I am exceedingly thankful to Alex Hailey for his vision to write the autobiography of Elder Malcolm Shabazz, otherwise known as Malcolm X. That book was the third book I read upon my arrival to the Americas. It was during one of the most difficult periods in my life. The book offered such a solid foundation that I would carry a copy around just for the sake of it. I felt both grounded as well as inspired just having it around.
A few years later, I almost shed tears when I heard of a judge in Memphis who would offer young African American men in legal trouble reduced sentences in exchange for reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X and writing a brief essay on lessons they may have learned. What a brilliant idea it was? I would actually pay money to talk to a few of those men who took up the generous offer from a legal system with a severely historical record. It was an injustice that I knew both personally but also historically. As a student of Political Science, I once argued in class that Lady Justice is a poor representation of blind law as racism seems to come from the heart. That meant that having a statue of a Caucasian with her eyes blinded by a folded cloth and a scale on her hand is a mockery to justice relative to indigenous Americans, African Americans and the economically underprivileged. I suggested that a set of shackles should be hung somewhere on the statue just like the set of shackles on the Statue of Liberty in New York.
The above example is just one example of the active life I had in college. I took the lesson of reading from elder Malcolm and that meant that I got more college than I otherwise would have. But the most significant changes that Alex Hailey’s writing influenced me was the set of friends I chose and the cause for which I dedicated my life. My friends tended to be serious in learning as well as in discipline. Some brothers from the Nation of Islam were some of my classes. Those Muslim young men were probably students of elders who had been taught by Elder Malcolm himself. That group of young men were always clean and active in the community. Even though I wasn’t interested in being a Muslim, we found much in common. I ended up buying a bow tie just to fit it.
I am humbled to have learned about the work of Elder Malcolm at an early age. But that experience is not without its set of tears. As we mark a century since the birth of this wise sage, the world is in a far worse shape than it was during his passing. I remember how touched I was when I read the last chapter of his autobiography where Osie Davis was quoted as saying that the morticians that examined his body claimed that it was the cleanest body they had ever seen in their career. It is for that reason, amongst many many others, that I call him an exemplary leader. His fight for justice and liberation did not ignore justice to his body and organs, in other words food justice was central to who he was. How can anyone be just to others unless he is just to his or her own body.
I have a hard time believing someone who is unfair or unjust to their own body. I therefore salute this remarkable man. I am not making claims about Elder Malcolm based on what others said or wrote about him, I heard a tape recording of the FBI trying to entice him to be an informant. That clip is online, thanks to the freedom of information act. Elder Malcolm, true to his stand, categorically refused to share any information about the organization he was a member for he knew that he was not engaged in any illegal activity.
Yet after such an illustrious life, to all I can say is : Cry My Beloved Malcolm. Our bodies and our resolve do not demonstrate justice. The state of Africans worldwide, is sorry, the long historical injustices notwithstanding. Our food and our commitment to upright values would make Elder Malcolm cry. Maybe the shackles I was suggesting should be hung on our heads and our stomachs. while it’s true some people are making spirited efforts to make the world a better place, the destruction is far greater than the building. The Dooms Clock, set up in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, was designed as a quick illustration of how far the world was to a nuclear war. The clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight. Midnight representing doom. The Doomsday Clock today is set at 89 seconds. That is how much “progress” we have made in the wrong direction!
Surely America has refused to change. Instead it wants to be the old self again. In the city where Elder Malcolm was assassinated, a poem by Emma Lazarus entitled The Great Colossus is still legible on the Statue of Liberty. But it’s the words “tempest tost” that best captures my feelings today as I think about the pain of resurrecting our human colossus to match that of Elder Malcolm both in resolve to stand for justice and with a body that is equally just. I don’t only cry for Elder Malcolm but I also cry for thee.