Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Malcolm in the extreme Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 16:10:35 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \SS (WS) \HD Malcolm in the extreme \SH THE FACTS: Separating man from myth \BY Sonya Ross \CR ASSOCIATED PRESS "Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. . . . " - Actor Ossie Davis eulogizing Malcolm X, 1965 At all-black, all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta, 75 freshmen grind out papers for History 111 on "The Relevance of the Views of Malcolm X in Today's Society." Five pages, based only on Malcolm's speeches and writings. Due today, the day Morehouse alum Spike Lee premieres "Malcolm X," his epic film on the Muslim leader's life. "I was determined my students would know something about Malcolm before the movie," says instructor Herman Mason Jr. "What Spike presents is going to shape the minds of so many young people who are not going to read." For the students, Malcolm X is a figure who aptly voices their alienation and hope for redemption. They track with wonder his metamorphosis from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X to El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. They want to be Malcolm, mimicking the goatee, horn-rimmed glasses and natty dress, but adopting only bits and pieces of his total philosophy. "There's all sorts of interesting lessons about the entire African-American experience that can be learned through Malcolm's life," says Robert Franklin, director of black church studies at Emory University in Atlanta. "I'm less interested in Malcolm as a hero than I am in his life as a window," he says. "A lot of brothers are going to be wearing the X, the glasses and all. I'm hoping younger brothers will study his model and embrace the substance. I hope his life can open up a larger arena of study, and white America will become more sensitized to the black experience because of this." Malcolm X evolved from a drug abuser, petty thief and convict into a disciplined follower of Islam who urged black power "by any means necessary." He called whites "blue-eyed devils," only to retract that sentiment after a pilgrimage to Mecca among Muslims of all races. Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Neb., he spent his childhood in Lansing, Mich. He was his seventh-grade class president and aspired to be a lawyer, but was discouraged by a white teacher who told him he couldn't go to college because he was black and suggested he try carpentry instead. As a teen-ager, Malcolm migrated to Boston and Harlem, where he became a nightclub waiter and picked up an education in hustling just by listening to some of the customers. Malcolm then became a pimp, drug addict and burglar. While serving a prison sentence for burglary, he re-educated himself, copying the dictionary page-by-page and reading practically every book he could find. He also discovered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam. After being released from prison in 1952, Malcolm dropped the Little surname and adopted "X," as did all of Muhammad's followers, to signify rejection of their white slave masters' names. In two years, Malcolm was named minister of the Harlem mosque and emerged as a national spokesman, advocating that blacks own their own businesses, learn their history. In 1958, he married Betty Sanders, now known as Betty Shabazz; they had six daughters. "Islam gave him an ideal to work for, gave him moral control. He became very, very idealistic," says David Leigh, a Seattle University professor who studies historical figures who experienced significant life changes. "What's unusual about Malcolm X is his religious conversion kept developing. His earlier perspective, he saw, was too narrow. He broadened it. Toward the end, he combined his insistence on black pride with his willingness to work with all races and all people." Envisioning a more universal worship of Islam, Malcolm subsequently split Elijah Muhammad, and founded the Organization for Afro-American Unity in 1964. But he didn't live long enough to get the group off the ground. He was assassinated at the age of 39 at a Harlem rally Feb. 21, 1965, in front of his wife. In the weeks before his death, Malcolm toured the South, and stopped in Alabama to visit the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was preparing a voting rights march on Selma, Ala. He also made the rounds of black colleges, sharing his Mecca experience with students. "I was awe-struck," says Peter Scott, an editor at the Atlanta Constitution who met Malcolm X in the student newspaper office at Tuskegee Institute Feb. 3, 1965. "He was trying to maybe shape our thinking, coming down there to just talk to us, in his own way, to see if he could keep us on the correct path. "He'd already broken from the Nation then. One of the things he was trying to do was talk with us about why he'd made the move. I think he must have just returned from Mecca. He told us he had gone there, and seen all these people, black, white, worshipping together. The impression he left us with was that it was possible for all groups of people to live together," Mr. Scott recalls. The post-Mecca phase of Malcolm X's life is the one on which Mr. Mason would like his students to concentrate. Young people too readily categorize him by his earlier militance and intolerance, he says. "He was not the hatred-filled man that he may have been prior to going to Mecca," Mr. Mason says. "He was a courageous man to have come out and spoke about the goings-on with Elijah Muhammad. There is Malcolm the myth, and Malcolm the man." 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