after i saw the movie because i was a big still am big spike lee guy so i saw the movie in ninety two and then read the autobiography with alex haley right after that and was just super into his story at the time it's been a while though well

[Josh Clark]

i have just entered my malcolm x face awesome i just researching him i accidentally got radicalized and i've got his autobiography on the way it should get here today oh great but it's crazy chuck because especially as just white people of our generation if you hadn't already gotten into him and like seen the spike lee movie and read his autobiography and just started to read his speeches and stuff if you just kind of knew him like i had up to this point like you knew him as the guy who said like by any means necessary that he was he was militant that he was essentially the foil to doctor martin luther king junior and that he and king kind of represented these two this fork in the road that america had to kind of choose between because there was at this point in like the fifties starting in the fifties there was no way for america to just stand there at the crossroads any longer like we like america as a whole had to make a choice which way we're going to go race war or integration peaceful integration and that's what malcolm x represented to white america race war like black militants taking over killing white people mercilessly ruthlessly because white people had it coming or you know everybody's much more familiar with the martin luther king junior way but there's so much more to it than that and just researching this this guy i like i'm i don't even want to say a fan because i think that kind of undermines like the respect i have for him now like he's a he's an amazing figure it turns out yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

for sure and you know when i was in high school there was a big this is you know i graduated in eighty nine the movie was ninety two so this was leading up to the film which obviously put things on a much bigger sort of platform but it was a big deal in the eighties like there was a big sort of at least in the south i don't know how it was everywhere else but there was a big movement among you know the black students at my school to get in touch with their african heritage malcolm x hats were all over the place in my school and he was just sort of in the forefront i guess kind of like my junior and senior year so it was striking to me that we didn't learn

[Josh Clark]

about him in high school yeah but if you step back and really think about it it's not very surprising you

[Chuck Bryant]

know well i mean looking back at the substandard public school education i got

[Josh Clark]

correct yeah but also the whitewashed and sanitized version where it's like okay we'll tell you about martin luther king junior but don't ask about malcolm x you don't want to know about him he was a rough dude but he yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

or anyone else it was just martin

[Josh Clark]

luther king exactly yeah he did the whole thing by himself it turns out yeah so yeah i remember that same era as well okay so i say we get into this because we could probably sit here and do an intro and it would end up being the entire thing but let's jump in and everybody else can kind of make up their own minds about how you feel about malcolm x and just kind of as an aside to start i would definitely recommend going and watching the documentary on them that american experience did i think in the nineties called make it plain and then i read a bunch of articles and the best one i read was the achievement of malcolm x by john j simon that was in the monthly review that was a really good comprehensive one too yeah and see

[Chuck Bryant]

that spike lee movie it's exceptional i've not seen it oh man you got

[Josh Clark]

to check it out it's great i will i will okay so we're talking about malcolm x if you hadn't figured that out by now and you may or may not know that malcolm x was born malcolm little that was his given name he was born back in nineteen twenty five in omaha nebraska and from the outset he was essentially raised in a very black conscious family so he was aware of the state of racial affairs in the united states as a very young person and the oppression that black people lived under at the time and still do in many ways

[Chuck Bryant]

yeah for sure his dad earl was a baptist lay speaker his mother louise little they were both members of the universal negro improvement association which was a marcus garvey joint someone else we never learned about in high school and they moved to milwaukee for a little while then eventually in nineteen twenty eight when little malcolm was three landed in michigan and they landed in a white neighborhood and that was a big problem because they were not wanted there and earl little was not the kind of guy to just pack up and leave because his neighbors didn't want him there so he he stayed and the community had a clause in their hoa covenant that said that basically no one was allowed to sell a house to non white people and so they sued to evict them and while that was kind of going through even before the eviction was finalized a group of white men burned their house to the ground without any firefighters even showing up right so whether

[Josh Clark]

they wanted to move or not they had to now and they moved a little further out of where they lived still in the lansing area and i don't know when the house burned but just within a year or two maybe less malcolm was six years old and his father died he died in a mysterious bizarre streetcar accident where he was run over by a streetcar and that's just the official line on the whole thing in fact i think it was it ended up being ruled a suicide but according to malcolm his family his mother like his father was murdered probably by a klan affiliated group called the black legion who operated in michigan back then and that was pretty much what the family was convinced of that his father had been murdered then on top of that no one would admit that his father was murdered which i'm sure makes that kind of experience that much

[Chuck Bryant]

harder yeah i mean there was actual evidence that was ignored he had clearly been beaten and placed on the tracks so it was kind of just brushed under the table it was very upsetting for a young malcolm cause that was like the rumor it was all around the school and everything so he was hearing all these stories and it was definitely a big early sort of kind of fork in the road for him in that his family was left without their dad they like you said ruled it a suicide but i think she got like one thousand dollars in one life insurance payment louise did which would be about twenty five grand a day but was denied because of the suicide claim a much larger insurance claim so she didn't have a lot of lot of dough to feed what was eight

[Josh Clark]

kids eight kids man and now she's suddenly on her own and she had a nervous breakdown is what you would call it i think that she was diagnosed as paranoid and was transferred to this state hospital in kalamazoo where she stayed this is in the mid thirties she stayed there until nineteen sixty four i think like twenty six years or something like that and all of a sudden malcolm and his seven siblings are without parents they're orphans essentially and they become wards of the state and they're broken up so just in a very short time couple of years malcolm goes from having a stable home life to his father being murdered his mother having a nervous breakdown and being institutionalized and his his siblings being spread out throughout the foster system around lansing that's just what happened to him and if you know a little bit about malcolm x you might know that he started out as a criminal what's astounding chuck is this is not when his his life of crime began he actually went the exact opposite route well a little of

[Chuck Bryant]

both he started stealing stuff when he was nine because he had to do something to provide for their family but he never got caught there and we'll go over his formal rap sheet here in a minute but he was sent to a juvenile detention center in mason michigan it was about ten miles south of lansing and he went to a white school and he did a great job he was he's a really you know was a really smart guy a really smart kid and made really good grades he was very charismatic from the beginning he was elected class president yeah and had dreams of going to law school before his white teacher said a pretty terrible thing to him yeah it

[Josh Clark]

was an english teacher and this is a one of probably one of the this is the second pivotal moment in his life where he had the rug pulled out from under him he had the wind taken out of his sails he got punched in the bread basket however you want to put it because the because he the english teacher he told the english teacher that he was dreaming of becoming a lawyer and the english teacher's like i think america would accept you more as a carpenter like that's the kind of profession you need to go in you need to be realistic about and then essentially being a black person in america it's not what the teacher said but the point was the same and it just completely sucked the life and enthusiasm for learning that he had up to that point right out of him yeah he quit school

[Chuck Bryant]

he never went to school again after that and he had a very promising academic career in front of him which is super sad so at fifteen he goes to live with his half sister in boston and eventually would get a job working at the railroad so he started traveling around some and by seventeen found himself living in harlem and this is where he got the name that stuck with him during his sort of early or later teenage years i guess red he had this red hair so he was either detroit red or big red because he was a tall guy he was six foot four and just a little fun side note while he was in harlem he was working at a chicken shack with a guy named john sanford and he was chicago red and malcolm was detroit red and he was trying john sanford was trying to be a standup comic and that ended up being redd fox that's right of

[Josh Clark]

sanford and so fame yeah i love that little fact so yeah he was he became a i guess you'd call him a petty criminal but he was he took all of that kind of charisma and charm and initiative and turned it he directed it toward a life of crime he's often described as a pimp although he was never a pimp he seemed more like the kind of guy who just knew where to get whatever you wanted and that included sex workers that included drugs he loved pot he loved gambling and he actually committed a lot of his crimes like burglary theft that kind of stuff just to support his habits which pot eventually turned into cocaine which even back then was more expensive and again he loved to gamble so he needed to keep both of those things up and that was a large reason why he was such a prolific criminal during this time another reason is that he just the options that he had hadn't really panned out very well for him like he had a few jobs up to this point but he realized like i'm not going to get anywhere serving sandwiches on a train i'm not going to get anywhere shining shoes like i might as well make a way for myself and the only way to make a way for myself in this situation is crime yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

for sure he was arrested a couple of times he was arrested at nineteen allegedly stealing his half sister's fur coat whom he lived with pretty low hanging fruit got arrested again when he allegedly mugged a friend of his at gunpoint and neither one of those amounted to much but finally he was arrested for a third time after he'd been doing a series of burglaries of wealthy homes with kind of a small crew it was him it was another black man and three white women and i mentioned everyone's race there because when they got caught on this one the three white women just got slaps on the wrist and basically got let go and the two men were sentenced to eight to

[Josh Clark]

ten in the hoof scowl yeah and they would have gotten much worse than that documentary make it plain the other guy his friend malcolm jarvis he said that they they tried to get the women to say that malcolm x and malcolm jarvis had raped them and had all they had to do was say that and they would have been convicted of that and sentenced to a couple more decades for that and luckily they were tight enough with these women that they they said no we're not going to do that despite the pressure that they were under too yeah for sure

[Chuck Bryant]

so prison is where a lot happened to him in prison sort of one of his first big transformations he spent about almost seven years there for that burglary and he was about twenty years old at the time and it was in prison where he really kind of found himself for the i guess for the first time as an adult in that he remembered like hey i'm a smart guy and i used to love academia and learning so he started he became a voracious reader again in prison he apparently tried to memorize the dictionary in prison and was reading anything he could get his hands on including eventually which would really transform his life the teachings of elijah muhammad who was a leader of the nation of islam at

[Josh Clark]

the time yeah and before he kind of came onto those teachings from his siblings i think who encouraged him to start looking into that and he had a real aversion to any kind of religion he was actually known as satan by the other prisoners in the correctional facility he was in but the reason he was able to read so much chuck is because he happened to be in mci norfolk in massachusetts and it's well known to have a lot like a huge library connections with mit and harvard and all that stuff so it was actually the perfect prison for him to land in so he was able to kind of educate himself from that point on and then when he finally did start taking up the teachings of elijah muhammad it just clicked and it was even further i guess reinforced when he started writing letters to elijah muhammad and elijah muhammad started writing back to him that really encouraged him big time

[Chuck Bryant]

yeah you know why because he didn't have to write letters to get those books like andy dufresne yeah in the

[Josh Clark]

shawshank redemption no they just threw them

[Chuck Bryant]

at you yeah he was of course because it was massachusetts so yeah he started you know basically became a pen pal with elijah muhammad and really became a hardcore muslim pretty quickly after reading you know his works and became an ascetic so that means no drugs no booze no pork no movies or music no gambling no dancing like the real straight and narrow and you know we'll later find out that that became a bit of a rift later on because he didn't think elijah muhammad at one point was sort of walking the walk whereas he really was from the beginning

[Josh Clark]

yeah for sure like and he did throughout too like the fbi tried and tried and tried to get something on him and they couldn't get anything like he's just that upstanding immoral from that point on i also i had never even thought to wonder but i had no idea why his last name was x i was pretty surprised to learn this but it makes a lot of sense you didn't know that no okay

[Chuck Bryant]

i thought that would have been sort of just the basic common knowledge no

[Josh Clark]

but maybe not i mean maybe it is but i'm pretty uncommon chuck you're

[Chuck Bryant]

an uncommon podcaster so yeah he dropped the name little because and a lot of people in the nation of islam did and do this because that was he thought that was his slave name so he rid himself of that name and replaced it with an x yeah

[Josh Clark]

he also one of the reasons he despised religion he despised christianity in general because he considered that the slave religion that was given to the african slaves to essentially keep them in line and so it was actually it was a big deal that he became this devotee of this religion and this particular religion just just really quick if you're not familiar with the nation of islam it is not the same thing as islam that was that emerged out of the middle east several hundred years ago it bears like a slight resemblance to it but it is essentially a completely altered version that has a lot of theology that seems very odd to outsiders yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

i mean they were muslim but you know i know you and this is stuff i didn't know that you found some stuff about elijah muhammad's original beliefs that i was sort of shocked by

[Josh Clark]

yeah so you've heard white devils before i mean all you have to do is listen to like ice cube he always talks about white devils but that is actually a teaching from the nation of islam from elijah muhammad and it predates him the nation of islam had been around for a few decades before elijah muhammad was its prophet but the reason that they call white people white devils is because according to black muslim theology there was a genius named jacob black genius who created white people by bleaching black people and he mutated them into white blue eyed devils and the reason why is he wanted to basically put the black race to the test so he put them in a subjugated position because he allowed these white people to be devils to basically act like white people have treated black people since time immemorial and that this reign would last about six millennia and that the six millennia were almost up and that this was the time when the black race would rise and take over from the white devils who would who would really regret the stuff that they had done up to that point after that

[Chuck Bryant]

which would have placed it about nineteen seventy and so white americans hearing this at the time they thought that's when like the race war was coming was was nineteen seventy or thereabouts yeah and

[Josh Clark]

we talked about that before and like i never really understood it but this is a big big reason that that white like there's going to be a race war it's like coming it's inevitable that was a big part of it so yeah this is and this wasn't like metaphorical this is from what i understand it's a it's a literal interpretation of where white people came from six thousand years ago so this was the this was what malcolm x was being indoctrinated into and he was a smart guy so he he had to submit himself like he had to take parts of his brain and just turn them off the suspicious part of him as far as like what he was being taught had to be turned off the critical thinking part as far as anything goes with the religion that he took on he was able to compartmentalize turn it off and throw himself fully into it and he was for the first decade essentially that he was a black muslim the best thing that ever happened to the nation of islam by far

[Chuck Bryant]

yeah for sure that seems like a

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[Chuck Bryant]

agree all right we'll be right back everybody with more on malcolm x you

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

ways so congrats on one hundred and fifty years of connecting people at and

[Podcast Host (Announcer)]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

hey everybody get this linkedin has grown to a network of over one billion professionals and one hundred thirty million decision makers and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys yeah for sure

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[Chuck Bryant]

so malcolm x is granted parole in nineteen fifty two he gets out of prison a completely different person than who entered prison almost seven years earlier and he was on a mission to to recruit and get as many people as he could to join the nation of islam and had a direct sort of go get em tiger from elijah muhammad and so as soon as he was paroled he joined temple number one in detroit he traveled to chicago to meet elijah muhammad in person and he said like i said he said go out there and do your thing he knew he had sort of a shining star because he was again he was tall he was handsome he was charismatic he was super smart and within a year there were only about four hundred members of the nation of islam at the time within a year he brought that to about one thousand but that would grow to six thousand by nineteen fifty five and then in the early nineteen sixties about seventy five thousand up from four hundred when malcolm x came on the scene so a lot of that not all of it obviously but a lot of that is really due to him being the face you know i guess sort of the second face and then ultimately the face of the nation of islam yeah for sure

[Josh Clark]

his rhetoric the things he was saying and like you said the charisma and just how well spoken he was and the points he makes it's like you can be white and he's talking about you being a white devil sorry you all white people are white devils he was uncompromising in that right it wasn't like yeah i mean some of them are okay no white people were okay in this philosophy and he in addition to that that rhetoric he also just knew how to work the media and what what you know levers to pull and he pushed elijah muhammad way out of his comfort zone to allow him to do new stuff with the nation of islam that helped bring in tons and tons of people one of the first big ones was a documentary from mike wallace of all people back in nineteen fifty nine called the hate that hate produced and it just basically said look at these guys but at the same time listen to what these guys have to say and it exposed the world to black muslims and it really helped drive up membership yeah for sure

[Chuck Bryant]

he was not trying to make friends in his job even within his own community you know we talked about him being a hardliner and ascetic and he he said that everyone should practice asceticism and he went to philadelphia at one point in nineteen fifty five and said all right everyone here needs to get their act together you need to lose weight even he had leaders in philadelphia weighing their members twice a week and there were penalties if you didn't lose the poundage that he required because he wanted everyone to look a certain way about a year later in nineteen fifty six he met civil rights activist betty sanders when she joined his temple and two years later when he called her from a gas station phone and proposed they married in january nineteen fifty eight and later that year had the first of what would be six daughters yeah

[Josh Clark]

all daughters right the whole along the way even twins i think the last ones born were twin daughters so yeah you said that he wasn't really trying to make friends and he didn't care whether he ticked people off so the old guard the existing guard of the nation of islam who had been around long before malcolm x came along they were not happy with this they did not like to be told that they were doughy and had to diet or else they'd be suspended but he was attracting people who were very much in line with himself so very quickly as he started to build up the roles of the members of nation of islam the philosophy and the viewpoint of that group started to shift away from the establishment that had been there up to that point to this much more radical much more politically active version of the nation of islam that was the malcolm x brand of nation of islam yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

i mean elijah muhammad told him to stay out of politics because he was a complete separatist he didn't want to to be involved in anything that the white america was doing but malcolm x basically started doing his own thing one of the big sort of early things he did that ended up being a huge deal was he founded their newspaper it was called muhammad speaks and it became a really it had a pretty wide distribution and i remember even growing up seeing on the streets of atlanta members of the nation of islam i feel like they were giving him away i don't think they were selling them but he had pretty firm quotas established for members to give these things out and had a pretty wide circulation yeah

[Josh Clark]

he also would do things like debate white people he did at oxford he did at harvard on like race relations he would take questions from white reporters all of this stuff was like not what elijah muhammad was jiving with but malcolm x was getting such results that elijah muhammad would just kind of be like i don't want you doing that but then when malcolm went ahead and did it there wouldn't be any real consequences for it right so as he's doing this he's becoming more and more emboldened and one of the things he sets his sights on chuck is that the american essentially the racial struggle in the united states that was really beginning to become part of the american preoccupation at the same time in the fifties it was really civil rights movement was really starting to take shape and this again this was totally opposite from what you were saying elijah muhammad wanted which was isolation separatism not just from white america from non black muslim black america too like he had no inclination to join the civil rights elijah muhammad to join the civil rights fight because they weren't black muslims so therefore they were essentially lesser versions of black americans yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

for sure you know part of the complications of malcolm x is that he had some anti semitic views at times he had some pretty dark views of jews in america and i guess all over the world but specifically america and this was especially sort of a you know a thumb in the eye of jewish people because they were a lot of jewish people were the the white people that were kind of really heavily involved in the civil rights movement obviously there were all kinds of people but jewish people were leading the charge for white america and the civil rights movement

[Josh Clark]

for the most part yeah that's why they were also really highly critical of the naacp is because they essentially said white people had they'd allowed white people to join and the white people had taken over and were now steering the boat so you could not be white and join the nation of islam sorry they would not let you in still won't as far as i know yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

for sure but the media was loving this the media loves to pit people against one another so they had two really clear like i think you described them as foils early on in doctor martin luther king and malcolm x because they couldn't be any more different not only in kind of the way they looked and how they talked and the things they were saying but their ultimate goals so you know they painted doctor king as a saint they painted malcolm x as a pariah and the i don't know if it's irony but something you can't forget is that you know malcolm x was making some waves but his reach was nothing compared to what doctor king was doing doctor king was much more of a threat if you you know is how they would have called it back then to white america and integration than malcolm x was because he was a fringe revolutionary at the time so he was you know he was kind of fortunate to be in the newspapers at all even though you know the media was painting them as enemies and they kind of you know enemies is a weird word they didn't hang out doctor king didn't return calls he was offered like debates for malcolm x and stuff like that and he kind of just didn't want anything to do with that brand because he had such a sort of a good thing going he had the momentum yeah and

[Josh Clark]

he was worried also that you know it would scare the white coalition that he'd help build to support the civil rights movement away from the civil rights movement if all of a sudden he's like oh yeah and also this guy's philosophy too we're going to incorporate the race war yeah he had every reason to stay away from malcolm x and frankly kind of wisely did but like you said this was the media saying like you got malcolm x you got mlk and that was like both of them kind of fostered that idea because if you had malcolm x and you know you didn't listen to mlk then we were going to go the malcolm x way as far as america was concerned in the near future so we should probably go the way that martin luther king is suggesting yeah you know

[Chuck Bryant]

reading this stuff i always was hoping that i would find out that they were secretly in cahoots with one another doing sort of a good cop bad cop thing because they were both well aware of that and i think they judging from some of the quotes i've seen they were both aware that it was helping the cause ultimately and even malcolm x even though that's not what he was after he knew that there were gains coming on that side because he was so scary to white america

[Josh Clark]

exactly yeah i think it was kind of like how food companies price fixed they don't have secret meetings but they just kind of make signals in the market in public and that's kind of what they think they were doing they were working together without actively working together

[Chuck Bryant]

yeah it's like food companies fixing grocery

[Josh Clark]

prices so yeah and i mean he was like really outspoken about what he thought about doctor martin luther king he called him a fool and uncle tom he also said that he was subsidized by the white man that the essentially again that white people had taken over the real levers of power with the civil rights movement and that it was completely useless now but even even if that weren't the case he was such a critic of the civil rights movement because he he was basically saying like if you're starting a revolution and the revolution's goal is to love your enemy like that's ridiculous that's stupid like that's never going to work it doesn't even make sense so what are you doing like all you're doing is is distracting and continuing to keep subjugated the people who you're supposedly trying to liberate and

[Chuck Bryant]

integrate yeah he called the march on washington the farce on washington malcolm x did and he said the quote was whoever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing we shall overcome while tripping and swaying along arm in arm with the very people they're supposed to be angrily revolting against so you know i'm not taking sides but he's making a lot of good points at the time you know i think the idea that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar is true but it was i think they almost needed there almost needed to be two sides of the same coin happening at the same time i don't know it was pretty interesting how it all worked out and if you're wondering if the federal government was concerned they absolutely were this started in nineteen fifty when malcolm x was still in prison he wrote a letter to harry truman who was president and said i'm a communist i'm opposed to the korean war and president truman said maybe we should get a file going on this guy with the fbi and they did that

[Josh Clark]

a couple of years later yeah he had also captured the attention of the nypd around that time where there was a protest because the harlem police had brutalized a member of the nation of islam and there was like just a bunch of people came out on the street and were shouting about it because the guy had been beaten so badly his skull had been cracked open and they wouldn't disperse so malcolm x was inside essentially negotiating that the guy should get care and taken to the hospital with the police officials and managed to get them to agree to that but the crowd was still angry wouldn't disperse and the cops were trying it wasn't very effective so malcolm x went outside and apparently didn't say a word just waved his hand and the crowd stopped the yelling and just dispersed and apparently the i think the police commissioner witnessed this and was like that that's too much power for any one man to have especially somebody who believes that the black race is going to take over from the white race and the white race is all devils like that that scared them tremendously and it also really caught their attention he it put him on their radar essentially forever yeah for

[Chuck Bryant]

sure and as far as the fbi goes like i said they started a file on him which they also had on martin luther king and john lennon and everybody else we've talked about all this stuff but there was something they found out later from the files was at one point j edgar hoover told the new york agency office they needed to do something about malcolm x but like you said early on they had a hard time doing anything because in nineteen fifty eight an informant said that malcolm x was of high moral character he doesn't smoke he doesn't drink he's always on time for appointments he's kind of a standup guy if you're not listening to what he's saying white america of course that didn't matter but they couldn't pin anything on him essentially and they even think and i don't think it's a spoiler to say that he was assassinated but i feel like everyone knows that but they even think that the fbi because they had so many informants inside the nation of islam that they knew about the plot to assassinate him and just let it happen yeah

[Josh Clark]

i saw that too and not just the fbi but also the nypd just let it happen so just real quick chuck i say we take a break in a second and talk about his break with the nation of islam but i just wanted to kind of give a thumbnail sketch of like what he was saying and you can go listen you should start with maybe the ballot or the bullet it was a great speech that gets his point across from this era but essentially what he was saying is black people have to learn to do for themselves integrating and then saying like you know hey let's all just share from the same pot with white people isn't going to work because white people will always hang it over you so we have to figure out how to do it ourselves using the nation of islam that's how you prop somebody up get them on the right path put them on the moral path and away from temptation and then after that you teach them black nationalism so now they feel good about being a black person and then from that point on they have the dignity and the motivation to to make something for themselves as a community that was his goal that's ultimately what he was preaching that was the kernel of the whole thing

[Chuck Bryant]

that's right so we're going to take that break and we're going to come back with the sad end and the split from the nation of islam right after this

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

hey everybody support for the show today comes from public so it kind of feels like there's two types of investing platforms you've got the old school brokerages that look like they were designed in like nineteen ninety five and then you have those other platforms you know the ones that feel less like investing and more like a casino public

[Josh Clark]

is neither it's the investing platform for people who actually take this stuff seriously you know people who are serious about building their wealth because on public you can build a portfolio of stocks options bonds crypto without all the bugs or

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

the confetti retirement accounts yep high yield cash of course they even have direct indexing honestly this is what an investing platform should look like modern design simple to use and customer support that actually

[Josh Clark]

cares go to public dot com sysk and earn an uncapped one percent bonus when you transfer for your portfolio that's public dot com sysk add paid for

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[Josh Clark]

hey everybody get this linkedin has grown to a network of over one billion professionals and one hundred thirty million decision makers and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys yeah

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

for sure you can target your buyers by job title industry company role seniority skills even company revenue so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience

[Josh Clark]

yep that's why linkedin ads generates the highest b two b roas of all online ad networks seriously all of them

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

so chuck malcolm x is become he's the face of the nation of islam to the press to the public people like they know the name elijah muhammad you might even have seen him speak but it's way likelier that you've seen malcolm x speak and that's who you associate as the head so if you're the protege and you become that the power kind of shifts like that the mentor doesn't usually like that kind of thing then on top of it the mentor elijah muhammad was starting to get on in age and so the people around elijah muhammad including his blood family were worried that malcolm x would actually take over so there was a lot of reason for there to be jealousy backbiting court intrigue and get rid of malcolm x one way or another and that's essentially what happened yeah i mean

[Chuck Bryant]

his kids thought that they were going to be next in line basically and i mentioned the fbi had lots of people on the inside of the nation of islam they use those people to kind of stoke that strife internally and try and disrupt it from within and we're fairly successful at that because it was not smooth sailing at this point so the real fracture comes all this is sort of leading up to what i think was the real fracture was when malcolm x finds out about elijah muhammad having three children out of wedlock with three very young members of the nation of islam and essentially started looking upon him as a false prophet that was just sort of a guy in power that was using that power to philander and he was like i don't think he's fit to lead the nation of islam anymore and in nineteen sixty three of april of that year he confronted elijah muhammad about this and that was not something that elijah muhammad wanted

[Josh Clark]

to hear no for sure and now like now malcolm x was a big problem because this is not something that elijah muhammad wanted out to the public it would immediately discredit him and so do you remember kind of at the beginning i was saying how malcolm x had to kind of compartmentalize and turn off critical thinking and stuff like that to allow himself to submit to elijah muhammad after this after he realized that this guy's actually not the real deal he was able to kind of grow and spread like one of those sponge dinosaurs that you put water on and they grow or a different analogy would be like apache chief in the justice league when he grows like really really big essentially that happened the moment he realized that elijah muhammad was a false prophet and he was able to finally grow and become the malcolm x that he always had the potential to be he had thrown off the shackles placed on him he'd gotten out from under the thumb and of the leader of the nation of islam but that also unfortunately meant he had no place in the nation of islam any longer yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

i think the final nail in the coffin was when kennedy was assassinated he got explicit direction from elijah muhammad to shut up about it to not say anything to the press to just let this pass because it was such a monumental thing for all of america certainly for white america and he was like we need to stay out of this if we know what's good for us and malcolm x did not do that he went to the reporters and he said that kennedy's death was quote a case of chickens coming home to roost end quote and elijah muhammad was super upset he said you're suspended for three months a month into that he removed him from most of his leadership roles and that was the writing was on the wall that that was really the beginning of the final split yeah and

[Josh Clark]

just one little aside about that chuck him saying a case of chickens coming home to roost there is so much more background and subtext to it and all the stuff he was saying that led up to that but that's the pull quote right that's the thing that you just pull and it sounds like a pretty awful thing to say or at least heartless but if you go back and read that stuff you find there's so much more context to the stuff he was he's quoted for and like you said kind of toward the beginning a lot of it seems pretty reasonable when you listen to the words

[Chuck Bryant]

he's saying yeah for sure you know after he was expelled basically not formally expelled but you know removed from his formal duties he went down to stay with cassius clay future muhammad ali at his place in miami and he stayed there for a week he was giving him spiritual guidance leading up to his heavyweight bout with sonny liston and he had not cleared this with elijah muhammad and elijah muhammad got mad about that as well and left him off the guest list for a convention in february where cassius clay you know had his coming out as muhammad ali so that was a very meaningful snub at the

[Josh Clark]

time yeah i was disappointed in muhammad ali because he was basically like oh that sucks man sorry see you yeah so now this is the break this is the schism and at this point now the nation of islam is doing everything they can to mock and discredit malcolm x and say that he was a turncoat and a benedict arnold and a hypocrite and malcolm x just gave it right back one of the first things he did was to tell the media that that elijah muhammad had kids out of wedlock with teenage girls that were around him he said that he had eight kids with six teenage secretaries and he just told it to the press and that was a really big deal and i think at that point he realized like he had just taken his life into his own hands yeah

[Chuck Bryant]

so that's all basically sort of early through spring nineteen sixty four later in nineteen sixty four a very important trip happened when he made the hajj to mecca and this was you know kind of the final big life changing moment for him he came back a sunni islam member and he had changed his name from malcolm x to el hajj malik el shabazz and i believe even his wife and daughters took the name shabazz like you know throughout the rest of their lives as well and while he was there he had a transformation another transformation kind of like he did in prison but the other way he came full circle and said quote he had encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of this earth displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like i've never seen before and he essentially flipped and said you know what there are good white people and we can and should work together and he came back and started to do that work and really poured himself for the first time into the legit official civil rights movement

[Josh Clark]

yeah he told martin luther king like i'm all in he he founded the organization of afro american unity he was trying to essentially teach black americans about their african heritage but that at the same time he had also zoomed in on this idea that he needed to take this struggle for american civil rights to the world like the un or the african congress and basically say hey this is the same thing this is part of the black struggle worldwide like this is part of this global problem it's not separate it's not its own thing so we need to figure like all these other countries need to get involved too and start pressuring the us to do something about it which is a pretty clever idea actually and it was not something that martin luther king was doing at the time from what

[Chuck Bryant]

i understand yeah for sure they would eventually meet there was a very famous single meeting with martin luther king junior and malcolm x it was not something they planned because it's not like martin luther king junior got on board immediately and was like oh great you're joining the movement like i don't think he still really liked him that much but they literally bumped into each other in the hallway when they were at the senate when the civil rights bill was being debated there at the capitol building and it was like oh it's you and they shook hands i think he told them in person i'm throwing myself into the heart of the civil rights struggle face to face there was a photographer there so there's a very famous picture of them together and then later that year in july sixty four that's when congress passed the civil rights act and it was signed into law by lyndon johnson and that was not the end for malcolm x though he thought he was just getting started very sadly

[Josh Clark]

though yeah so this was you said that was may of nineteen sixty four within just a few months he would be dead and it's just so sad that he underwent that transformation and all of a sudden his potential is really starting to blossom he turned into like a full butterfly for the first time and he's struck down he the first thing that happened that kind of just foreshadowed his death was his house was firebombed by he was quite sure members of the nation of islam apparently one of the bombs was thrown through a window that would have landed in and on the three of his little girls in their room but luckily it shattered on the outside of the window and didn't make it through but it burned his house essentially down and this was a house that was owned by the nation of islam so they went as far as to accuse him of burning it down because they had evicted him from the house and so out of spite he burned it down which was obviously not true yeah which is full

[Chuck Bryant]

circle because i don't think we mentioned that when their house was burned down when he was a little kid they actually accused his dad earl of burning his own house down so the same thing happened all those years later that was on february fourteenth nineteen sixty five on february eighteenth they formally evicted him and then on february twenty first he was murdered he was shot and killed in front of his in front of betty in front of the girls i think there were four girls at the time because betty was pregnant with the twins that would be born after his death and this was in harlem at an organization of afro american unity meeting and they arrested three members of the nation of islam one confessed and said the other two weren't involved but all three were convicted even though later on i think in twenty twenty one the other two were exonerated after the attorney general of new york saw that they had buried some exculpatory evidence you know

[Josh Clark]

back when it happened right so you were talking about how the fbi let it happen the nypd apparently helped pave the way by arresting a couple of his bodyguards on bs charges so he was short security on that day and at his funeral like he had made quite a name for himself i think fifteen hundred people showed up which is a pretty good turnout for your funeral and ossie davis who is very much in with the martin luther king version of the civil rights movement he led malcolm x's funeral because he was just that moved by him even though he didn't see eye to eye on a bunch of stuff like he realized what a loss this was for the black community and the world yeah for sure

[Chuck Bryant]

i mentioned that the twins were born after he died they obviously grew up without their dad and the other girls weren't that much older and they always just knew him as dad i think the ones that kind of didn't even know him at all they weren't raised by betty as like hey your dad was a revolutionary he was this or that apparently they'd learned about him mainly in school because betty always wanted him just to be dad and my husband and so they were you know they went on to do a lot of great things as well we should probably do one on betty shabazz at some point she was a great woman and his daughters all you know became activists in their own way as well so

[Josh Clark]

yeah i kind of mentioned like how just sad this is that he was struck down especially at the time he was struck down but if you look back at like the timeframe of all this stuff this guy changed the world or left such an indelible mark that people are still learning from him all these years later over essentially the course of ten years that was about the timeline that we're talking about from when he took up the nation of islam's teachings to when he was assassinated by the nation of islam it was just about a decade and that's how much of an impact that he made over just that time yeah that was a

[Chuck Bryant]

pretty great quote that who is this was this julia that helped us with

[Josh Clark]

this yeah julia helped us big time

[Chuck Bryant]

yeah she found a great quote from poet maya angelou who malcolm x visited at her home in ghana at one point and basically kind of summarizing what guts it took to make that transformation in full public view after being so public and militant she said that it takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say say everybody you remember what i said yesterday well i found out that's wrong and she just thought that was an amazing thing to be able to do and it really was you know not a lot of people can can own up to kind of being on what they thought later was the wrong path you know yeah

[Josh Clark]

it is remarkable so you can go read the autobiography of malcolm x also i've seen that malcolm x speaks is a really great book i think it's his collected speeches there's the spike lee movie there's make it plain the pbs documentary and then there's just tons of like his speeches are just all over youtube so if you're interested in this at all like there's a lot you can still learn from malcolm x even with him being dead all these years

[Chuck Bryant]

yeah i can't recommend the book and the movie enough the book sold four hundred thousand copies the year it was released in nineteen sixty seven and has sold five million to date and the movie was a big hit too it grossed close to fifty million bucks which is not bad for a long true story biopic with political overtones it had a couple of academy award nominees certainly denzel because he was amazing as always and the great ruth e carter for costume design even though neither one would win it was fairly controversial when al pacino won for scent of a woman over denzel yeah people thought it was a pretty big snub including spike lee he thought it was due to the controversy of the film obviously and the character and he also thought it was a bit of a makeup call for pacino losing so many times so he would get some due though later in twenty ten when the film was added to the national film registry as being culturally historically or aesthetically significant beautiful that's

[Josh Clark]

a great ending charles you got anything else that's it well that's it for malcolm x chuck just said that's it so obviously everybody it's time for listener mail

[Chuck Bryant]

yeah this one's a little long but it's one of the great emails we've gotten because after we did our what i think was a really fun episode on the fyre festival debacle yes we heard you know in that we talked about the magnesis credit card and we heard from an actual holder of that credit card which was great did

[Josh Clark]

you see this no i haven't seen

[Chuck Bryant]

that yet it's pretty fantastic so hey guys hearing you talk about this credit card brought me back to some very special memories of my early days in new york when i first moved there in twenty fourteen i stumbled upon the magnesis and thought it sounded like the perfect way to meet new people since i was new there and access the cool and exclusive parties and parts of the city so i applied and was surprised to be accepted as a member i quickly found myself at fun rooftop parties with open bars great tickets to shows and sports games and snagging reservations for restaurants that were impossible to book all of which seemed to be too good to be true for the dollar two hundred fifty annual fee which should have been my first clue that something was wrong the first real crack came when i took advantage of an offer to get floor seats to a beyonce concert for only two hundred dollars and had to obtain the tickets by meeting a magnisous concierge in the parking lot outside of the venue the tickets i got felt like they had just been bought from a scalper and they probably were but it did work out and it was a great show not long after i had will call tickets to an nba game through a partnership they had with the team when my friends and i showed up to grab the seats no one behind the ticket counter had ever heard of magnesis that was the moment i started asking questions and when i reached out about the issue and about canceling my membership they actually refunded it almost immediately in fact they refunded my fee so quickly it was almost alarming like they were hoping i'd just quietly go away thankfully i managed to exit the whole thing before the house of cards came crashing down so hearing you guys explain how the whole thing worked was fascinating and weirdly nostalgic despite the sketchiness at the end i actually do have some pretty fun memories from that brief period when it felt like i had unlocked some secret vip version of new york city look forward to your next stop at the bell house and that is from kevin kevin

[Josh Clark]

that really was one of the all time best emails we've gotten yeah i

[Chuck Bryant]

was hoping a magnesis member would write in and we got it look at

[Josh Clark]

you you should be playing the lotto i probably should thanks a lot kevin if you want to be like kevin and send us one of our all time great emails we always love those you can wrap it up spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio dot com

[Podcast Host (Announcer)]

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