March 26, 2026 • 55 mins
Malcolm X was one of the most revered, feared leaders of the civil rights movement. In contrast to Martin Luther King, Jr., X advocated black self-reliance and separateness in American society and that equal rights should obtained by any means necessary.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
A production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Son, Josh,
And there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, just being quiet
as a church mouse. And this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's because he told her to zip it.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I was gonna leave that part out. You're gonna get
hate mail for that one.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm surprised we're just now getting to this.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I went through a Malcolm X phase in college. I
wasn't one of those guys walking around Georgia with a
Malcolm X hat on.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You weren't wearing like, Okay, I have a great story,
but please go ahead.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
It was after I saw the movie because I was
a big you still am big Spike Lee guy. So
I saw the movie in ninety two and then read
the autobiography that with Alex Haley right after that, Yeah,
and was just super into a story at the time.
It's been a while, though.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, I have just entered my Malcolm X's face. I uh,
just researching him. I accidentally got radicalized, and I've got
his autobiography on the way. It should get here today. Great,
but it's it's crazy, Chuck, because like, especially as just
white people of our generation, if you hadn't already gotten
(01:23):
into him and like seing the Spike Lee movie and
read his autobiography and just started to read his speeches
and stuff, if you just kind of knew him like
I had up to this point, Like you knew him
as the guy who said, like by any means necessary,
that he was he was militant, that he was essentially
the foil to doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and that
(01:47):
he and King kind of represented these two this fork
in the road that America had to kind of choose between,
because there was at this point in like the fifties,
starting in the fifties, there was no way for America
to just stand there at the crossroads any longer. Like
like America as a whole had to make a choice
which way we're gonna go race war or integration, peaceful integration.
(02:10):
And that's what Malcolm X represented to white America. Race war,
like black militants taking over killing white people mercilessly, ruthlessly
because white people had it coming. Or you know, everybody's
much more familiar with the Martin Luther King Junior way,
but there's so much more to it than that, and
(02:30):
just researching this this guy, I like, I'm I don't
even want to say a fan, because I think that
kind of undermines like the respect I have for him now,
Like he's he's an amazing figure.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
It turns out, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
And you know, when I was in high school, there
was a big This Is you know, I graduated eighty nine,
the movie was ninety two, so this was leading up
to the film, which obviously put things on a much
bigger sort of platform. But it was a big deal
in the eighties. Like, there was a big sort of
at least in the South. I don't know how it
was everywhere else, but there was a big movement among
(03:07):
you know, the black students at my school to get
in touch with the African heritage. Malcolm X hats were
all over the place in my school, and he was
just sort of in the forefront, I guess, kind of
like my junior and senior year. So it was striking
to me that we didn't learn about him in high school.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, but if you step back and really think about it,
it's not very surprising, you know.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Well, I mean looking back at the substandard public school
education I got.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Correct, Yeah, but also the white washed and sanitized version
where it's like, Okay, we'll tell you about Martin Luther
King Junior, but don't ask about Malto's. Yes, you don't
want to know about him.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
He was a rough dude, but he yes, or anyone else.
It was just Martin Luther King exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah. He did the whole thing by himself, it turns out. Yeah,
so yeah, I remember that same era as well. Okay,
so I say we get into this because we could
probably sit here and do an intro and it would
end up being the entire thing. Well, let's jump in
and everybody else can kind of make up their own
minds about how you feel about Malcolm X and just
(04:12):
kind of asit decide to start. I would definitely recommend
going and watching the documentary on him. That American experience
did I think in the nineties, make it plain. And
then I read a bunch of articles and the best
one I read was the Achievement of Malcolm X by
John J. Simon. That was in the Monthly Review. That
was a really good comprehensive one too.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, and see that's Spike Lee movie Exception. I've not
seen it, man, you gotta check it out.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I will. Okay, So we're talking about Malcolm X. If
you hadn't figured that out by now, and you may
or may not know that Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little.
That was his given name. He was born back in
nineteen twenty five in Omaha, Nebraska, and from the outset,
he was essentially raised in a very black conscious family,
(05:04):
so he was aware of the state of racial affairs
in the United States as a very young person and
oppression that black people lived under at the time and
still do him many ways.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah, for sure. His dad, Earle was a Baptist lay speaker,
his mother Louise Little. They were both members of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was a Marcus Garvey joint
someone else we never learned about in high school. And
they moved to Milwaukee for a little while. Then eventually
in nineteen twenty eight, when little Malcolm was three, landed
(05:36):
in Michigan, and they landed in a white neighborhood and
that was a big problem because they were not wanted there,
and Earle Little was not the kind of guy to
just pack up and leave because his neighbors didn't want
him there, so he stayed and the community had a
clause in their hoa covenant that said that basically no
(05:57):
one was allowed to sell a house to non white people,
and so they sued to a victim. And while that
was kind of going through, even before the eviction was finalized,
a group of white men burned their house to the
ground without any firefighters even showing up.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Right, So whether they wanted to move or not, they
had to now, and they moved a little further out
of where they lived, still in the Lansing area, And
I don't know when the house burned, but just within
a year or two maybe less. Malcolm was six years
old and his father died. He died in a mysterious,
bizarre streetcar accident where he was run over by a streetcar.
(06:36):
And that's just the official line on the whole thing.
In fact, I think it was. It ended up being
ruled a suicide. But according to Malcolm his family, his mother,
like his father, was murdered, probably by a clan affiliated
group called the Black Legion who operated in Michigan back then,
and that was pretty much what the family was convinced of,
(06:58):
that his father had been murdered. Then, on top of that,
no one would admit that his father was murdered, which
I'm sure makes that kind of experience that much harder.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, I mean there was actual evidence that was ignored.
He had clearly been beaten and placed on the tracks,
so it was kind of just brushed under the table.
It was very upsetting for a young Malcolm because that
was like the rumor. It was all around the school
and everything, so he was hearing all these stories and
it was, you know, definitely a big early sort of
(07:31):
kind of forking the road for him, and that his
family was left without their dad.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
They, like you said, ruled it a suicide.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
But I think she got like one thousand dollars in
one life insurance payment. Louise did, which would be about
twenty five grand a day, but was denied because of
the suicide claim, a much larger insurance claim. So she
didn't have a lot of dough to feed.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
What was eight kids?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Eight kids, man, and now she suddenly on her own
and she had a nervous breakdown, is what you would
call it. I think that she was diagnosed as paranoid
and was transferred to this state hospital in Kalamazoo where
she stayed. This is in the mid thirties. She stayed
there until nineteen sixty four, I think like twenty six
(08:18):
years or something like that, and all of a sudden,
Malcolm and his seven siblings are without parents. They're orphans essentially,
and they become wards of the state and they're broken up.
So just in a very short time couple of years,
Malcolm goes from having a stable home life to his
father being murdered, his mother having a nervous breakdown and
(08:39):
being institutionalized, and his siblings being spread out throughout the
foster system around Lansing. That's just what happened to him.
And if you know a little bit about Malcolm X,
you might know that he started out as a criminal.
What's astounding, Chuck, is this is not when his life
of crime began. He actually went the exact opposite.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Route, well a little both.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
He started stealing stuff when he was nine because he
had to do something to provide for their family. But
he never got caught there And you know, wil Gover's
his former formal rap.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Sheet here in a minute.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
But he was sent to a juvenile detention center in Mason, Michigan.
It was about ten miles south of Lansing, and he
went to a white school, and he did a great job.
He was he's a really you know, was a really
smart guy, a really smart kid, and made really good grades.
He was very charismatic from the beginning. He was elected
(09:39):
class president. Yeah, and had dreams of going to law
school before his white teacher said a pretty terrible thing
to him.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, it was an English teacher. And this is a
one of the probably one of the This is the
second pivotal moment in his life where he had the
rug pull out from under him, He had the wind
taken out of his sales. He got punched in the
bread basket you want to put it because the English teacher.
He told the English teacher that he was dreaming of
becoming a lawyer, and the English teachers like, I think
(10:08):
America would accept you more as a carpenter, Like that's
the kind of profession you need to go in, you
need to be realistic about. And then essentially being a
black person in America, it's not, the teacher said, but
the point was the same, and it just completely sucked
the life and enthusiasm for learning that he had up
(10:30):
to that point right out of him.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, he quit school. He never went to school again
after that. And he had a very promising academic career
in front of him, which is super sad. So at
fifteen he goes to live with his half sister in
Boston and eventually would get a job working at the railroad.
So he started traveling around some and by seventeen found
(10:53):
himself living in Harlem. And this is where he got
the name that stuck with him. You know, during his
sort of early tea or later teenage years.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
I guess Red.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
He had this red hair, so he was either Detroit
Red or Big Red because he was a tall guy.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
He's six foot four.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
In just a little fun side note, while he was
in Harlem, he was working at a chicken shack with
a guy named John Sandford, and he was Chicago Red
and Malcolm was Detroit Red. And he was trying. John
Sandford was trying to be a stand up comic and
that ended up being Red Box.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
That's right of Sandford in something. Yeah, I love that
little fact. So yeah, he was. He became a I
guess he'd call him a petty criminal, but he was.
He took all of that kind of charisma and charm
and initiative and turned it. He directed it toward a
life of crime. He's often described as a pimp, although
he was never a pimp. He seemed more like the
(11:50):
kind of guy who just knew where to get whatever
you wanted, and that included sex workers, that included drugs.
He loved pot, he loved gambling, and he actually committed
a lot of his crimes like burglary, theft, that kind
of stuff just to support his habits, which eventually turned
(12:10):
into cocaine, which even back then was more expensive. And again,
he loved to gamble, so he needed to keep both
of those things up, and that was a large reason
why he was such a prolific criminal during this time.
Another reason is that he just the options that he
had hadn't really panned out very well for him. Like
he had a few jobs up to this point, but
(12:32):
he realized, like, I'm not going to get anywhere serving
sandwiches on a train, I'm not going to get anywhere
shining shoes, Like I might as well make away for myself,
and the only way to make away for myself in
this situation is crime.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, for sure. He was arrested a couple of times.
He was arrested at nineteen allegedly stealing his half sisters
for coat, whom he lived with pretty low hanging fruit.
Got arrested again when he allegedly mugged a friend of
his at gunpoint, and neither one of those amounted too much.
But finally he was arrested for a third time after
(13:07):
he'd been doing a series of burglaries of wealthy homes
with a kind of a small crew. It was him,
it was another black man and three white women. Yeah,
and I mentioned everyone's race there, because when they got
caught on this one, the three white women just got
slaps on the wrist and basically got let go, and
the two men were sentenced to eight to ten in
the Hoofscow.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, and they would have gotten much worse than that
documentary make it plain. The other guy, his friend, Malcolm Jarvis.
He said that they tried to get the women to
say that the Malcolm X and Malcolm Jarvis had raped
them and had all they had to do was say that,
and they would have been convicted of that and sentenced
to a couple more decades for that. And luckily they
(13:51):
were tight enough with these women that they said, no,
we're not going to do that, despite the pressure that
they were under.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Two Yeah, for sure. So prison is where a lot
happened to him. In prison sort of one of his
first big transformations. He spent about almost seven years there
for that burglary, and he was about twenty years old
at the time, and it was in prison where he
really kind of found himself for the I guess for
(14:19):
the first time as an adult, and that he remembered like, Hey,
I'm a smart guy, and I used to love academia
and learning. So he started he became a voracious reader
again in prison. He apparently tried to memorize the Dictionary
in prison and was reading anything he could get his
hands on, including, eventually which would really transform his life,
(14:41):
the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, who was a leader of
the Nation of Islam at the time.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, and before he kind of came on to those
teachings from his siblings, I think who encouraged him to
start looking into that. And he had a real aversion
to any kind of religion. He was actually known as
Satan by the other prisoners in the correctional facility he
was in. But the reason he was able to read
(15:07):
so much, Chuck, is because he happened to be in
MCI Norfolk in Massachusetts, and it's well known to have
a lot, like a huge library, connections with like MIT
and Harvard and all that stuff. So it was actually
the perfect prison for him to land in. So he
was able to kind of educate himself from that point on.
And then when he finally did start taking up the
(15:27):
teachings of Elijah Mohammad, it just clicked. And it was
even further, I guess reinforced when he started writing letters
to Elijah Mohammad and Elijah Muhammad started writing back to him.
That really encouraged him big time.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, you know why because he didn't have to write
letters to get those books like Andy Defrain, Yeah in
the Shawshing.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Redemption, No, they just threw them at you.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, he was of course because it was Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
So yeah, he started, you know basically it became a
pinpal with Elijah Mohammed and really became a hardcore Muslim
pretty quickly after reading you know, his works, and became
an ascetic. So that means no drugs, no booze, no pork,
no movies or music, no gambling, no dancing, like the
(16:17):
real straight and narrow. And you know, we'll later find
out that that became a bit of a riff later on,
because he didn't think Elijah Muhammad at one point was
sort of walking the walk where as he really was
from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, for sure, like and he did throughout too. Like
the FBI tried and tried and tried to get something
on him, and they couldn't get anything. Like, He's just
that upstanding and moral from that point on. I also,
I had never even thought to wonder, but I had
no idea why his last name was X. I was
pretty surprised to learn this, But it makes a lot
(16:51):
of sense.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
You didn't know that, no, Okay, I thought that would
have been sort of just the basic common knowledge.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
But maybe not.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I mean, maybe it is, but I'm I'm pretty uncommon, right, You're.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
An uncommon podcaster.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
So yeah, he dropped the name little because and a
lot of people in the Nation of Islam did and
do this because that was he thought that was his
slave name, so he rid himself of that name and
replaced it with an X.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah. He also one of the reasons he despised religion.
He despised Christianity in general because he considered that the
slave religion that was given to the African slaves to
essentially keep them in line, and so it was actually
it was a big deal that he became this devotee
(17:40):
of this religion and this particular religion. Just really quick,
if you're not familiar with the Nation of Islam, it
is not the same thing as Islam that was that
emerged out of the Middle East several hundred years ago.
It bears like a slight resemblance to it, but it
is essentially a completely altered version that has a lot
(18:04):
of theology that seems very odd to outsiders.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah, I mean they were Muslim, but you know, I
know you've and this is stuff I didn't know that
you found some stuff about Elijah Muhammad's original beliefs that
I was I was just sort of shocked by.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, so you've heard white devils before. I mean, you
have to was listening to like ICEQB. He always talks
about white devils. But that is actually a teaching from
the Nation of Islam from Elijah Muhammad, and it predates him.
The Nation of Islam had been around for a few
decades before Elijah Muhammad was its prophet. But the reason
(18:43):
that they call white people white devils is because, according
to black Muslim theology. There was a genius named yaka
Black Genius who created white people by bleaching black people
and he mutated them into white, blue eyed devils. And
the reason why is he wanted to basically put the
(19:06):
black race to the test, so he put them in
a subjugated position because he allowed these white people to
be devils, to basically act like white people have treated
black people since time immemorial. And that this rain would
last about six millennia, and that the six millennia were
(19:26):
almost up, and that this was the time when the
black race would rise and take over from the white devils.
Who would who would really regret the stuff that they
had done up to that point after.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
That ye, which would have placed it about nineteen seventy.
And so white Americans hearing this at the time, they
thought that's when like the race war was coming.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Was was nineteen seventy or thereabouts.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, and we talked about that before and like, I
never really understood it, but this is a big, big
reason that white America was like, there's go to be
a race war. It's like coming, it's inevitable. That was
a big part of it. So, yeah, this was and
this wasn't like metaphorical. This is from what I understand,
it's a it's a literal interpretation of where white people
(20:13):
came from six thousand years ago. So this was the
This was what Malcolm X was being indoctrinated into. And
he was a smart guy, so he he had to
submit himself, like he had to take parts of his
brain and just turn them off. The suspicious part of him,
as far as like what he was being taught had
to be turned off, the critical thinking part, as far
(20:34):
as anything goes with the religion that he took on.
He was able to compartmentalize, turn it off, and throw
himself fully into it. And he was for the first
decade essentially that he was a black Muslim, the best
thing that ever happened to the Nation of Islam by far.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Yeah, for sure, that seems like a pretty good place
for a break.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
All right, we'll be right back, everybody with more on
Malcolm X. So Malcolm X is granted parole in nineteen
(21:21):
fifty two. He gets out of prison a completely different
person than who entered prison almost seven years earlier, and
he was on a mission to recruit and get as
many people as he could to join the Nation of
Islam and had a direct sort of go get him
tiger from Elijah Muhammad, And so as soon as he
(21:44):
was paroled, he joined Temple Number one in Detroit. He
traveled to Chicago to meet Elijah Mohammad in person, and
he said, like I said, he said, you know, go
out there and do your thing. Like he knew he
had a sort of a shining star because he was again,
he was taugh he was handsome, he was charismatic, he
was super smart. And within a year there were only
(22:06):
about four hundred members of the Nation of Islam at
the time. Within a year he brought that to about
a thousand, but that would grow to six thousand by
nineteen fifty five, and then in the early nineteen sixties
about seventy five thousand, up from a four hundred when
Malcolm X came on the scene. So a lot of that,
not all of it, obviously, but a lot of that
(22:27):
is really due to him being the face you know,
I guess sort of the second face and then ultimately
the face of the Nation of Islam.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yeah, for sure, his rhetoric, the things he was saying,
and like you said, the charisma and just how well
spoken he was, and the points he makes, it's like,
you can be white and he's talking about you being
a white devil. Sorry, you all white people are white devil's.
He was uncompromising in that right. It wasn't like, yeah,
I mean some of them are okay. No, white people
were okay in this philosophy. And he in addition to
(22:58):
that rhetoric, he also just knew how to work the
media and what you know, levers to pull, and he
pushed Elijah Muhammad way out of his comfort zone to
allow him to do new stuff with the Nation of
Islam that helped bring in tons and tons of people.
One of the first big ones was a documentary from
(23:19):
Mike Wallace of all People back in nineteen fifty nine
called The Hate that Hate Produced, and it just basically said,
look at these guys, but at the same time, listen
to what these guys have to say. And it exposed
the world to black Muslims and it really helped drive
up membership.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, for sure, he was not trying to make friends
in his job, even within his own community. You know,
we talked about him being a hardliner and ascetic, and
he said that everyone should practice asceticism. And you know,
he went to Philadelphia at one point in nineteen fifty
five and said, all right, everyone here is.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Needs to get their act together. You need to lose weight.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Even he had leaders in Philadelphia weighing their members twice
a week, and there were penalties if you didn't lose
the poundage that he required because he wanted everyone to
look a certain way. About a year later, in nineteen
fifty six, he met civil rights activists Betty Sanders when
she joined his temple, and two years later when he
(24:24):
called her from a gas station phone and proposed. They
married in January nineteen fifty eight, and later that year
had the first of what would be six daughters.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, all daughters, right, the whole, all along the way,
even twins. I think the last ones born were twin daughters.
So yeah, you said that he wasn't really trying to
make friends, and he didn't care whether he ticked people off.
So the old guard, the existing guard of the Nation
of Islam, who had been around long before Malcolm X
(24:53):
came along, they were not happy with this. They did
not like to be told that they were dowe and
to diet or else they'd be suspended. But he was
attracting people who were very much in line with himself.
So very quickly, as he started to build up the
roles of the members of Nation of Islam, the philosophy
(25:13):
and the viewpoint of that group started to shift away
from the establishment that had been there up to that
point to this much more radical, much more politically active
version of the Nation of Islam. That was the Malcolm
X brand of Nation of Islam.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yeah, I mean, Elijah Muhammad told him to stay out
of politics because he was a complete separatist. He didn't
want to be involved in anything that the White America
was doing. But you know, Malcolm X basically started doing
his own thing. One of the big sort of early
things he did that ended up being a huge deal
was he founded their newspaper. It was called Mohammad Speaks,
(25:53):
and it became a really it had a pretty wide distribution,
and you know, I remember, even growing up seeing on
the streets of Atlanta members of the Nation of Islam.
I feel like they were giving him away. I don't
think they were selling them. But he had pretty firm
quotas established for members to give these things out and
(26:13):
had a pretty wide circulation.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, he also would do things like debate white people.
He did at Oxford, he did at Harvard on race relations.
He would take questions from white reporters. All of this
stuff was like not what Elijah Muhammad was jibing with,
but Malcolm X was getting such results that Elijah Muhammad
(26:36):
would just kind of be like, I don't want to
do in that. But then when Malcolm went ahead and
did it, there wouldn't be any real consequences for it. Right. So,
as he's doing this is becoming more and more emboldened.
And one of the things he sets his sight on, Chuck,
is that the American essentially the racial struggle in the
United States that was really beginning to become part of
(27:00):
the American preoccupation. At the same time in the fifties,
it was really civil rights movement was really starting to
take shape. And this, again, this was totally opposite from
what you were saying Elijah Muhammad wanted, which was isolation,
separatism not just from white America, from non black Muslim
black America too. Like he had no inclination to join
(27:22):
the civil rights Elijah Muhammad to join the civil rights
fight because they weren't black Muslims. So therefore they were
essentially lesser versions of Black Americans.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
You know, part of the complications of Malcolm X is
that he had some anti Semitic views at times.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
He had some.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Pretty dark views of Jews in America and I guess
all over the world, but specifically America. And this was
especially sort of a you know, a thumb in the
eye of Jewish people, because they were a lot of
Jewish people were the white people that were kind of
really heavily involved in the civil rights movement. Obviously, there
(28:03):
were all kinds of people, but Jewish people were leading
the charge for white America and the civil rights movement
for the most part.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, that's why they were also really highly critical of
the naacp is because they essentially said white people had
they'd allowed white people to join the white people had
taken over and were now steering the boat. So you
could not be white and be joined the Nation of Vislam.
I'm sorry, they would not let you in. Still won't
as far as I know.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, for sure. But the media was loving this.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
The media loves to pit people against one another, so
they had two really clear like you, I think you
described him as spoils early on in doctor Martin Luther
King and Malcolm X because it couldn't be any more different,
not only in kind of the way they looked and
how they talked and the things they were saying, but
their ultimate goals. So you know, they painted doctor King
(28:53):
as a saint, they paid in Malcolm X as a pariah,
and the I don't know if it's irony, but something
you can't forget is that, you know, Malcolm X was
making some waves, but his reach was nothing compared to
what doctor King was doing. He Doctor King was much
more of a threat, if you you know, as how
(29:14):
they would have called it back then to white America
and integration than Malcolm X was because he was he
was a fringe revolutionary at the time, so he was
you know, he was kind of fortunate to be in
the newspapers at all, even though you know, the media
was painting them as enemies and they kind of you know,
(29:35):
enemies is a weird word. They didn't hang out. Doctor
King didn't return calls. He was offered like debates for
Malcolm X and stuff like that, and he kind of
just didn't want anything to do with that brand because
he had such a sort of a good thing going
he had some momentum.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yeah, and he was worried also that you know, it
would it would scare the white coalition that he'd helped
build to support this civil rights movement away from the
civil rights movement all of a sudden. He's like, oh yeah,
and also this guy's philosophy too, we're going to incorporate
the race war. Yeah. He had every reason to stay
away from Malcolm X, and frankly kind of wisely did.
(30:14):
But like you said, this was the media saying, like,
you got Malcolm X, you got MLK, and that was
like both of them kind of fostered that idea because
if you had Malcolm X, and you know, you didn't
listen to MLK, then we were going to go the
Malcolm X way as far as America was concerned in
(30:36):
the near future. So we should probably go the way
that Martin Luther King is suggesting.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, you know, reading this stuff, I always was hoping
that I would find out that they were secretly in
cahoots with one another, Yeah, doing sort of a good
a good cop bad cop thing, because they were both
well aware of that, and I think they, judging from
what some of the quotes I've seen, they were both
aware that it was helping the cause ultimately. And even
(31:05):
Malcolm X, even though that's not what he was after,
he knew that there were gains coming on that side
because he was so scary to white America exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah. I think it was kind of like how food
companies price fixed. They don't have secret meetings, but they
just kind of make signals in the market in public,
and that's kind of what they think they were doing.
They were working together without actively working together.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, it's like food companies fixing grocery prices.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So yeah, and I mean, he was like really outspoken
about what he thought about doctor Martin Luther King. He
called them a fool and Uncle Tom. He also said
that he was subsidized by the white man, that the
essentially again that white people had taken over the real
levers of power with the civil rights movement and that
(31:53):
it was completely useless now. But even if that weren't
the case, he was such a critic of the civil
rights movement because he's he was basically saying, like, if
you're starting a revolution and the revolution's goal is to
love your enemy, like that's ridiculous, that's stupid, Like that's
never going to work. It doesn't even make sense. So
(32:13):
what are you doing? Like, all you're doing is distracting
and continuing to keep subjugated the people who you're supposedly
trying to liberate and integrate.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah, he called the March on Washington the farce on Washington.
Malcolm X did, and he said the quote was, whoever
heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing we shall overcome while
tripping and swaying along arm in arm with the very
people they're supposed to be angrily revolting against. Right, So,
you know, I'm not taking sides, but he's making a
(32:45):
lot of good points at the time. You know, I
think the idea that you can catch more flies with
honey than vinegar is true, But it was I think
they almost needed there almost needed to be two sides
of the same coin happening at the same time.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, I no know.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
It's pretty interesting how it all worked out. And if
you're wondering if the federal government was concerned, they absolutely were.
This started in nineteen fifty, when Malcolm X was still
in prison. He wrote a letter to Harry Truman, who
was president, and said, I'm a communist, I'm a post
of the Korean War, and President Truman said, maybe we
should get a file going on this guy with the FBI,
(33:23):
and they did that a couple of years later.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, he had also captured the attention of the NYPD
around that time where there was a protest because the
Harlem police had brutalized a member of the Nation of
Islam and there was just a bunch of people came
out on the street and were shouting about it because
the guy had been beaten so badly, off skull been
(33:47):
cracked open, and they wouldn't disperse. So Malcolm X was
inside essentially negotiating that the guy should get care and
taken to the hospital with the police officials and managed
to get them to agree to that, but the crowd
was still angry, wouldn't disperse, and the cops were trying
(34:07):
it wasn't very effective. So Malcolm X went outside and
apparently didn't say a word, just waved his hand and
the crowd stopped yelling and just dispersed. And apparently the
I think the police commissioner witnessed this and was like
that that's too much power for any one man to have,
especially somebody who believes that the black race is going
(34:29):
to take over from the white race, and that the
white races all devils like that scared them tremendously and
it also really caught their attention. He It put him
on their radar essentially forever.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
And as far as the FBI goes he you know,
like I said, they started a file on him, which
they also had on Martin Luther King and you know,
John Lennon and everybody else. We've talked about all this stuff.
But there was something they found out later from the
files was at one point Jay Edgar Hoover told the
New York Agency Office they needed to do something about
(35:04):
Malcolm X. But like you said, early on, they had
a hard time doing anything because in nineteen fifty eight,
an informant said that Malcolm X was of high moral character.
He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink, he's always on time
for appointments. He's kind of a stand up guy if
you if you're not listening to what he's saying.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
White America. Of course, that didn't matter.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
But they couldn't pin anything on him essentially, and they
even think, and I don't think it's a spoiler to
say that he was assassinated. But I feel like everyone
knows that, but they even think that the FBI, because
they had so many informants inside the Nation of Islam,
that they knew about the plot to assassinate him and
just let it happen.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, I saw that too, and not just the FBI,
but also the NYPD just let it happen. So just
real quick, Chuck, I say, we take a break in
a second and talk about his break with the Nation
of Islam. But I just wanted to kind of give
a thumbnail catch of like what he was saying. You
can go listen. You should start with maybe the ballot
or the bullet It is a great speech that gets
(36:07):
his point across from this era. But essentially what he
was saying is black people have to learn to do
for themselves. Integrating and then saying like you know, hey,
let's all just share from the same pot with white
people isn't going to work because white people will always
hang it over you. So we have to figure out
how to do it ourselves. Using the Nation of Islam.
That's how you prop somebody up, get them on the
(36:28):
right path, put them on the moral path in a
way from temptation, and then after that, you teach them
black nationalisms, so now they feel good about being a
black person, and then from that point on they have
the dignity and the motivation to make something for themselves
as a community. That was his goal. That's ultimately what
he was preaching. That was the kernel of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
So we're going to take that break and we're going
to come back with the sad end and the split
from the Nation of Islam right after this.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
So Chuck Malcolm X has become He's the face of
the Nation of Islam to the press, to the public.
People like they know the name Elijah Muhammad. You might
even have seen him speak, but it's way likeli er
that you've seen Malcolm X speak, and that's who you
associate is the head. So if you're the protege and
you become that the power kind of shifts like that.
(37:38):
The mentor doesn't usually like that kind of thing. Then
on top of it, the mentor Elijah Muhammad was starting
to get on in age, and so the people around
Elijah Muhammad, including his blood family, were worried that Malcolm
X would actually take over. So there was a lot
of reason for there would be jealousy, backbiting, court intrigue,
(37:58):
and get rid of Malcolm X one way or another,
and that's essentially what happened.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, I mean, his kids thought that they were going
to be next in line basically. And you know, I
mentioned the FBI had lots of people on the inside
of the Nation of Islam. They use those people to
kind of stoke that strife internally and you know, try
and disrupt it from within, and we're fairly successful at
that because it was not smooth sailing at this point.
(38:24):
So you know, the real fracture comes. You know, all
this is sort of leading up to what I think
was the real fracture was when Malcolm X finds out
about Elijah Muhammad having three children out of wedlock with
three very young members of the Nation of Islam and
essentially started looking upon him as a false prophet that
(38:47):
was just sort of a guy in power that was
using that power to Philander and he was like, I
don't think he's fit to lead the Nation of Islam anymore.
And in nineteen sixty three of April of that year,
he can fronted Elijah Muhammad about this, and that was
not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted to hear.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
No for sure, and now like now, Malcolm X was
a big problem because this is not something that Elijah
Muhammad wanted out to the public. It would immediately discredit him.
And so do you remember kind of at the beginning,
I was saying how Malcolm X had to kind of
compartmentalize and turn off critical thinking and stuff like that
to allow himself to submit to Elijah Muhammad. After this,
(39:28):
after he realized that this guy's actually not the real deal,
he was able to kind of grow and spread like
one of those sponge dinosaurs that you put water on
and they grow, or a different analogy would be like
Apache Chief in the Justice League when he grows like
really really big. Essentially, that happened the moment he realized
that Elijah Muhammad was a false prophet and he was
(39:50):
able to finally grow and become the Malcolm X that
he always had the potential to be. He had thrown
off the shackles placed on him. He gotten out from
under the thumb of the leader of the Nation of Islam.
But that also, unfortunately meant he had no place in
the Nation of Islam any longer.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Yeah, I think the final nail in the coffin was
when Kennedy was assassinated, he got explicit direction from Elijah
Muhammad to shut up about it, to not say anything
to the press, to just let this pass because it
was such a monumental thing for all of America, certainly
for white America. And he was like, we need to
(40:31):
stay out of this if we know it's good for us.
And Malcolm X did not do that. He went to
the reporters and he said that Kennedy's death was quote
a case of chickens coming home to roost end quote
and Elijah Muhammad was super upset. He said, you're suspended
for three months. A month into that, he removed him
(40:51):
from most of his leadership roles and that was the
writing was on the wall that that was really the
beginning of the final split.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Yeah, and just one little aside about that, chuck him
saying a case of chickens coming home to rest. There
is so much more background and subtext to it and
all the stuff he was saying that led up to that.
But that's the pull quote, right, that's the thing that
you just pull in. It sounds like a pretty awful
thing to say, or at least heartless, but if you
go back and read that stuff you like, you find
(41:20):
there's so much more context to the stuff he was
he's quoted for, and like you said, kind of toward
the beginning, a lot of it seems pretty reasonable when
you listen to the words he's saying.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
You know, after he was expelled basically not formally expelled,
but you know, removed from his formal duties, he went
down to stay with Cassius Clay future Muhammad Ali at
his place in Miami, and he stayed there per week.
He was giving him a spiritual guidance leading up to
his heavyweight bout with Sonny Liston, and he had not
(41:55):
cleared this with Elijah Mohammad, and Elijah Muhammad got mad
about that as well and left him off the guest
list for convention in February, where Cassius Clay you know,
had his coming out as Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
So that was a very meaningful snub at the time.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, I was disappointed in Muhammad Ali because he was
basically like, oh that sucks, man, Sorry, see you. Yeah.
So now this was the break, This was the schism,
and at this point now the Nation of Islam is
doing everything they can to mock and discredit Malcolm X
and say that he was a turncoat and a Benedict
Arnold and a hypocrite, and Malcolm xis gave it right back.
(42:36):
One of the first things he did was to tell
the media that Elijah Muhammad had kids out of wedlock
with teenage girls that were around him. He said that
he had eight kids with six teenage secretaries, and he
just told it to the press and that was a
really big deal. And I think at that point he
(42:57):
realized like he had just taken his life into his
own hands.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, So that's all basically sort of early through spring
nineteen sixty four. Later in nineteen sixty four, a very
important trip happened when he made the Haj to Mecca,
and this was, you know, kind of the final, big
life changing moment for him. He came back a Sunni
Islam member and he had changed his name from Malcolm
(43:23):
X to El Haj Malik l Schabaz, and I believe
even his wife and daughters took the name Shabbaz, like
you know, throughout the rest of their lives as well.
And while he was there, he had a transformation, another
transformation kind of like he did in prison. But the
other way, he came full circle and said, quote, he
(43:43):
had encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of
this earth, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like
I've never seen before. And he essentially flipped and said,
you know what, there are good white people and we
can and should work together. And he came back and
started to do that work and really poured himself for
the first time into the legit official civil rightsman.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah, he told Martin Luther King, like I'm all in.
He founded the Organization of Afro American Unity. He was
trying to essentially teach Black Americans about their African heritage,
but that at the same time he had also zoomed
in on this idea that he needed to take this
(44:24):
struggle for American civil rights to the world like the
UN or the African Congress and basically say, hey, this
is the same thing. This is part of the black
struggle worldwide, Like this is part of this global problem.
It's not separate, it's not its own thing. So we
need to figure out like all these other countries need
to get involved too and start pressuring the US to
(44:46):
do something about it, which is a pretty clever idea actually,
and it was not something that Martin Luther King was
doing at the time from what I understand.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, for sure they would eventually meet. That was a
very famous single meeting with Martin Luther King Junior and
Malcolm X. It was not something they planned because it's
not like Martin Luther King Junior got on board immediately
and was like, oh, great, you're joining the movement. Like
I don't think he still really liked him that much.
But they literally bumped into each other in the hallway
(45:17):
when they were at the Senate when the Civil Rights
Bill was being debated there at the Capitol Building, and
it was like, oh, it's you, and they shook hands.
I think he told him in person, I'm throwing myself
into the heart of the civil rights struggle face to face.
There was a photographer there, so there's a very famous
(45:37):
picture of them together. And then later that year in
July sixty four's when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act
and it was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. And
that was not the end for Malcolm X though he
thought he was just getting started.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Very sadly, Yeah, so this was you said, that was
May of nineteen sixty four. Within just a few months,
he would be dead. And it's just so sad that
he underwent that transformation and all of a sudden his
potential is really starting to blossom. He turned into like
a full butterfly for the first time, and he's struck down.
(46:17):
The first thing that happened that kind of just foreshadowed
his death was his house was firebombed by he was
quite sure members of the Nation of Islam. Apparently one
of the bombs was thrown through a window that would
have landed in and on the three of his little
girls in their room, but luckily it shattered on the
outside of the window and didn't make it through, but
(46:41):
it burned his house essentially down. And this was a
house that was owned by the Nation of Islam, so
they went as far as to accuse him of burning
it down because they had evicted him from the house,
and so out of spite, he burned it down, which
was obviously not true.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Yeah, which is full circle because I don't think we
mentioned that when their house was burned down when he
was a little kid, they actually accused his dad, Earl
of burning his own house down. So the same thing
happened all those years later. That was on February fourteenth,
nineteen sixty five. On February eighteenth, they formally evicted him,
and then on February twenty first, he was murdered. He
(47:19):
was shot and killed in front of his in front
of Betty, in front of the girls. I think there
were four girls at the time, because Betty was pregnant
with the twins that would be born after his death.
And this was in Harlem at an organization of Afro
American Unity meeting, and they arrested three members of the
Nation of Islam. One confessed and said the other two
(47:40):
weren't involved, but the all three were convicted, even though
later on, I think in twenty twenty one, the other
two were exonerated after the Attorney General of New York
saw that they had buried some exculpatory evidence back when
it happened.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Right, So you were talking about how the FBI let
it happen. The NYPD apparently helped pave the way by
arresting a couple of his bodyguards on bs charges. So
he was short security on that day and at his funeral,
like he had made quite a name for himself. I
think fifteen hundred people showed up, which is a pretty
(48:17):
good turnout for your funeral. And Ossie Davis, who was
very much in with the Martin Luther King version of
the civil rights movement, he led at Malcolm X's funeral
because he was just that moved by him, even though
he didn't see eye had eye on a bunch of stuff, Like,
he realized what a loss this was for the black
(48:37):
community in the world.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
You know, I mentioned that the twins were born after
he died. They you know, obviously grew up without their dad,
and the other girls weren't that much older, and they
always just knew him as dad. He you know, I
think the ones that were kind of didn't even know
him at all. They weren't raised by Betty as like, hey,
(49:02):
your dad was a revolutionary, he was this or that.
Apparently they'd learned about him mainly in school because Betty
always wanted him just to be a dad and my husband,
and so they were. You know, they went on to
do a lot of great things as well. We should
probably do one on Betty Shabaz at some point. She
was a great woman, and his daughters all, you know,
became activists in their own way as well.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
So yeah, I kind of mentioned like how just sad
this is that he was struck down, especially at the
time he was struck down. But if you look back
at like the timeframe of all this stuff, this guy
changed the world or left such an indelible mark that
people are still learning from him all these years later,
over essentially the course of ten years. That was about
(49:47):
the timeline that we're talking about, from when he took
up the Nation of Islam's teachings to when he was
assassinated by the Nation of Islam. It was just about
a decade and that's how much of an impact that
he made over just that time.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, there was a pretty great quote that who is
this was this Julia.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
That helped us with you, Yeah, Julia helped uspeak time.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah, she found a great quote from a poet Maya Angelou,
who Malcolm X visited in at her home in Ghana
at one point and basically kind of summarizing what guts
it took to make that transformation in full public public view,
after being so public and militant. She said that it
takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to
(50:31):
say say everybody, you remember what I said yesterday, Well
I found out that's wrong, and she just thought that
was an amazing thing to be able to do. And
it really was. You know, not a lot of people
can can own up to kind of being on what
they thought later was the wrong path.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
You know. Yeah, it is remarkable. So you can go
read the autobiography of Malcolm X. Also, I've seen that
Malcolm X be is a really great book. I think
it's his collected speeches. There's the Spike Lee movie, there's
Make It Plain, the PBS documentary, and then there's just
tons of like his speeches are just all over YouTube.
(51:11):
So if you're interested in this at all, like there's
a lot you can still learn from Malcolm X, even
with him being dead all these years.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
Yeah, I can't recommend the book and the movie enough.
The book sold four hundred thousand copies. The Year was
released in nineteen sixty seven and has sold five million
to date. And the movie was a big kit too.
It grows close to fifty million bucks, which is not
bad for a long, you know, true story biopic like
you know, with political overtones. It had a couple of
(51:42):
Academy Award nominees. Certainly Denzel because he was amazing as always,
and the great Ruth E. Carter for costume design. Even
though neither one would win, it was fairly controversial when
al Pacino won for Scent of a Woman over Denzel Real.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
People thought it was a pretty big snub, including Spike Lee.
He thought it was due to the controversy of the film,
obviously in the character, and he also thought it was
a bit of a makeup call for Pacino losing so
many times, so he would get some due though later
in twenty ten, when the film was added to the
National Film Registry as being culturally, historically, or esthetically significantly beautiful.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
That's a great ending, Charles, You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (52:29):
That's it?
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Well, that's it for Malcolm X. Chuck just said that's it,
So obviously everybody, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
Yeah, this one's a little long, but it's one of
the great emails we've gotten. Because after we did our
what I think was a really fun episode on the
Fire Festival debacles, we heard, you know, in that we
talked about the Magnesis credit card and we heard from
an actual holder of that credit card, which was great.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Did you see this, so I haven't seen that yet.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
It's pretty fantastic.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
So hey, guys here and you talk about this credit
card brought me back to some very special memories of
my early days in New York. When I first moved
there in twenty fourteen, I stumbled upon the Magnesis and
thought it sounded like the perfect way to meet new people.
Since I was new, there in excess the cool and
exclusive parties and parts of the city, so I applied
and was surprised.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
To be accepted as a member.
Speaker 3 (53:26):
I quickly found myself at fun rooftop parties with open bars,
great tickets to shows and sports games, and snagging reservations
for restaurants that were impossible to book, all of which
seemed to be too good to be true for the
two hundred and fifty dollars annual feet, which should have
been my first clue that something was wrong. The first
reel crack came when I took advantage of an offer
to get floor seats to a Beyonce concert for only
(53:47):
two hundred dollars and had to obtain the tickets by
meeting a quote Magnesis concierge and the parking lot outside.
Speaker 1 (53:54):
Of the indue.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
The tickets I got felt like they had just been
bought from a scalper, and they probably were.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
But it did work out and it was a great show.
Not long after, I had.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
Will call tickets to an NBA game through a quote
partnership they had with the team. When my friends and
I showed up to grab the seats, know and behind
the ticket counter, I had ever heard of Magnesis. That
was a moment I started asking questions, and when I
reached out about the issue and about canceling my membership,
they actually refunded it almost immediately. In fact, they refunded
(54:24):
my fees so quickly it was almost alarming, like they
were hoping I'd just.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
Quietly go away.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
Thankfully, I managed to exit the whole thing before the
house of cards came crashing down. So hearing you guys
explain how the whole thing worked was fascinating and weirdly nostalgic.
Despite the sketchiness at the end, I actually do have
some pretty fun memories from that brief period when it
felt like I had unlocked some secret VIP version of
New York City.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Look forward to your next stop at the Bell House,
and that is from Kevin.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
Kevin, that really was one of the all time best
emails we've gotten.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, I was hoping a Magnusis member would write in,
and we got it.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Look at you. You should be playing the lotto.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
That probably should.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Thanks a lot, Kevin. If you want to be like
Kevin and send us one of our all time great emails,
we always love those. You can wrap it up, spank
it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
A production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Son, Josh,
And there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, just being quiet
as a church mouse. And this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's because he told her to zip it.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I was gonna leave that part out. You're gonna get
hate mail for that one.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm surprised we're just now getting to this.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I went through a Malcolm X phase in college. I
wasn't one of those guys walking around Georgia with a
Malcolm X hat on.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You weren't wearing like, Okay, I have a great story,
but please go ahead.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
It was after I saw the movie because I was
a big you still am big Spike Lee guy. So
I saw the movie in ninety two and then read
the autobiography that with Alex Haley right after that, Yeah,
and was just super into a story at the time.
It's been a while, though.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, I have just entered my Malcolm X's face. I uh,
just researching him. I accidentally got radicalized, and I've got
his autobiography on the way. It should get here today. Great,
but it's it's crazy, Chuck, because like, especially as just
white people of our generation, if you hadn't already gotten
(01:23):
into him and like seing the Spike Lee movie and
read his autobiography and just started to read his speeches
and stuff, if you just kind of knew him like
I had up to this point, Like you knew him
as the guy who said, like by any means necessary,
that he was he was militant, that he was essentially
the foil to doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and that
(01:47):
he and King kind of represented these two this fork
in the road that America had to kind of choose between,
because there was at this point in like the fifties,
starting in the fifties, there was no way for America
to just stand there at the crossroads any longer. Like
like America as a whole had to make a choice
which way we're gonna go race war or integration, peaceful integration.
(02:10):
And that's what Malcolm X represented to white America. Race war,
like black militants taking over killing white people mercilessly, ruthlessly
because white people had it coming. Or you know, everybody's
much more familiar with the Martin Luther King Junior way,
but there's so much more to it than that, and
(02:30):
just researching this this guy, I like, I'm I don't
even want to say a fan, because I think that
kind of undermines like the respect I have for him now,
Like he's he's an amazing figure.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
It turns out, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
And you know, when I was in high school, there
was a big This Is you know, I graduated eighty nine,
the movie was ninety two, so this was leading up
to the film, which obviously put things on a much
bigger sort of platform. But it was a big deal
in the eighties. Like, there was a big sort of
at least in the South. I don't know how it
was everywhere else, but there was a big movement among
(03:07):
you know, the black students at my school to get
in touch with the African heritage. Malcolm X hats were
all over the place in my school, and he was
just sort of in the forefront, I guess, kind of
like my junior and senior year. So it was striking
to me that we didn't learn about him in high school.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, but if you step back and really think about it,
it's not very surprising, you know.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Well, I mean looking back at the substandard public school
education I got.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Correct, Yeah, but also the white washed and sanitized version
where it's like, Okay, we'll tell you about Martin Luther
King Junior, but don't ask about Malto's. Yes, you don't
want to know about him.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
He was a rough dude, but he yes, or anyone else.
It was just Martin Luther King exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah. He did the whole thing by himself, it turns out. Yeah,
so yeah, I remember that same era as well. Okay,
so I say we get into this because we could
probably sit here and do an intro and it would
end up being the entire thing. Well, let's jump in
and everybody else can kind of make up their own
minds about how you feel about Malcolm X and just
(04:12):
kind of asit decide to start. I would definitely recommend
going and watching the documentary on him. That American experience
did I think in the nineties, make it plain. And
then I read a bunch of articles and the best
one I read was the Achievement of Malcolm X by
John J. Simon. That was in the Monthly Review. That
was a really good comprehensive one too.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, and see that's Spike Lee movie Exception. I've not
seen it, man, you gotta check it out.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I will. Okay, So we're talking about Malcolm X. If
you hadn't figured that out by now, and you may
or may not know that Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little.
That was his given name. He was born back in
nineteen twenty five in Omaha, Nebraska, and from the outset,
he was essentially raised in a very black conscious family,
(05:04):
so he was aware of the state of racial affairs
in the United States as a very young person and
oppression that black people lived under at the time and
still do him many ways.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah, for sure. His dad, Earle was a Baptist lay speaker,
his mother Louise Little. They were both members of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was a Marcus Garvey joint
someone else we never learned about in high school. And
they moved to Milwaukee for a little while. Then eventually
in nineteen twenty eight, when little Malcolm was three, landed
(05:36):
in Michigan, and they landed in a white neighborhood and
that was a big problem because they were not wanted there,
and Earle Little was not the kind of guy to
just pack up and leave because his neighbors didn't want
him there, so he stayed and the community had a
clause in their hoa covenant that said that basically no
(05:57):
one was allowed to sell a house to non white people,
and so they sued to a victim. And while that
was kind of going through, even before the eviction was finalized,
a group of white men burned their house to the
ground without any firefighters even showing up.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Right, So whether they wanted to move or not, they
had to now, and they moved a little further out
of where they lived, still in the Lansing area, And
I don't know when the house burned, but just within
a year or two maybe less. Malcolm was six years
old and his father died. He died in a mysterious,
bizarre streetcar accident where he was run over by a streetcar.
(06:36):
And that's just the official line on the whole thing.
In fact, I think it was. It ended up being
ruled a suicide. But according to Malcolm his family, his mother,
like his father, was murdered, probably by a clan affiliated
group called the Black Legion who operated in Michigan back then,
and that was pretty much what the family was convinced of,
(06:58):
that his father had been murdered. Then, on top of that,
no one would admit that his father was murdered, which
I'm sure makes that kind of experience that much harder.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, I mean there was actual evidence that was ignored.
He had clearly been beaten and placed on the tracks,
so it was kind of just brushed under the table.
It was very upsetting for a young Malcolm because that
was like the rumor. It was all around the school
and everything, so he was hearing all these stories and
it was, you know, definitely a big early sort of
(07:31):
kind of forking the road for him, and that his
family was left without their dad.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
They, like you said, ruled it a suicide.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
But I think she got like one thousand dollars in
one life insurance payment. Louise did, which would be about
twenty five grand a day, but was denied because of
the suicide claim, a much larger insurance claim. So she
didn't have a lot of dough to feed.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
What was eight kids?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Eight kids, man, and now she suddenly on her own
and she had a nervous breakdown, is what you would
call it. I think that she was diagnosed as paranoid
and was transferred to this state hospital in Kalamazoo where
she stayed. This is in the mid thirties. She stayed
there until nineteen sixty four, I think like twenty six
(08:18):
years or something like that, and all of a sudden,
Malcolm and his seven siblings are without parents. They're orphans essentially,
and they become wards of the state and they're broken up.
So just in a very short time couple of years,
Malcolm goes from having a stable home life to his
father being murdered, his mother having a nervous breakdown and
(08:39):
being institutionalized, and his siblings being spread out throughout the
foster system around Lansing. That's just what happened to him.
And if you know a little bit about Malcolm X,
you might know that he started out as a criminal.
What's astounding, Chuck, is this is not when his life
of crime began. He actually went the exact opposite.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Route, well a little both.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
He started stealing stuff when he was nine because he
had to do something to provide for their family. But
he never got caught there And you know, wil Gover's
his former formal rap.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Sheet here in a minute.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
But he was sent to a juvenile detention center in Mason, Michigan.
It was about ten miles south of Lansing, and he
went to a white school, and he did a great job.
He was he's a really you know, was a really
smart guy, a really smart kid, and made really good grades.
He was very charismatic from the beginning. He was elected
(09:39):
class president. Yeah, and had dreams of going to law
school before his white teacher said a pretty terrible thing
to him.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, it was an English teacher. And this is a
one of the probably one of the This is the
second pivotal moment in his life where he had the
rug pull out from under him, He had the wind
taken out of his sales. He got punched in the
bread basket you want to put it because the English teacher.
He told the English teacher that he was dreaming of
becoming a lawyer, and the English teachers like, I think
(10:08):
America would accept you more as a carpenter, Like that's
the kind of profession you need to go in, you
need to be realistic about. And then essentially being a
black person in America, it's not, the teacher said, but
the point was the same, and it just completely sucked
the life and enthusiasm for learning that he had up
(10:30):
to that point right out of him.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, he quit school. He never went to school again
after that. And he had a very promising academic career
in front of him, which is super sad. So at
fifteen he goes to live with his half sister in
Boston and eventually would get a job working at the railroad.
So he started traveling around some and by seventeen found
(10:53):
himself living in Harlem. And this is where he got
the name that stuck with him. You know, during his
sort of early tea or later teenage years.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
I guess Red.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
He had this red hair, so he was either Detroit
Red or Big Red because he was a tall guy.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
He's six foot four.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
In just a little fun side note, while he was
in Harlem, he was working at a chicken shack with
a guy named John Sandford, and he was Chicago Red
and Malcolm was Detroit Red. And he was trying. John
Sandford was trying to be a stand up comic and
that ended up being Red Box.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
That's right of Sandford in something. Yeah, I love that
little fact. So yeah, he was. He became a I
guess he'd call him a petty criminal, but he was.
He took all of that kind of charisma and charm
and initiative and turned it. He directed it toward a
life of crime. He's often described as a pimp, although
he was never a pimp. He seemed more like the
(11:50):
kind of guy who just knew where to get whatever
you wanted, and that included sex workers, that included drugs.
He loved pot, he loved gambling, and he actually committed
a lot of his crimes like burglary, theft, that kind
of stuff just to support his habits, which eventually turned
(12:10):
into cocaine, which even back then was more expensive. And again,
he loved to gamble, so he needed to keep both
of those things up, and that was a large reason
why he was such a prolific criminal during this time.
Another reason is that he just the options that he
had hadn't really panned out very well for him. Like
he had a few jobs up to this point, but
(12:32):
he realized, like, I'm not going to get anywhere serving
sandwiches on a train, I'm not going to get anywhere
shining shoes, Like I might as well make away for myself,
and the only way to make away for myself in
this situation is crime.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, for sure. He was arrested a couple of times.
He was arrested at nineteen allegedly stealing his half sisters
for coat, whom he lived with pretty low hanging fruit.
Got arrested again when he allegedly mugged a friend of
his at gunpoint, and neither one of those amounted too much.
But finally he was arrested for a third time after
(13:07):
he'd been doing a series of burglaries of wealthy homes
with a kind of a small crew. It was him,
it was another black man and three white women. Yeah,
and I mentioned everyone's race there, because when they got
caught on this one, the three white women just got
slaps on the wrist and basically got let go, and
the two men were sentenced to eight to ten in
the Hoofscow.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, and they would have gotten much worse than that
documentary make it plain. The other guy, his friend, Malcolm Jarvis.
He said that they tried to get the women to
say that the Malcolm X and Malcolm Jarvis had raped
them and had all they had to do was say that,
and they would have been convicted of that and sentenced
to a couple more decades for that. And luckily they
(13:51):
were tight enough with these women that they said, no,
we're not going to do that, despite the pressure that
they were under.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Two Yeah, for sure. So prison is where a lot
happened to him. In prison sort of one of his
first big transformations. He spent about almost seven years there
for that burglary, and he was about twenty years old
at the time, and it was in prison where he
really kind of found himself for the I guess for
(14:19):
the first time as an adult, and that he remembered like, Hey,
I'm a smart guy, and I used to love academia
and learning. So he started he became a voracious reader
again in prison. He apparently tried to memorize the Dictionary
in prison and was reading anything he could get his
hands on, including, eventually which would really transform his life,
(14:41):
the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, who was a leader of
the Nation of Islam at the time.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, and before he kind of came on to those
teachings from his siblings, I think who encouraged him to
start looking into that. And he had a real aversion
to any kind of religion. He was actually known as
Satan by the other prisoners in the correctional facility he
was in. But the reason he was able to read
(15:07):
so much, Chuck, is because he happened to be in
MCI Norfolk in Massachusetts, and it's well known to have
a lot, like a huge library, connections with like MIT
and Harvard and all that stuff. So it was actually
the perfect prison for him to land in. So he
was able to kind of educate himself from that point on.
And then when he finally did start taking up the
(15:27):
teachings of Elijah Mohammad, it just clicked. And it was
even further, I guess reinforced when he started writing letters
to Elijah Mohammad and Elijah Muhammad started writing back to him.
That really encouraged him big time.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, you know why because he didn't have to write
letters to get those books like Andy Defrain, Yeah in
the Shawshing.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Redemption, No, they just threw them at you.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, he was of course because it was Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
So yeah, he started, you know basically it became a
pinpal with Elijah Mohammed and really became a hardcore Muslim
pretty quickly after reading you know, his works, and became
an ascetic. So that means no drugs, no booze, no pork,
no movies or music, no gambling, no dancing, like the
(16:17):
real straight and narrow. And you know, we'll later find
out that that became a bit of a riff later on,
because he didn't think Elijah Muhammad at one point was
sort of walking the walk where as he really was
from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, for sure, like and he did throughout too. Like
the FBI tried and tried and tried to get something
on him, and they couldn't get anything. Like, He's just
that upstanding and moral from that point on. I also,
I had never even thought to wonder, but I had
no idea why his last name was X. I was
pretty surprised to learn this, But it makes a lot
(16:51):
of sense.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
You didn't know that, no, Okay, I thought that would
have been sort of just the basic common knowledge.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
But maybe not.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I mean, maybe it is, but I'm I'm pretty uncommon, right, You're.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
An uncommon podcaster.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
So yeah, he dropped the name little because and a
lot of people in the Nation of Islam did and
do this because that was he thought that was his
slave name, so he rid himself of that name and
replaced it with an X.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah. He also one of the reasons he despised religion.
He despised Christianity in general because he considered that the
slave religion that was given to the African slaves to
essentially keep them in line, and so it was actually
it was a big deal that he became this devotee
(17:40):
of this religion and this particular religion. Just really quick,
if you're not familiar with the Nation of Islam, it
is not the same thing as Islam that was that
emerged out of the Middle East several hundred years ago.
It bears like a slight resemblance to it, but it
is essentially a completely altered version that has a lot
(18:04):
of theology that seems very odd to outsiders.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah, I mean they were Muslim, but you know, I
know you've and this is stuff I didn't know that
you found some stuff about Elijah Muhammad's original beliefs that
I was I was just sort of shocked by.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, so you've heard white devils before. I mean, you
have to was listening to like ICEQB. He always talks
about white devils. But that is actually a teaching from
the Nation of Islam from Elijah Muhammad, and it predates him.
The Nation of Islam had been around for a few
decades before Elijah Muhammad was its prophet. But the reason
(18:43):
that they call white people white devils is because, according
to black Muslim theology. There was a genius named yaka
Black Genius who created white people by bleaching black people
and he mutated them into white, blue eyed devils. And
the reason why is he wanted to basically put the
(19:06):
black race to the test, so he put them in
a subjugated position because he allowed these white people to
be devils, to basically act like white people have treated
black people since time immemorial. And that this rain would
last about six millennia, and that the six millennia were
(19:26):
almost up, and that this was the time when the
black race would rise and take over from the white devils.
Who would who would really regret the stuff that they
had done up to that point after.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
That ye, which would have placed it about nineteen seventy.
And so white Americans hearing this at the time, they
thought that's when like the race war was coming.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Was was nineteen seventy or thereabouts.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, and we talked about that before and like, I
never really understood it, but this is a big, big
reason that white America was like, there's go to be
a race war. It's like coming, it's inevitable. That was
a big part of it. So, yeah, this was and
this wasn't like metaphorical. This is from what I understand,
it's a it's a literal interpretation of where white people
(20:13):
came from six thousand years ago. So this was the
This was what Malcolm X was being indoctrinated into. And
he was a smart guy, so he he had to
submit himself, like he had to take parts of his
brain and just turn them off. The suspicious part of him,
as far as like what he was being taught had
to be turned off, the critical thinking part, as far
(20:34):
as anything goes with the religion that he took on.
He was able to compartmentalize, turn it off, and throw
himself fully into it. And he was for the first
decade essentially that he was a black Muslim, the best
thing that ever happened to the Nation of Islam by far.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Yeah, for sure, that seems like a pretty good place
for a break.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
All right, we'll be right back, everybody with more on
Malcolm X. So Malcolm X is granted parole in nineteen
(21:21):
fifty two. He gets out of prison a completely different
person than who entered prison almost seven years earlier, and
he was on a mission to recruit and get as
many people as he could to join the Nation of
Islam and had a direct sort of go get him
tiger from Elijah Muhammad, And so as soon as he
(21:44):
was paroled, he joined Temple Number one in Detroit. He
traveled to Chicago to meet Elijah Mohammad in person, and
he said, like I said, he said, you know, go
out there and do your thing. Like he knew he
had a sort of a shining star because he was again,
he was taugh he was handsome, he was charismatic, he
was super smart. And within a year there were only
(22:06):
about four hundred members of the Nation of Islam at
the time. Within a year he brought that to about
a thousand, but that would grow to six thousand by
nineteen fifty five, and then in the early nineteen sixties
about seventy five thousand, up from a four hundred when
Malcolm X came on the scene. So a lot of that,
not all of it, obviously, but a lot of that
(22:27):
is really due to him being the face you know,
I guess sort of the second face and then ultimately
the face of the Nation of Islam.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yeah, for sure, his rhetoric, the things he was saying,
and like you said, the charisma and just how well
spoken he was, and the points he makes, it's like,
you can be white and he's talking about you being
a white devil. Sorry, you all white people are white devil's.
He was uncompromising in that right. It wasn't like, yeah,
I mean some of them are okay. No, white people
were okay in this philosophy. And he in addition to
(22:58):
that rhetoric, he also just knew how to work the
media and what you know, levers to pull, and he
pushed Elijah Muhammad way out of his comfort zone to
allow him to do new stuff with the Nation of
Islam that helped bring in tons and tons of people.
One of the first big ones was a documentary from
(23:19):
Mike Wallace of all People back in nineteen fifty nine
called The Hate that Hate Produced, and it just basically said,
look at these guys, but at the same time, listen
to what these guys have to say. And it exposed
the world to black Muslims and it really helped drive
up membership.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, for sure, he was not trying to make friends
in his job, even within his own community. You know,
we talked about him being a hardliner and ascetic, and
he said that everyone should practice asceticism. And you know,
he went to Philadelphia at one point in nineteen fifty
five and said, all right, everyone here is.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Needs to get their act together. You need to lose weight.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Even he had leaders in Philadelphia weighing their members twice
a week, and there were penalties if you didn't lose
the poundage that he required because he wanted everyone to
look a certain way. About a year later, in nineteen
fifty six, he met civil rights activists Betty Sanders when
she joined his temple, and two years later when he
(24:24):
called her from a gas station phone and proposed. They
married in January nineteen fifty eight, and later that year
had the first of what would be six daughters.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, all daughters, right, the whole, all along the way,
even twins. I think the last ones born were twin daughters.
So yeah, you said that he wasn't really trying to
make friends, and he didn't care whether he ticked people off.
So the old guard, the existing guard of the Nation
of Islam, who had been around long before Malcolm X
(24:53):
came along, they were not happy with this. They did
not like to be told that they were dowe and
to diet or else they'd be suspended. But he was
attracting people who were very much in line with himself.
So very quickly, as he started to build up the
roles of the members of Nation of Islam, the philosophy
(25:13):
and the viewpoint of that group started to shift away
from the establishment that had been there up to that
point to this much more radical, much more politically active
version of the Nation of Islam. That was the Malcolm
X brand of Nation of Islam.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yeah, I mean, Elijah Muhammad told him to stay out
of politics because he was a complete separatist. He didn't
want to be involved in anything that the White America
was doing. But you know, Malcolm X basically started doing
his own thing. One of the big sort of early
things he did that ended up being a huge deal
was he founded their newspaper. It was called Mohammad Speaks,
(25:53):
and it became a really it had a pretty wide distribution,
and you know, I remember, even growing up seeing on
the streets of Atlanta members of the Nation of Islam.
I feel like they were giving him away. I don't
think they were selling them. But he had pretty firm
quotas established for members to give these things out and
(26:13):
had a pretty wide circulation.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, he also would do things like debate white people.
He did at Oxford, he did at Harvard on race relations.
He would take questions from white reporters. All of this
stuff was like not what Elijah Muhammad was jibing with,
but Malcolm X was getting such results that Elijah Muhammad
(26:36):
would just kind of be like, I don't want to
do in that. But then when Malcolm went ahead and
did it, there wouldn't be any real consequences for it. Right. So,
as he's doing this is becoming more and more emboldened.
And one of the things he sets his sight on, Chuck,
is that the American essentially the racial struggle in the
United States that was really beginning to become part of
(27:00):
the American preoccupation. At the same time in the fifties,
it was really civil rights movement was really starting to
take shape. And this, again, this was totally opposite from
what you were saying Elijah Muhammad wanted, which was isolation,
separatism not just from white America, from non black Muslim
black America too. Like he had no inclination to join
(27:22):
the civil rights Elijah Muhammad to join the civil rights
fight because they weren't black Muslims. So therefore they were
essentially lesser versions of Black Americans.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
You know, part of the complications of Malcolm X is
that he had some anti Semitic views at times.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
He had some.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Pretty dark views of Jews in America and I guess
all over the world, but specifically America. And this was
especially sort of a you know, a thumb in the
eye of Jewish people, because they were a lot of
Jewish people were the white people that were kind of
really heavily involved in the civil rights movement. Obviously, there
(28:03):
were all kinds of people, but Jewish people were leading
the charge for white America and the civil rights movement
for the most part.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, that's why they were also really highly critical of
the naacp is because they essentially said white people had
they'd allowed white people to join the white people had
taken over and were now steering the boat. So you
could not be white and be joined the Nation of Vislam.
I'm sorry, they would not let you in. Still won't
as far as I know.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, for sure. But the media was loving this.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
The media loves to pit people against one another, so
they had two really clear like you, I think you
described him as spoils early on in doctor Martin Luther
King and Malcolm X because it couldn't be any more different,
not only in kind of the way they looked and
how they talked and the things they were saying, but
their ultimate goals. So you know, they painted doctor King
(28:53):
as a saint, they paid in Malcolm X as a pariah,
and the I don't know if it's irony, but something
you can't forget is that, you know, Malcolm X was
making some waves, but his reach was nothing compared to
what doctor King was doing. He Doctor King was much
more of a threat, if you you know, as how
(29:14):
they would have called it back then to white America
and integration than Malcolm X was because he was he
was a fringe revolutionary at the time, so he was
you know, he was kind of fortunate to be in
the newspapers at all, even though you know, the media
was painting them as enemies and they kind of you know,
(29:35):
enemies is a weird word. They didn't hang out. Doctor
King didn't return calls. He was offered like debates for
Malcolm X and stuff like that, and he kind of
just didn't want anything to do with that brand because
he had such a sort of a good thing going
he had some momentum.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yeah, and he was worried also that you know, it
would it would scare the white coalition that he'd helped
build to support this civil rights movement away from the
civil rights movement all of a sudden. He's like, oh yeah,
and also this guy's philosophy too, we're going to incorporate
the race war. Yeah. He had every reason to stay
away from Malcolm X, and frankly kind of wisely did.
(30:14):
But like you said, this was the media saying, like,
you got Malcolm X, you got MLK, and that was
like both of them kind of fostered that idea because
if you had Malcolm X, and you know, you didn't
listen to MLK, then we were going to go the
Malcolm X way as far as America was concerned in
(30:36):
the near future. So we should probably go the way
that Martin Luther King is suggesting.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, you know, reading this stuff, I always was hoping
that I would find out that they were secretly in
cahoots with one another, Yeah, doing sort of a good
a good cop bad cop thing, because they were both
well aware of that, and I think they, judging from
what some of the quotes I've seen, they were both
aware that it was helping the cause ultimately. And even
(31:05):
Malcolm X, even though that's not what he was after,
he knew that there were gains coming on that side
because he was so scary to white America exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah. I think it was kind of like how food
companies price fixed. They don't have secret meetings, but they
just kind of make signals in the market in public,
and that's kind of what they think they were doing.
They were working together without actively working together.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, it's like food companies fixing grocery prices.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So yeah, and I mean, he was like really outspoken
about what he thought about doctor Martin Luther King. He
called them a fool and Uncle Tom. He also said
that he was subsidized by the white man, that the
essentially again that white people had taken over the real
levers of power with the civil rights movement and that
(31:53):
it was completely useless now. But even if that weren't
the case, he was such a critic of the civil
rights movement because he's he was basically saying, like, if
you're starting a revolution and the revolution's goal is to
love your enemy, like that's ridiculous, that's stupid, Like that's
never going to work. It doesn't even make sense. So
(32:13):
what are you doing? Like, all you're doing is distracting
and continuing to keep subjugated the people who you're supposedly
trying to liberate and integrate.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah, he called the March on Washington the farce on Washington.
Malcolm X did, and he said the quote was, whoever
heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing we shall overcome while
tripping and swaying along arm in arm with the very
people they're supposed to be angrily revolting against. Right, So,
you know, I'm not taking sides, but he's making a
(32:45):
lot of good points at the time. You know, I
think the idea that you can catch more flies with
honey than vinegar is true, But it was I think
they almost needed there almost needed to be two sides
of the same coin happening at the same time.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, I no know.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
It's pretty interesting how it all worked out. And if
you're wondering if the federal government was concerned, they absolutely were.
This started in nineteen fifty, when Malcolm X was still
in prison. He wrote a letter to Harry Truman, who
was president, and said, I'm a communist, I'm a post
of the Korean War, and President Truman said, maybe we
should get a file going on this guy with the FBI,
(33:23):
and they did that a couple of years later.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, he had also captured the attention of the NYPD
around that time where there was a protest because the
Harlem police had brutalized a member of the Nation of
Islam and there was just a bunch of people came
out on the street and were shouting about it because
the guy had been beaten so badly, off skull been
(33:47):
cracked open, and they wouldn't disperse. So Malcolm X was
inside essentially negotiating that the guy should get care and
taken to the hospital with the police officials and managed
to get them to agree to that, but the crowd
was still angry, wouldn't disperse, and the cops were trying
(34:07):
it wasn't very effective. So Malcolm X went outside and
apparently didn't say a word, just waved his hand and
the crowd stopped yelling and just dispersed. And apparently the
I think the police commissioner witnessed this and was like
that that's too much power for any one man to have,
especially somebody who believes that the black race is going
(34:29):
to take over from the white race, and that the
white races all devils like that scared them tremendously and
it also really caught their attention. He It put him
on their radar essentially forever.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
And as far as the FBI goes he you know,
like I said, they started a file on him, which
they also had on Martin Luther King and you know,
John Lennon and everybody else. We've talked about all this stuff.
But there was something they found out later from the
files was at one point Jay Edgar Hoover told the
New York Agency Office they needed to do something about
(35:04):
Malcolm X. But like you said, early on, they had
a hard time doing anything because in nineteen fifty eight,
an informant said that Malcolm X was of high moral character.
He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink, he's always on time
for appointments. He's kind of a stand up guy if
you if you're not listening to what he's saying.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
White America. Of course, that didn't matter.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
But they couldn't pin anything on him essentially, and they
even think, and I don't think it's a spoiler to
say that he was assassinated. But I feel like everyone
knows that, but they even think that the FBI, because
they had so many informants inside the Nation of Islam,
that they knew about the plot to assassinate him and
just let it happen.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, I saw that too, and not just the FBI,
but also the NYPD just let it happen. So just
real quick, Chuck, I say, we take a break in
a second and talk about his break with the Nation
of Islam. But I just wanted to kind of give
a thumbnail catch of like what he was saying. You
can go listen. You should start with maybe the ballot
or the bullet It is a great speech that gets
(36:07):
his point across from this era. But essentially what he
was saying is black people have to learn to do
for themselves. Integrating and then saying like you know, hey,
let's all just share from the same pot with white
people isn't going to work because white people will always
hang it over you. So we have to figure out
how to do it ourselves. Using the Nation of Islam.
That's how you prop somebody up, get them on the
(36:28):
right path, put them on the moral path in a
way from temptation, and then after that, you teach them
black nationalisms, so now they feel good about being a
black person, and then from that point on they have
the dignity and the motivation to make something for themselves
as a community. That was his goal. That's ultimately what
he was preaching. That was the kernel of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
So we're going to take that break and we're going
to come back with the sad end and the split
from the Nation of Islam right after this.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
So Chuck Malcolm X has become He's the face of
the Nation of Islam to the press, to the public.
People like they know the name Elijah Muhammad. You might
even have seen him speak, but it's way likeli er
that you've seen Malcolm X speak, and that's who you
associate is the head. So if you're the protege and
you become that the power kind of shifts like that.
(37:38):
The mentor doesn't usually like that kind of thing. Then
on top of it, the mentor Elijah Muhammad was starting
to get on in age, and so the people around
Elijah Muhammad, including his blood family, were worried that Malcolm
X would actually take over. So there was a lot
of reason for there would be jealousy, backbiting, court intrigue,
(37:58):
and get rid of Malcolm X one way or another,
and that's essentially what happened.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, I mean, his kids thought that they were going
to be next in line basically. And you know, I
mentioned the FBI had lots of people on the inside
of the Nation of Islam. They use those people to
kind of stoke that strife internally and you know, try
and disrupt it from within, and we're fairly successful at
that because it was not smooth sailing at this point.
(38:24):
So you know, the real fracture comes. You know, all
this is sort of leading up to what I think
was the real fracture was when Malcolm X finds out
about Elijah Muhammad having three children out of wedlock with
three very young members of the Nation of Islam and
essentially started looking upon him as a false prophet that
(38:47):
was just sort of a guy in power that was
using that power to Philander and he was like, I
don't think he's fit to lead the Nation of Islam anymore.
And in nineteen sixty three of April of that year,
he can fronted Elijah Muhammad about this, and that was
not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted to hear.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
No for sure, and now like now, Malcolm X was
a big problem because this is not something that Elijah
Muhammad wanted out to the public. It would immediately discredit him.
And so do you remember kind of at the beginning,
I was saying how Malcolm X had to kind of
compartmentalize and turn off critical thinking and stuff like that
to allow himself to submit to Elijah Muhammad. After this,
(39:28):
after he realized that this guy's actually not the real deal,
he was able to kind of grow and spread like
one of those sponge dinosaurs that you put water on
and they grow, or a different analogy would be like
Apache Chief in the Justice League when he grows like
really really big. Essentially, that happened the moment he realized
that Elijah Muhammad was a false prophet and he was
(39:50):
able to finally grow and become the Malcolm X that
he always had the potential to be. He had thrown
off the shackles placed on him. He gotten out from
under the thumb of the leader of the Nation of Islam.
But that also, unfortunately meant he had no place in
the Nation of Islam any longer.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Yeah, I think the final nail in the coffin was
when Kennedy was assassinated, he got explicit direction from Elijah
Muhammad to shut up about it, to not say anything
to the press, to just let this pass because it
was such a monumental thing for all of America, certainly
for white America. And he was like, we need to
(40:31):
stay out of this if we know it's good for us.
And Malcolm X did not do that. He went to
the reporters and he said that Kennedy's death was quote
a case of chickens coming home to roost end quote
and Elijah Muhammad was super upset. He said, you're suspended
for three months. A month into that, he removed him
(40:51):
from most of his leadership roles and that was the
writing was on the wall that that was really the
beginning of the final split.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Yeah, and just one little aside about that, chuck him
saying a case of chickens coming home to rest. There
is so much more background and subtext to it and
all the stuff he was saying that led up to that.
But that's the pull quote, right, that's the thing that
you just pull in. It sounds like a pretty awful
thing to say, or at least heartless, but if you
go back and read that stuff you like, you find
(41:20):
there's so much more context to the stuff he was
he's quoted for, and like you said, kind of toward
the beginning, a lot of it seems pretty reasonable when
you listen to the words he's saying.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
You know, after he was expelled basically not formally expelled,
but you know, removed from his formal duties, he went
down to stay with Cassius Clay future Muhammad Ali at
his place in Miami, and he stayed there per week.
He was giving him a spiritual guidance leading up to
his heavyweight bout with Sonny Liston, and he had not
(41:55):
cleared this with Elijah Mohammad, and Elijah Muhammad got mad
about that as well and left him off the guest
list for convention in February, where Cassius Clay you know,
had his coming out as Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
So that was a very meaningful snub at the time.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, I was disappointed in Muhammad Ali because he was
basically like, oh that sucks, man, Sorry, see you. Yeah.
So now this was the break, This was the schism,
and at this point now the Nation of Islam is
doing everything they can to mock and discredit Malcolm X
and say that he was a turncoat and a Benedict
Arnold and a hypocrite, and Malcolm xis gave it right back.
(42:36):
One of the first things he did was to tell
the media that Elijah Muhammad had kids out of wedlock
with teenage girls that were around him. He said that
he had eight kids with six teenage secretaries, and he
just told it to the press and that was a
really big deal. And I think at that point he
(42:57):
realized like he had just taken his life into his
own hands.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, So that's all basically sort of early through spring
nineteen sixty four. Later in nineteen sixty four, a very
important trip happened when he made the Haj to Mecca,
and this was, you know, kind of the final, big
life changing moment for him. He came back a Sunni
Islam member and he had changed his name from Malcolm
(43:23):
X to El Haj Malik l Schabaz, and I believe
even his wife and daughters took the name Shabbaz, like
you know, throughout the rest of their lives as well.
And while he was there, he had a transformation, another
transformation kind of like he did in prison. But the
other way, he came full circle and said, quote, he
(43:43):
had encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of
this earth, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like
I've never seen before. And he essentially flipped and said,
you know what, there are good white people and we
can and should work together. And he came back and
started to do that work and really poured himself for
the first time into the legit official civil rightsman.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah, he told Martin Luther King, like I'm all in.
He founded the Organization of Afro American Unity. He was
trying to essentially teach Black Americans about their African heritage,
but that at the same time he had also zoomed
in on this idea that he needed to take this
(44:24):
struggle for American civil rights to the world like the
UN or the African Congress and basically say, hey, this
is the same thing. This is part of the black
struggle worldwide, Like this is part of this global problem.
It's not separate, it's not its own thing. So we
need to figure out like all these other countries need
to get involved too and start pressuring the US to
(44:46):
do something about it, which is a pretty clever idea actually,
and it was not something that Martin Luther King was
doing at the time from what I understand.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, for sure they would eventually meet. That was a
very famous single meeting with Martin Luther King Junior and
Malcolm X. It was not something they planned because it's
not like Martin Luther King Junior got on board immediately
and was like, oh, great, you're joining the movement. Like
I don't think he still really liked him that much.
But they literally bumped into each other in the hallway
(45:17):
when they were at the Senate when the Civil Rights
Bill was being debated there at the Capitol Building, and
it was like, oh, it's you, and they shook hands.
I think he told him in person, I'm throwing myself
into the heart of the civil rights struggle face to face.
There was a photographer there, so there's a very famous
(45:37):
picture of them together. And then later that year in
July sixty four's when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act
and it was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. And
that was not the end for Malcolm X though he
thought he was just getting started.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Very sadly, Yeah, so this was you said, that was
May of nineteen sixty four. Within just a few months,
he would be dead. And it's just so sad that
he underwent that transformation and all of a sudden his
potential is really starting to blossom. He turned into like
a full butterfly for the first time, and he's struck down.
(46:17):
The first thing that happened that kind of just foreshadowed
his death was his house was firebombed by he was
quite sure members of the Nation of Islam. Apparently one
of the bombs was thrown through a window that would
have landed in and on the three of his little
girls in their room, but luckily it shattered on the
outside of the window and didn't make it through, but
(46:41):
it burned his house essentially down. And this was a
house that was owned by the Nation of Islam, so
they went as far as to accuse him of burning
it down because they had evicted him from the house,
and so out of spite, he burned it down, which
was obviously not true.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Yeah, which is full circle because I don't think we
mentioned that when their house was burned down when he
was a little kid, they actually accused his dad, Earl
of burning his own house down. So the same thing
happened all those years later. That was on February fourteenth,
nineteen sixty five. On February eighteenth, they formally evicted him,
and then on February twenty first, he was murdered. He
(47:19):
was shot and killed in front of his in front
of Betty, in front of the girls. I think there
were four girls at the time, because Betty was pregnant
with the twins that would be born after his death.
And this was in Harlem at an organization of Afro
American Unity meeting, and they arrested three members of the
Nation of Islam. One confessed and said the other two
(47:40):
weren't involved, but the all three were convicted, even though
later on, I think in twenty twenty one, the other
two were exonerated after the Attorney General of New York
saw that they had buried some exculpatory evidence back when
it happened.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Right, So you were talking about how the FBI let
it happen. The NYPD apparently helped pave the way by
arresting a couple of his bodyguards on bs charges. So
he was short security on that day and at his funeral,
like he had made quite a name for himself. I
think fifteen hundred people showed up, which is a pretty
(48:17):
good turnout for your funeral. And Ossie Davis, who was
very much in with the Martin Luther King version of
the civil rights movement, he led at Malcolm X's funeral
because he was just that moved by him, even though
he didn't see eye had eye on a bunch of stuff, Like,
he realized what a loss this was for the black
(48:37):
community in the world.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
You know, I mentioned that the twins were born after
he died. They you know, obviously grew up without their dad,
and the other girls weren't that much older, and they
always just knew him as dad. He you know, I
think the ones that were kind of didn't even know
him at all. They weren't raised by Betty as like, hey,
(49:02):
your dad was a revolutionary, he was this or that.
Apparently they'd learned about him mainly in school because Betty
always wanted him just to be a dad and my husband,
and so they were. You know, they went on to
do a lot of great things as well. We should
probably do one on Betty Shabaz at some point. She
was a great woman, and his daughters all, you know,
became activists in their own way as well.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
So yeah, I kind of mentioned like how just sad
this is that he was struck down, especially at the
time he was struck down. But if you look back
at like the timeframe of all this stuff, this guy
changed the world or left such an indelible mark that
people are still learning from him all these years later,
over essentially the course of ten years. That was about
(49:47):
the timeline that we're talking about, from when he took
up the Nation of Islam's teachings to when he was
assassinated by the Nation of Islam. It was just about
a decade and that's how much of an impact that
he made over just that time.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, there was a pretty great quote that who is
this was this Julia.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
That helped us with you, Yeah, Julia helped uspeak time.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah, she found a great quote from a poet Maya Angelou,
who Malcolm X visited in at her home in Ghana
at one point and basically kind of summarizing what guts
it took to make that transformation in full public public view,
after being so public and militant. She said that it
takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to
(50:31):
say say everybody, you remember what I said yesterday, Well
I found out that's wrong, and she just thought that
was an amazing thing to be able to do. And
it really was. You know, not a lot of people
can can own up to kind of being on what
they thought later was the wrong path.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
You know. Yeah, it is remarkable. So you can go
read the autobiography of Malcolm X. Also, I've seen that
Malcolm X be is a really great book. I think
it's his collected speeches. There's the Spike Lee movie, there's
Make It Plain, the PBS documentary, and then there's just
tons of like his speeches are just all over YouTube.
(51:11):
So if you're interested in this at all, like there's
a lot you can still learn from Malcolm X, even
with him being dead all these years.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
Yeah, I can't recommend the book and the movie enough.
The book sold four hundred thousand copies. The Year was
released in nineteen sixty seven and has sold five million
to date. And the movie was a big kit too.
It grows close to fifty million bucks, which is not
bad for a long, you know, true story biopic like
you know, with political overtones. It had a couple of
(51:42):
Academy Award nominees. Certainly Denzel because he was amazing as always,
and the great Ruth E. Carter for costume design. Even
though neither one would win, it was fairly controversial when
al Pacino won for Scent of a Woman over Denzel Real.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
People thought it was a pretty big snub, including Spike Lee.
He thought it was due to the controversy of the film,
obviously in the character, and he also thought it was
a bit of a makeup call for Pacino losing so
many times, so he would get some due though later
in twenty ten, when the film was added to the
National Film Registry as being culturally, historically, or esthetically significantly beautiful.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
That's a great ending, Charles, You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (52:29):
That's it?
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Well, that's it for Malcolm X. Chuck just said that's it,
So obviously everybody, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
Yeah, this one's a little long, but it's one of
the great emails we've gotten. Because after we did our
what I think was a really fun episode on the
Fire Festival debacles, we heard, you know, in that we
talked about the Magnesis credit card and we heard from
an actual holder of that credit card, which was great.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Did you see this, so I haven't seen that yet.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
It's pretty fantastic.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
So hey, guys here and you talk about this credit
card brought me back to some very special memories of
my early days in New York. When I first moved
there in twenty fourteen, I stumbled upon the Magnesis and
thought it sounded like the perfect way to meet new people.
Since I was new, there in excess the cool and
exclusive parties and parts of the city, so I applied
and was surprised.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
To be accepted as a member.
Speaker 3 (53:26):
I quickly found myself at fun rooftop parties with open bars,
great tickets to shows and sports games, and snagging reservations
for restaurants that were impossible to book, all of which
seemed to be too good to be true for the
two hundred and fifty dollars annual feet, which should have
been my first clue that something was wrong. The first
reel crack came when I took advantage of an offer
to get floor seats to a Beyonce concert for only
(53:47):
two hundred dollars and had to obtain the tickets by
meeting a quote Magnesis concierge and the parking lot outside.
Speaker 1 (53:54):
Of the indue.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
The tickets I got felt like they had just been
bought from a scalper, and they probably were.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
But it did work out and it was a great show.
Not long after, I had.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
Will call tickets to an NBA game through a quote
partnership they had with the team. When my friends and
I showed up to grab the seats, know and behind
the ticket counter, I had ever heard of Magnesis. That
was a moment I started asking questions, and when I
reached out about the issue and about canceling my membership,
they actually refunded it almost immediately. In fact, they refunded
(54:24):
my fees so quickly it was almost alarming, like they
were hoping I'd just.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
Quietly go away.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
Thankfully, I managed to exit the whole thing before the
house of cards came crashing down. So hearing you guys
explain how the whole thing worked was fascinating and weirdly nostalgic.
Despite the sketchiness at the end, I actually do have
some pretty fun memories from that brief period when it
felt like I had unlocked some secret VIP version of
New York City.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Look forward to your next stop at the Bell House,
and that is from Kevin.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
Kevin, that really was one of the all time best
emails we've gotten.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, I was hoping a Magnusis member would write in,
and we got it.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Look at you. You should be playing the lotto.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
That probably should.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Thanks a lot, Kevin. If you want to be like
Kevin and send us one of our all time great emails,
we always love those. You can wrap it up, spank
it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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