[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 10901-10902]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


             UNDERSTANDING THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MALCOLM X

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 23, 2005

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise again today to draw the attention of 
this Chamber to the importance of this day in African-American history. 
Today marks what would have been the 80th birthday of Malcolm X, one of 
the more revolutionary and controversial leaders of the Civil Rights 
Movement.
  Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925. It was a time in American history 
where the opportunities of African-Americans were limited due to 
segregation and racial intolerance. He nonetheless was born to parents 
that were, not only proud of the black race, but instilled that pride 
in their politics, actions, and, most importantly, their children. He 
learned at an early age about the challenges that Black men would face 
just because of the color of their skin and found ways to rise above 
those obstacles.
  Too often, historians, social scientists, and the American public 
have attempted to pigeonhole Malcolm into a singular character. When 
they do so, they miss the true man, his life, and his experiences. 
Malcolm X's personal story is a tale of many challenges, many 
conflicting events, many goals, and many aspirations. He was not simply 
the young son of a slain Black nationalist or the young Black student 
discouraged by his White teachers in the 1930s. Neither would he only 
be the street thug and hustler of 1940s nor the incarcerated felon of 
the 1950s. Nor was he just the influential minister of the Nation of 
Islam or the worldly Muslim of the Organization of Afro-American Unity 
who loved his White brethren. He was all of these persons and more.
  Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, Malcolm X, and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz 
were the same individual, seeking a goal of racial justice for himself, 
his family, and his people. He walked his journey in life in the same 
way that many Blacks of his time have and as many do today. The 
education, radicalism, determination, and sense of justice that Malcolm 
fought for in his life represented the thoughts of blacks throughout 
the world then and today. To box him into any one of those personas 
would be a failure to understand his life and experiences and those of 
his time.
  We should all take time this day and in the days to come to reflect 
on the challenges and accomplishments of Malcolm X. To this goal, I 
would like to alert this august Chamber to the perceptive exhibition at 
the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York 
Public Library in Harlem. This new exhibit, ``Malcolm X: A Search for 
Truth,'' opened in commemoration of the birthday of Malcolm X and 
provides insight into his personal story, development, and journey.
  I would like to submit in the Record the following New York Times 
review on the value and insight of this exhibition to understanding 
Malcolm X. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, it is a fitting 
tribute that we honor this extraordinary individual and realize the 
significance of his life journey.

             The Personal Evolution of a Civil Rights Giant

       May 19, 2005--In the 1940's, Malcolm Little a k a Detroit 
     Red (and, later, a k a Malcolm X, a k a El-Hajj Malik El-
     Shabazz) wanted to impress co-conspirators in petty crime 
     with his ruthlessness and daring. He loaded his pistol with a 
     single bullet, twirled the cylinder, put the muzzle to his 
     head and fired. The gesture demonstrated that he was unafraid 
     of death and therefore not afraid of much else. And when he 
     recounts the story in his 1965 autobiography (``as told to'' 
     Alex Haley), the reader is also impressed--though evidence of 
     his brilliance, fury and self-destructiveness is, by then, 
     hardly necessary.
       A new exhibition about Malcolm X opens at the Schomburg 
     Center for Research in Black Culture today (which would have 
     been his 80th birthday). And though it doesn't mention this 
     theatrical gesture in its survey of one of the most 
     significant black leaders in American history, Malcolm's 
     public displays of passion and position sometimes seem as 
     courageous, dangerous, and even, yes, foolish, as his game of 
     Russian roulette.
       The exhibition, ``Malcolm X: A Search for Truth,'' seeks to 
     map out the major themes of his life in a ``developmental 
     journey'' reflecting his ``driving intellectual quest for 
     truth.'' It offers evidence that has been unavailable: 
     personal papers, journals, letters, lecture outlines--rescued 
     from being sold at auction in San Francisco and on eBay in 
     2002.
       Those papers, which the Shabazz family had lost control of 
     when monthly fees for a commercial storage facility were left 
     unpaid, were returned to them, and then lent for 75 years to 
     the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center in Harlem. The 
     documents are lightly sampled in this first public showing, 
     but they will eventually offer greater insight into Malcolm 
     X's developmental journey: from child of a Black Nationalist 
     father murdered in his prime, to a star elementary school 
     pupil in a largely white school; to a hustler and criminal; 
     to a convert, while in prison, to Elijah Muhammad's eccentric 
     brand of Islam; to a radical minister who built Muhammad's 
     Nation of Islam into a major national movement, declaring the 
     white race to be the devil incarnate; and finally, to a 
     political leader who, cut off by Muhammad, turned to 
     traditional Islam and was rethinking his views, just as he 
     was assassinated in New York's Audubon Ballroom in 1965 at 
     the age of 39.
       His brief life stands as a challenge no matter one's 
     perspective, an overweening presence in the roiling currents 
     of American racial debates. After all, Islam is a force in 
     the American black community partly because of Malcolm X 
     (who, after his 1964 hajj to Mecca, changed his name to El-
     Hajj Malik El-Shabazz). Advocates of reparations for slavery 
     echo his arguments. Less radically, so do believers in the 
     encouragement of black-run businesses and schools. And by 
     seeking to internationalize race, particularly in the mid-
     1960's, Malcolm X helped set the stage for the doctrines of 
     Third Worldism, which asserts that Western enslavement of 
     dark-skinned peoples is played out on a world scale.
       Even those who dissent from such views can recognize in 
     Malcolm X's fearsome intelligence and self-discipline a kind 
     of a developmental quest, ultimately left incomplete. The 
     exhibition, which also includes material from the Schomburg 
     and other collections, tells that story chronologically, 
     using textual summaries and photographs to create a context 
     for the personal papers.
       Those papers include letters from Malcolm to his brother, 
     Philbert Little, describing his first embrace of the Nation 
     of Islam, as well as a disturbing sequence of letters about 
     his final embrace, suggesting how Muhammad tried to rein him 
     in. And above the display cases, the walls are lined with 
     photographs chronicling the life: an elementary-school 
     photograph of Malcolm, glimpses of the bodies of Nation of 
     Islam followers killed by Los Angeles police in 1962, views 
     of halls packed with devoted listeners, and finally, glimpses 
     of the fallen chairs and stark disorder of the Audubon 
     Ballroom after Malcolm X was murdered. An epilogue to the 
     exhibition displays court drawings of the trial of the 
     accused assassins, along with objects found on his body, 
     including a North Vietnamese stamp showing an American 
     helicopter getting shot down.
       But, despite the new personal documents, there is something 
     familiar about the exhibition, which does not offer new 
     interpretations and misses an opportunity to delve more 
     deeply into the difficulties in Malcolm's quest. In his 
     autobiography, Malcolm X spoke of the importance of speaking 
     the ``raw, naked truth'' about the nature of race relations. 
     He also recognized one of the tragic consequences of 
     enslavement: the erasure of the past. The name ``X'' was 
     provided to initiates as a stand in for a lost original name. 
     Names could also be readily changed because they were little 
     more than expressions of newly formed identities.
       In fact, invention became crucial. For Malcolm X, it was a 
     matter of control: mastering one's past, determining one's 
     character and, finally, controlling one's future. Documents 
     describe how members of the Nation of Islam were expelled for 
     any backsliding, including adultery. In one letter, Malcolm 
     almost provides a motto for his kind of charismatic 
     discipline:
       ``For one to control one's thoughts and feelings means one 
     can actually control one's atmosphere and all who walks into 
     its sphere of influence.''
       But this also means that the truth can seem less crucial 
     than the kind of identity being constructed, the kind of past 
     being invented. After reading the autobiography, we learn 
     from Alex Haley's epilogue that Malcolm actually confessed 
     that his story of Russian roulette was not what it seemed: He 
     had palmed the bullet. Everybody had been hustled, the 
     readers included. The adoption

[[Page 10902]]

     of Nation of Islam ideology, with its invented history and 
     its evil scientist named Yacub breeding the white race, is 
     another kind of hustle.
       Curiously, the exhibition itself doesn't make enough of 
     such distinctions. In a wall display, labeled ``Messengers of 
     Hope and Liberation,'' major figures like W. E. B. Du Bois 
     have no more stature than such figures as Wallace D. Fard. 
     Fard was the greater influence on Malcolm X, since he created 
     the Nation of Islam mythology, but he may not have had any 
     African heritage at all and, as Karl Evanzz argues in his 
     recent book, ``The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah 
     Muhammad,'' he had even encouraged the practice of human 
     sacrifice.
       As if reluctant to be too judgmental, there is also not 
     enough explanation of the quarrel with Elijah Muhammad, 
     though the photographer Gordon Parks quoted Malcolm X saying, 
     just before his death: ``I did many things as a Muslim that 
     I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then--like all Muslims--I 
     was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to 
     march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of 
     himself if he's ready to pay the cost. It cost me 12 years.''
       That kind of statement is too blunt for this exhibition, 
     which makes suggestions but seems reluctant to draw too many 
     distinctions. But even the differing interpretations of 
     Malcolm's final transformation might have been outlined with 
     more clarity. It is intriguing to read, in one 1964 letter 
     from Malcolm's office to Martin Luther King Jr., an 
     expression of apology for ``unkind things'' said in the past. 
     And the trial of the accused assassins from the Nation of 
     Islam merits more explanation, particularly because a 
     conspiracy theory of F.B.I. involvement has long simmered, 
     even as Muhammad was known to have encouraged threats against 
     Malcolm X and had already sent one disciple to kill him. The 
     quest for truth, surely, goes on, but part of it means facing 
     squarely the extent of certain kinds of hustle.
       ``Malcolm X: A Search for Truth'' is at the Schomburg 
     Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Lenox Avenue, at 
     135th Street, Harlem, (212) 491-2200, through Dec. 31.

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