Manning Marable Quotes
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What is clear is that Malcolm X incorporated within the framework of black nationalism a pan-Africanist and internationalist perspective. In doing so, he began to reassess radically earlier positions sexism and patriarchy. He began to break with notions of sexism that he had long held as a member of the Nation of Islam, and began to advance and push forward women leadership in the OAAU.
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[Alex Haley] objective was to illustrate that the racial separatism of the N.O.I. was a kind of pathological or a kind of - it was the logical culmination of separatism and racial isolationism and exclusion.
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Whiteness in a racist, corporate-controlled society is like having the image of an American Express Cardstamped on one's face: immediately you are “universally accepted.”
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What is striking is that from almost from the very beginning of certainly by September and October of 1963, as the book was being constructed, that [Alex] Haley was vetting - asking questions to the publisher and to the publisher's attorney regarding many of the things that Malcolm X was saying. He was worried that he would not have a book that would have the kind of sting that he wanted.
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When this country here was first being founded, there were 13 colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation. So some of them stood up and said, liberty or death.
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Let me put it in a positive light, with that archive [of Anne Romaine], we have gained extensive knowledge about how [Alex] Haley and Malcolm X actually worked and how the book, the autobiography, was constructed.
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Malcolm X had a clear vision and an understanding that we were - that he was a part of a broad freedom struggle.
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I'm so familiar with what Malcolm X wrote at certain stages of his own life and development.
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Malcolm X was the first prominent American to attack and to criticize the U.S. role in Southeast Asia, and he came out four-square against the Vietnam War in 1964, long before the vast majority of Americans did.
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Malcolm X broke with the N.O.I. in March 1964, and in that last 11 chaotic months, he spent most of the time outside of the United States. Nevertheless, he built two organizations in the spring of 1964. First, Muslim Mosque Incorporated, which was a religious organization that was largely based on members of the N.O.I. who left with him. It was spearheaded by James 67X or James Shabazz, who was his chief of staff. Then secondly was the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
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There were tensions between these two organizations [Organization of Afro-American Unity and N.O.I.] , and Malcolm had to negotiate between them and since he was out of the country a great deal of the time, it was rather difficult for him to do so.
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I have asked James Shabazz, I've asked other people who are members of the OAAU, Herman Ferguson and others, what led to that disastrous decision [that the guards didn't carry weapons]? James Shabazz said to me with a shrug, you just didn't know Malcolm. Malcolm was adamant, and that whatever Malcolm wanted, that's what we just did.
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I think that Malcolm X was envisioning, even while he was in the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist progressive strategy toward uniting black people across ideological, class lines, denominational religious lines, Christians, as well as Muslims, to build a strong movement for justice and for empowerment.
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There was deep knowledge on the part of members of the Nation of Islam regarding the planning, in sight of the OAAU and the Muslim Mosque Incorporated regarding the events at the Audubon. They knew when they were going to be there, they knew what the schedules were.
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Malcolm's X objective was actually to reingratiate himself within the Nation of Islam, that because he had emerged by the early 1960s as a very prominent figure outside of the N.O.I., there were critics within the organization that were saying to the patriarch of the N.O.I., the Honorable Elijah Mohammad, that Malcolm planned to take over the organization, which was not true.
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We know from Talmadge Hayer, one of the men who carried out the assassination, who was shot by Ruben X as he tried to flee the Audubon after shooting Malcolm X, we know that Hayer confessed years later to his Imam in prison that there had been a walk-through a week prior to February 21st [1965] at the Audubon Ballroom.
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The F.B.I. was very happy with the article they produced, which was entitled, "The Black Merchants of Hate," that came out in early 1963. What's significant about that piece is that that became the template for what evolved into the basic narrative structure of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
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Now, of course, people know that over the last several months prior to February 21st, 1965, the OAAU and MMI tried to get away from the old practices of checking people at the door for weapons. They wanted people to feel more comfortable.
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I think that Malcolm X was the most remarkable historical figure produced by Black America in the 20th century.
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The NYPD was ubiquitous. They were always around Malcolm X. Whenever Malcolm spoke, there would be one or two dozen cops all over the place.
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Anne Romaine collected her own parallel archive to [Alex] Haley.
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The MMI brothers, who provided security for Malcolm X had been trained by Malcolm himself that inside of the Nation of Islam, whenever there is a diversion, you protect the principal. The principal, in this case Malcolm, clearly was not protected on February 21st [1965].
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[Alex] Haley had a tendency to write even more frequently and voluminously to his agents and his editors than he did putting pen to paper in his own books.
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I'm not an attorney or a person who does intellectual property .
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The Organization of Afro-American Unity was an organization that was a secular group. It largely consisted of people that we would later call several years later Black Powerites, Black nationalists, progressives coming out of the Black freedom struggle, the northern students' movement, people - students, young people, professionals, workers, who were dedicated to Black activism and militancy, but outside of the context of Islam.
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Very few people have actually had a chance to see the raw material that was going to comprise these three chapters [of Malcolm X Autobiography]. The missing political testament that should have been in the autobiography, but isn't.
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There are literally a thousand works with the title Malcolm X in them. There are over 350 films and over 320 web-based educational resources with the title Malcolm X, yet the vast majority of them are based on secondary literatures, that is, not on primary source material.
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I believe that if we could see the chapters that are missing from the book [The Autobiography of Malcolm X], we would gain an understanding as to why perhaps - perhaps - the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the New York Police Department and others in law enforcement greatly feared what Malcolm X was about, because he was trying to build a broad - an unprecedented black coalition across the lines of black nationalism and integration. And in way, it presages 30 years ahead of time, the Million Man March.
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There were over 40,000 pages of FBI documents of which only about half are currently available to scholars and researchers. I think that this 40th anniversary of the assassination is a good opportunity for us to say that now is the time to declassify all FBI material on Malcolm X. There really is a need for us to challenge the US government for its refusal to open up its own archives 40 years after the death of Malcolm.
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As the years progress, what women and men will discover is that the most lasting and rewarding educational experiences come not from specific information provided in classroom lectures or assigned textbooks, but from the values obtained in active engagement in meaningful issues. We achieve for ourselves only as we appreciate the problems and concerns of others-and only as we see our own lives as part of a much greater social purpose.
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