Malcolm X - Biography

[Music] [Applause] [Music] Malcolm X was born in America during the Jazz Age the time of rampant racism the time when African Americans were treated as second-class citizens and had few opportunities for advancement early in his short life Malcolm worked at a variety of menial jobs eventually turning to a life of crime he spent years in prison then he converted to Islam and became a voice of hope for many African Americans even today from criminal to charismatic leader biography looks at the life of Malcolm X Malcolm became one of the lowest forms of human beings you could become according to his own testimony in his autobiography before he reached his 21st birthday he was locked up our forefathers weren't the pilgrims we didn't land on Plymouth Rock the rack was landed on us we're talking about a guy who began his out on life as a hustler doing every kind of drug available in the streets of Harlem sexually promiscuous a true sinner who purify himself through a religious conversion when they are being brutally and unjustly attacked then the Negroes themselves should take whatever steps necessary to defend Memphis when he spoke he strike home to the crux of the matter it hits you with the truth just like someone to hit you in the head with a blunt instrument what is your real name Malcolm Malcolm X that's your legal name as far as I'm concerned it's my legal name would you mind telling me what your father's last name was my father didn't know his last name the last name of my forefathers it was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves and then the name of the slave master was given which we refused we rejected that name today you mean you won't even tell me what your father's supposed last name was or gifted last name I never acknowledged it whatsoever although he did not acknowledge his given name in later life he was born Malcolm little on May 19 1925 in Omaha Nebraska he was the fourth child of louise and earl little earl was from georgia Louise from Grenada Earl a Baptist minister worked in construction to feed his growing family Malcolm's childhood was heavily influenced by his parents involvement in Marcus Garvey's black separatist movement Garvey preached that to survive blacks must form their own nation outside the United States and separate from whites the GABAA movement largely represented blacks who were not professionals not largely lawyers and doctors at least they were not prominent so much they certainly reached down to get the masses of black people who were not in the mainstream largely of the african-american community the Ku Klux Klan was then powerful in the north in Omaha the Klan threatened the littles before Malcolm was born because they were Garvey organizers rather than fight Earl his family over the next three years first to Milwaukee then Indiana finally settling in Lansing Michigan in 1928 by then Earl and Louise had four boys and a girl despite the dangers Earl little continued his work as a Garvey ight he didn't have a permanent Church but he was a preacher so he traveled from place to place promoting Marcus Garvey movement the separatist movement and at the same time trying to preach the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ he saw no conflicts between the two now Malcolm used to travel with his father as he would talk about Garvey and talk in the churches about Jesus Christ Malcolm learned to love the talk about ghave but he didn't like so much the talk about Jesus Christ settling in the industrialized Midwest was a good idea at the time because Earl could find work he and Louise had their hands full caring for their growing family Malcolm's rivalry with his brothers was contentious at times as they competed for their parents attention life was not easy for Malcolm and his family but his father's hard work and preaching put enough food on the table then the depression changed everything in Lansing Detroit Grand Rapids places like that the the loss of jobs of African Americans was devastating chances are if you were black you were poor in 1929 their family home burned to the ground Malcolm's father believed the Ku Klux Klan was responsible but there was no proof Earl little built a new house a tarpaper Shack with no running water no indoor toilet Earl gave each child daily chores some in the garden some in the house he was a tough father beating his children if they didn't follow his rules Malcolm's mother and father were violent in their relationship to each other Malcolm talks about his father you know expressing the frustrations that he experienced in the society in the context of the family and that created a great deal of tension within the family in fact Malcolm claims that it was from the fight between his mother and his father that dad is father to leave that day he was killed in 1931 when Malcolm was six Earl little died he fell or was pushed off a streetcar in the middle of the night his left arm was crushed and his left leg partially severed by the rear wheels although officials said the death was accidental Malcolm believed his father had been killed by the Ku Klux Klan because of his separatist views but Malcolm never talked publicly about his father's death this particular experience left the family destitute and so Malcolm grew up in a very difficult situation in which he had very little reinforcement for his self-esteem in the environment in which he did in the 1930s none of the seven children had enough to eat stale bread wild onions and dandelion leaves were often the only food at school Malcolm ate alone rarely joining the other kids for lunch for Malcolm going to a predominately white school for example feeling alienated from the dominant culture feeling as if he really had very few friends and his white friends pretty chundan that could have deep psychological effects on an ahkam he was tall handsome red-haired light-skinned different even within his family much of the color symbolism was reflected in the context of that family Malcolm's mother I was very light complexion and so she Malcolm's father was a very dark complexion man so the children's were mixed some were dark someone light Malcolm was a light read very much like his mother in color so his mother was hard on him she wanted Malcolm to get in the Sun and put some black on him Malcolm became a troublesome child after his father's death his mother found it hard to supervise her family alone though Malcolm was a good student he became a disciplinary problem and he was moved from school to school but despite all that in the seventh grade he was voted class president years later Malcolm realized this was his first experience with tokenism being the only African American a wonderful few also makes you an exotic he did get a lot of attention and people noticed him wherever he went it was also it's also an unusual situation to be not only young black poor being a predominately white community but to be as intelligent and as articulate as he was which made him in some respects an automatic leader even among his peers because his teachers found him so hard to handle in the eighth grade Malcolm was placed in a white foster home in Mason Michigan the authorities thought new surroundings would calm him soon he was first in his class but his desire to achieve to be somebody quickly faded in fact when he was in the eighth grade the incident that forced him to drop out of school embarrassed him made him feel like he was not important was when his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he would grow up and he said he wanted to be a lawyer an attorney and his teacher said to him Malcolm you have to be a little more realistic than that because you can't be that Ana [ __ ] at the same time being a lawyer is no realistic expectation for a [ __ ] he said he became disheartened and quit school Malcolm was 14 it was the eve of World War two though the Depression was ending life was still hard in America especially for blacks Malcolm's mother Louise was pregnant with her eighth child the father was unknown she was increasingly losing touch with reality after her son was born she was found wandering in the cold of winter her feet bare her baby boy held tightly in her arms Louise was declared legally insane and committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital Malcolm now had neither mother nor father to guide him he could not be just like the white children and thus being shown in many ways that he could not be accepted just like anybody else and this tension grew in Malcolm so much so that he dropped out of the dominant society school had no meaning for Malcolm teachers could not discipline him he sometimes stole but something new was on the horizon his half-sister Ella a daughter from Earl littles first marriage came from Boston to visit the family after she returned home she asked Malcolm to stay with her over the summer she knew her half-brother was having a difficult time and took it on herself to save him but Boston opened Malcolm's eyes Boston was the big city and he was treated by his peers immediately as a kind of country bumpkin backwards young and one way to escape that country baggage was to enter a kind of cool subculture in this case of the zoot suit of the hipster a kind of underground fidelity male youth culture that was raging in the late 30s and early 40s after the summer Malcolm returned to Lansing where his family was still struggling to survive he felt isolated and sent Ella a letter saying he wanted to live in Boston she told him he was welcome by February 1941 he was back in a city that would change his life forever after the death of his father his mother's confinement in an insane asylum and his increasing loneliness as one of the few blacks in East Lansing 15-year old Malcolm was anxious to return to the predominantly black Roxbury section of Boston once there he gave his sister Ella more problems than she could handle she nearly went around the streets looking for him you know because you know he came to Boston either like he was a country boy and he of course had to do a lot of ducking and dodging because there were a lot of relatives who lived in Boston at that time and he just you know just became completely dazzled by everything and wanted to get out there Malcolm wanted to be like the blacks at the dance hall of the ballroom Hall he wanted to be like the blacks who were not ashamed of who they were and who lives in the underworld and he became a part of it when you go to a place like the Rosen ballroom for example they were packed for the young people men just in zoot suits young women who have identified with the hipster culture malcolm bought a colorful zoot suit then he took the painful fashionable step of cocking his hair straightening it using lye raw potatoes and eggs he was starting a new life though Ella wanted him to be a lawyer to go into business Malcolm's thoughts were elsewhere after years as an outsider Malcolm had finally found a place where he belonged they embraced him because when he was articulate they breasts embraced him because he ended up being a very good dancer he was stylish he was able to put put on a suit of clothes and look like a changed person a brand new person and step out of his background and into kind of a whole new world part of that world was the inner sanctum of the pool hall the hangout of hustlers hipsters budding crooks and small-time criminals I used to play pool in this pool room every day and Malcolm had a reputation in roxbury at that time of being one of the best dressed men in town with you the famous zoot suit and he was standing on the sidelines watching the fellas shoot pool one day in the pool hall shorty Jarvis made a great shot and in the excitement lost his watch and I looked at Malcolm I said you didn't see it did you because he was a newcomer he had a smirk on his face and I walked up to him quick with my hands in those days grab him and then drew back to hit him and when I did somebody grabbed my arm and said to me no he didn't take you watch somebody else got you watching they're gone now I was in the process of apologizing to him straight not his [ __ ] man I'm sorry i falsely accused and so on and so on that was the beginning of our friendship despite the fancy clothes to survive Malcolm had to take what he called slave jobs menial work open to blacks he worked as a kitchen porter on the New Haven Railroad bussed tables swept floors in nightclubs where he met the big entertainers of the day Malcolm shine shoes the jobs gave him money to eat leaving him time to develop his skills as a petty criminal Malcolm was in my opinion a beautiful Carnales he was a thinker and he learned these things from street smarts iconic from living on the streets and being around people in the hustling world he could meet you on the street as I've told it many times and be broke and talk you out of your last two dollars and you'd give it to him with enthusiasm working on the railroad allowed Malcolm to travel freely and often between Boston and Harlem New York the Harlem was the capital of not just a little culture of capital the black world and so going to Harlem for for Malcolm was like going Harlem for a lot of African Americans it was entering the most exciting place you can possibly be Malcolm already part of Boston subculture became part of haarlem's thriving underground economy he moved into pimping steering white men to black prostitutes during World War two Malcolm was a petty stick-up man ran numbers sold marijuana he frequented jazz clubs was a small-time pusher and used every drug he could find a jazz was performed were places of exchange for drug dealers and users and so the whole world that surrounded Malcolm was also one infested with drugs and so it was hard for him to escape that possibility in spite of the lure of Harlem Malcolm always returned to Boston to Roxbury where he was admired for his flashy clothes and his charismatic personality it was like a Romeo and I say that the girls were all after he was the type of person that when he walked down the street he would command attention with that blood red hair he had and with that zoot suit on the girls are all in love with you during Christmas 1945 Malcolm in constant need of new thrills went on a spur-of-the-moment robbery spree in Cambridge with Jarvis and three white women one of whom was Malcolm's girlfriend we went out stealing for two weeks for fun kick somebody in the gang said oh let's go out and breaking somebody's house for fun being adventurous as young people like to be we certainly wasn't doing it for money we were making our own livelihoods in our own rights so for fun for two weeks and after to which we stopped Malcolm was eventually arrested when he attempted to buy back a watch he had pawned the gang was caught indicted and tried in early 1946 Malcolm and shorty could not make bail and were kept in a cage inside the courtroom Jarvis said the detectives and prosecution were furious that white girls were socializing with black men they tried to get the girls to say that we had raped them the girls wouldn't hear that because they knew better they sentenced the girls to five years and in a reformatory and gave them a suspended sentence and set him free but Malcolm little not yet 21 and Malcolm Jarvis were given up to ten years in prison we were not hiding criminals we didn't feel that we deserved that kind of time as first offenders so we were given that time mostly because of our associating with white girls it was very difficult for Malcolm not to be put in jail and not to get trouble in trouble with the law because of the context of the world in which he was living and it was in prison that his life was transformed in jail Malcolm made a pact with Jarvis that they would learn everything they could and not come out in Jarvis's words as stupid and dumb as we went in life in prison was like nothing they had ever known the cell you lived in was six by 12 you had a hard caught the lay on one table one small stool a bucket of water no running water and a bucket fortification it was unsanitary clean and filthy so with years of time on their hands the two friends sat studied and read long into the night until their eyes burned Malcolm educated himself sharpening his skills as a debater and speaker while he was in prison Malcolm's brothers Wilfred and filbert had become members of the Nation of Islam a small black separatist movement in Detroit led by Elijah Muhammad a one-time follower of Marcus Garvey Malcolm's brothers urged him to convert saying they found a religion a way of life that offered survival at first Malcolm resisted then he relented his life was transformed he saw Christianity as the white man's religion as the religion of black people who wanted to become like white people but here in the Black Muslim the Nation of Islam he encountered a religion that reinforced his identity as a black person and enabled himself to love himself as a black person he didn't have a particularly love for white people and they used to call him Satan at one time because they thought it was evil a lot of white units especially used to call in that in 1952 after six and a half years in prison Malcolm little was released on parole wearing a $10 suit he moved to Michigan to be with his older brother Wilfred in Detroit he would once again transform himself after six and a half years in prison Malcolm was released in August 1952 he went to Detroit where his brother Wilfred found him a construction job he joined the Nation of Islam's mosque he worked hard to gain acceptance to earn his ex his new name for his new life as a Black Muslim to replace the slave name imposed on his forefathers Malcolm soon went to Chicago the headquarters of the Nation of Islam where he met with Elijah Muhammad and officially became Malcolm X his religious conversion was complete it is an about-face a complete turnaround a totally new life in which Malcolm who was the criminal now becomes a minister in the religion of Islam when Malcolm came out of prison the Nation of Islam was a quite isolated little sect of about 400 Souls he would tell Muhammad you've got to bring this message to a much larger audience so he became a recruiter one who went out and fished as he said for others to become a part of the Nation of Islam the Negro will be serving notice that no longer does he believe in turning the other cheek and being the constant victim of someone else's elegy the message of Elijah Muhammad was clear the Nation of Islam did not need white people or white society black self-esteem came first and with it the establishment of a separate country inside the United States for blacks alone failing that blacks should be allowed to return to their African homeland we are African and we happen to be in America we're not American we are people who formerly were Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America our forefathers weren't the pilgrims we didn't land on Plymouth Rock the raft was landed on us the message was always this is a racist society white folks are not gonna rescue you forget about the civil rights movement forget about the civil rights legislation you will never get real freedom and recognition between black and white people in this country without destroying the country it was a message that terrified white America and was too extreme for most black Americans who saw the more moderate civil rights movement growing in 1954 in Brown versus the Board of Education the Supreme Court said public schools must be integrated in 1955 Rosa Parks started the Montgomery bus boycott by refusing to move to the back of the bus Martin Luther King jr. at 26 began his rise as a leader in the push toward integration the Negro citizens of Montgomery Alabama will return to the buses on a non-segregated basis meanwhile the Nation of Islam struggled to win converts Malcolm became the chief evangelists for the Nation of Islam and he would go from city to city with great success as a reward Elisha appointed Malcolm head of temple 7 in New York and he became the national representative for the Nation of Islam and is regarded very highly as the number 2 person in the Nation of Islam and it will be being regarded as the number 2 person that will eventually lead to all kinds of jealousy within the movement Elijah regarded Malcolm as a son and told him he should marry for the good of the movement in January 1958 at age 32 Malcolm weds Betty Saunders who had gone to college and was planning to become a nurse they moved to a small house in East Elmhurst Queens owned by the Nation of Islam in November of that year at ala the first of their six daughters was born Malcolm was a caring father a good husband but he was almost never home his missionary work and message came first blacks have been deprived for hundreds of years it's time to take a stand in the areas of the country where the government has proven itself unable and or unwilling to defend the Negroes when they are being brutally and unjustly attacked then the Negroes themselves because of Malcolm's efforts and his personal charisma the movement was growing fast Malcolm was very easy to grab hold to because Malcolm was John Wayne Malcolm was all the things in the movie that we saw about our heroes heroes didn't take nothing from nobody and they always had the best lines tall lean handsome magnetic a brilliant smile dazzling smile Malcolm was everywhere he debated on college campuses made speeches street corners appeared on radio and television the more Malcolm saw of America the more his philosophy began to change for Elijah Muhammed the movement was strictly religious Allah would be the one that would punish the white devil Malcolm however did not want to wait on God it was the start of the rift between Malcolm and the Nation of Islam but there was something on the horizon that would widen the split further Malcolm discovered that Elijah might have fathered as many as eight illegitimate children he thought if the story got out it could seriously hurt the movement he called fellow ministers he trusted to warn them of the danger all three of the people he told immediately they blew the whistle on him called headquarters in Chicago and said Malcolm is blaspheming against the messenger he was the object of a lot of jealousy so I think those people were motivated partly by jealousy one of them was Louis Farrakhan Malcolm's friend and out that Elijah Muhammad was actually the biggest hypocrite of all was quite devastating to him it took the very foundation upon which he was standing out from under his feet his access to Elijah became limited he was rarely quoted in Muhammad speaks the newspaper he created but despite his problems Malcolm continued preaching the gospel of the Nation of Islam that's a chance to solve our own problems among ourselves on some land of our own instead of continually trying to force us into white society where the white society knows we're absolutely not wanted now did not see how you could get freedom for african-americans by trying to be like white people he did not see that whites would ever accept us fully as human beings so for him he didn't see why it is that the civil rights movement fought so hard to be integrated at the lunch counter for a cup of coffee because he felt that a cup of coffee was a small price to pay for two hundred and fifty years of slavery as the civil rights movement gained momentum the Nation of Islam remained on the sidelines unyielding in its dreams of separatism though Malcolm kept his religious faith he was moving further toward political activism and inevitably toward a greater confrontation with Elijah Muhammad though Malcolm's differences with the Nation of Islam were widening it was not apparent to outsiders he was as uncompromising and faithful as ever the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the only solution for the problem is that our people of which there are now 22 million we are involved in a mass exodus back to our own homeland despite adhering to the party line Malcolm became increasingly isolated from Elijah Muhammad and his inner circle the assassination of President John F Kennedy on November 22nd 1963 gave the Nation of Islam a way to limit Malcolm's growing influence Elijah Muhammad did not want anybody talking about the death of Kennedy the reason being that he was a beloved figure not only in white America but in black America on December 1st Malcolm gave a standard speech but in an unusual departure he took questions and his first one was about Kennedy's death he said it was a case of the chickens coming home to roost was exactly what he shouldn't have said in terms of his relations with Elijah Muhammad so he he had handed his enemies or Elijah Muhammad knew that silence was his best weapon against Malcolm he suspended him for three months in January 1964 Malcolm had a secret meeting with Elijah in Phoenix and learned he had no chance for reinstatement his ideas for the Nation of Islam had become too threatening to Elijah Muhammad's power structure they didn't succeed as the leader of the movement and the best way to do that was to make sure that Malcolm was marginalized and expelled and worse Malcolm began to receive death threats by telephone by letter and on the street in March 1964 after three months of silence and much soul-searching Malcolm quit the Nation of Islam to form his own organization the Muslim mosque incorporated he was to join the civil rights movement to broaden its scope so as to make it much more militant infused militancy in it Malcolm brought his new message everywhere with renewed energy in Washington during a hearing on civil rights he accidentally met Martin Luther King jr. for the only time the two men merely exchanged greetings in April Malcolm delivered a major speech defining his new activism they're both important and if you don't use the ballot you're gonna have to use the bullet the Nation of Islam continuing its purge of Malcolm filed an eviction notice ordering Betty and their daughters to vacate their home Malcolm and his family did not leave soon afterwards his sense of religious mission drew him to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a pilgrimage to Mecca it was a journey that would fundamentally change him I didn't see any racism I didn't see any conflict between the people over there because of the colors of their skin or the differences in color of skin many in America wanted to believe that Malcolm had modified his extremist views what most fights wanted Malcolm to say and to do was to act as if racism had been eliminated and therefore I like all white people and Malcolm could never say that in 1964 Malcolm formed the organization of afro-american unity created to reach out to blacks throughout the world as an expression of brotherhood unlike the other leaders at that time Malcolm X had a foreign policy he was treated in Africa when he traveled around almost like he was a Secretary of State you know from from black folks in America to the rest of the world but to the American government Malcolm was seen as a revolutionary Malcolm was a haunted man and a hunted man agents of the American government both of the State Department and the CIA were monitoring his movements around Africa he gets home and the climate is tinder rehad inflammatory articles against Malcolm appeared frequently in the Nation of Islam newspaper Muhammad speaks the most notorious was one written by Louis Farrakhan than Louis ax who had been a protege of Malcolm's Malcolm himself described it as as a death warrant in December 1964 and into January 1965 the threats continued there were even several attempts on his life assumed by some to be inspired by the Nation of Islam I said if you think for one moment that these brothers I'm not gonna try to take you out you have mistaken but he knew he was hunted and he knew his days were numbered I think in the early morning hours of February 14 1965 his home was fire bombed and destroyed except for a lucky stroke of Fae he and his family including four quite small children and his wife who was pregnant with twins would have died I really think Malcolm before her died I mean he knew he was going to be killed Malcolm moved his family and continued his mission making speeches in Detroit and New York in the week following the fire bombing observers described him as being very tense on Saturday February 20th the day before he was to make a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem he checked into the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan I think he enjoyed the luxuries he used to kid about it he didn't say now I know what white folks have been hiding for from us all these years despite his going into hiding threatening calls to his home and the hotel did not stop Sunday morning Malcolm phone Dick Gregory in Chicago wondering if he would be there for the speech and Malcolm kind of sound kind of say it but Malcolm knew something was going to happen and then I said I love you and I would have liked to say see when I get back but I knew that before the speech Malcolm was making plans for a trip south later that week I went backstage and I was talking to him and I remember thinking for the first time that he really looked harried he got study a lectern does the traditional Muslim greeting I heard him say assalamualaikum somebody leaps up and says never get your hands out of my pockets and then the next thing I heard was the shots and when I heard the shots I jumped up and I ran through the doors into the to the main room and I you know it's it just it sound to me like literally hundreds of shots the first blast killed him Reynold his chest and I heard butyl people screaming and getting knocked down and I got knocked out on the floor two more guys come up one with a Luger and one I believe with a 45 and pump bullets into his dead body and his dying body so I laid on the floor till I heard the shooting stop then I jumped up and I ran down and I jumped onstage and I saw him you know laying there on stage and somebody pulled his shirt open and I saw the bullet holes in his body at 39 years of age on Sunday February 21st 1965 Malcolm X was assassinated by three men all members of the Nation of Islam he died for what he believed in he believed with his whole heart soul and mind and the struggle of the FO Americans in this country one week later thousands would attend Malcolm X's funeral in Harlem people were stunned by his death black America had lost a powerful leader born into a life of struggle and uncertainty Malcolm X lived as a hustler and pimp then as a fighter for his people and finally a man of God but the controversy sparked by his death would ensure that Malcolm X would not easily be forgotten Malcolm X was laid to rest in Hartsdale New York on February 27 1965 throughout his life he remained uncompromising in his expectations for african-americans for 30 years the legacy of Malcolm X has been as much a source of controversy as the circumstances surrounding his death in 1995 the passions and doubts that have smoldered since that time were rekindled ever since the black leader Malcolm X was assassinated three decades ago his family has been convinced that the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was involved Farrakhan was certainly a bitter rival and today one of Malcolm X's daughters has been arrested and accused of trying to arrange for mr. Farrakhan to be murdered in 1965 kabila Shabazz was four years old she was in the Audubon Ballroom with her mother and three sisters only a few feet away when assassins gunned down her father thirty years later she has been tied to a conspiracy to murder Louis Farrakhan the man who was her father's great rival in the Nation of Islam despite his violent opposition to Malcolm's break with Elijah Muhammad Farah Khan has denied any involvement in the murder of Malcolm X no I was not in any way involved in his murder I said such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death and were it not for Elijah Muhammad's faith in God it would have been so I was very angry with Malcolm for what Malcolm had done I was hurt by his assassination I can't say that I approved and I really didn't disapprove I was numb the charges against Kabila Shabazz set off a bizarre series of accusations conspiracy theories and shifting alliances lawyers for both miss Shabazz and mr. Farrakhan charged that a government informant lured her into a plot although Shabazz did not plead guilty she also admitted that a statement she made last December where she said killing Farrakhan was her idea was substantially true but outside of court she disavowed the confession it was coerced it was fired now instead of going on trial on charges that carried a prison term of up to 90 years Shabazz is getting what amounts to two years probation the surreal sequence of events culminated less than one week after the hearing when once passionate enemies stood as apparent allies at New York's Apollo Theater last night Betty Shabazz the widow of Malcolm X and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan tried to make amends after a 30-year rift at a fundraiser hosted by Farrakhan to benefit her family mrs. Shabazz thanked her husband's one-time enemy for his support it is an uneasy truce but it is a measure of the impact Malcolm X had that three decades later his death and his legacy are still capable of stirring powerful emotions didn't leave no buildings you know I say he left changed minds and and that's the most lasting thing he was a field general in the movement and he was loved for that and and and he will be loved for a long long time for his ethics and for his him integrity the goal he had in mind was to teach our people to rise up in this world to defeat racism anyway it read its ugly head my personal problem has never solved as long as the problem has not solved for all of our people in this country so I remain Malcolm X as long as there's a need to protest and struggle and fight against the injustice and our people are involved in in this country [Music] Malcolm X led a life of continual change and growth spent the final years of his life struggling to find his spirituality there was no doubt in the minds of his followers that he was headed for greatness perhaps public office but when Malcolm was murdered his dreams were left unfulfilled but his teachings endure and his life story continues to inspire [Music] [Music]

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Length: 46min 34sec (2794 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2019