*Photo: Malcom X*
In the African-American civil rights struggle of the 1960s, Malcolm X’s mission was to assert the equal humanity of Blacks. This principally meant fighting against the lynching of Blacks, the setting of dogs against Blacks to tear off their flesh, the brutalisation of Blacks by the police, the washing of Blacks down the drain using water from high pressure hoses, and other sundry racial indignities in America. It also meant challenging the government for passing civil rights legislations without the ability or willingness to enforce them and the inequitable refusal to offer Blacks reparations for centuries of slavery to propel them to economic respectability.
Within the African-American community itself, Malcolm was committed to inspiring Blacks to have a sense of positive self-esteem or racial pride in and unity amongst themselves, and the promotion of the desire to exert themselves optimally to free themselves from the racial quagmire of America. He also believed that America did not have the capacity to solve the problems of Blacks by itself when considered as civil rights problems, and that the problems needed to be internationalised as human rights problems. The starting point in this regard was to reach out to Africans and African governments to let them know the true condition of Blacks in America.
In carrying out his mission, Malcolm was conscious of the power of the media to misinform and misrepresent, and famously said, “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” So, he counselled: “Never believe what you read in the newspapers. They’re not going to tell you the truth.”
Relatedly, a 19 December, 2023 report of ThisWeekInLibraries noted about Malcolm X: “Firstly, he urged individuals to question the motivations behind media messages. He encouraged people to consider who owns the media outlets, and what their interests might be. This could help to reveal any potential biases and agendas. Secondly, Malcolm X emphasized the importance of seeking out alternative sources of information. He believed that mainstream media did not always provide a complete or accurate picture, and that it was essential to look to other outlets for a more balanced perspective. Lastly, he advocated for the creation of independent media … to combat the misrepresentation and give a voice to marginalized communities.”
Malcolm also noted: “The best thing the White man ever did for me was to make me look like a monster all over the world, because I can go any place on the African continent and our African brothers know where I stand.” And Malcolm X did travel widely in Africa, and he was cordially received by various African heads of government.
In a speech titled “OAAU Homecoming Rally (November 29, 1964)”, he said that, over an 18-week period, he visited Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Guinea Conakry, Algeria, and Senegal. According to Malcolm X, “in all the travelling that I did in … Africa, everywhere I went, I found nothing but open minds; I found nothing but open hearts; and I found nothing but open doors. Our people love us. All they want to know is do we love them.”
Malcolm also declared: “My main theme while I was travelling with our brothers abroad on the African continent was to try and impress upon them that 22 million of our people here in America who consider ourselves inseparably linked with them that our origin is the same and our destiny is the same. … [So] what is necessary, we have to go back [to Africa] mentally; we have to go back culturally; we have to go back spiritually, and philosophically and psychologically; and … when we go back in that sense, then this spiritual bond that is created makes us inseparable.”
With this, Malcolm opined, “they can see that our problem is their problem, and their problem is our problem. Our problem is not solved until theirs is solved; theirs is not solved until ours is solved. And when we can develop that kind of relationship, it then means that we will help them solve their problem and we want them to help us solve our problem. And by both of us working together, we’ll get a solution to that problem. We’ll only get that problem solved working together.”
Malcolm reiterated: “This was the essence of any discussion: that the problems are one; that the destiny is still the same; the origin is the same; even the experiences are the same. They catch hell, we catch hell. And no matter how much independence they get on the motherland continent, if we don’t have … respect over here, when they come over here, they’re mistaken for one of us and they’re disrespected too. Well, in order [for them] to be respected, we must be respected.”
Malcolm was most irked by the colonial administration of Congo by Belgium which he described as “one of the worst racist governments that have ever existed on the face of the earth.” In an 18 July, 2023 YouTube record titled “The speech that got Patrice Lumumba killed,” at Congo’s independence ceremony in Leopoldville, King Baudouin of Belgium praised his country’s colonial record and patronisingly counselled the new Congo government not to change the colonial policies. The Belgian colonial legacy being glamourised here is one which was so racistly brutal that it reportedly caused the death of over ten million Congolese.
Patrice Lumumba, the new Prime Minister, responded at the event: “Today, we have won our struggle for independence. I salute you in the name of the Congolese government. To you all my friends, who have fought without respite at our sides, I ask you to make of today, this 30th June, 1960, an illustrious day that will be etched on forever on your hearts, a date whose significance you would pass on with pride to your children who in turn will pass on to their sons and grandsons, the glorious story of the struggle for our liberty.”
Lumumba continued, listing the evils of Belgian colonial rule: “We have known ironies, insults. We have had to submit to beatings morning, noon and night, because we were Negroes. A Black was always addressed in the familiar form, certainly not as a friend, but because the respectful form was reserved for the Whites. We whose bodies have suffered under the colonial oppression, we say to you, it is all over now.” After that brave and patriotic public challenge of King Baudouin, Lumumba became a marked man.
Shortly after independence, disagreements began between Lumumba and the President, Joseph Kasavubu. These created an opportunity for a military intervention on 14 September, 1960, led by Congolese Chief of Army Staff, Col. Joseph Mobutu (later known as Mobutu Sese Seko), and it resulted in the arrest of Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was assassinated on 17 January, 1961 at the age of 35 within the territory of Moïse Tshombe, the President of the secessionist mineral-rich Katanga State (from 1960 to 1963) and later Prime Minister of Congo (from 1964 to 1965).
As Britannica.com reports, “Lumumba and his associates were … executed by a Katangan firing squad, under Belgian supervision, and in the presence of Katangan and Belgian officials and officers. The bodies were then thrown into shallow graves. A Katangan government official later ordered that the bodies disappear. At that point, a Belgian police officer led a group that searched for the graves, dug up the bodies, hacked them to pieces, and dissolved as much of the body parts as they could in sulphuric acid. Anything that remained was set on fire.”
Condemning Tshombe who was believed to have collaborated with Belgium and the United States to murder Lumumba, Malcolm said passionately: “If there’s the worst African that was ever born, it was the man who, in cold blood, cold blood, committed an international crime, murdered Patrice Lumumba, murdered him in cold blood. The world knows that Tshombe murdered Lumumba, and now he’s a big partner of Lyndon B. Johnson [the 36th President of America]. … Johnson is … propping up Tshombe’s government; the murderer.”
Imam Omar Suleiman, in a 21 February, 2021 Al Jazeera article reported: “Malcolm also spoke to the internalised racism of Black people that was essential to overcome for true liberation. As the late James Cone states, ‘Malcolm was a cultural revolutionary. Malcolm changed how Black people thought about themselves. Before Malcolm came along, we were all Negroes. After Malcolm, he helped us become Black.’”
Given that on 5 May, 1962, Malcolm said to Black women, “We teach you to love the hair that God gave you,” how would he have reacted to today’s ‘educated’ African women’s still self-hating humongous investments on different kinds of wigs or ‘hairs’ to make them look like White women? And how would he have reacted to Nigeria’s japa syndrome, considering the fact that he said that he insulted the African-Americans he met in Ghana who cut themselves off the Black struggle back in America and were living in luxury in Africa?
Considering the state of leadership in Africa today, and possibly because he died at the young age of 39 in 1965, Malcolm X’s vision of an Africa which would unite with the African-American world to carry out joint actions for the mutual benefit of both partners seems not to have gained much traction. All the same, Malcolm has set down an invaluable template for current and future African leaders.
On Malcolm’s personal identity, Omar Suleiman noted: “In championing his movement’s philosophy, some seek to secularise him, intentionally erasing his Muslim identity. And in championing his religious identity, others seek to depoliticise him. This was a tension that Malcolm noted in his own life, saying: ‘For the Muslims, I’m too worldly. For other groups, I’m too religious. For militants, I’m too moderate, for moderates I’m too militant. I feel like I’m on a tightrope.’”
On 7 March, 2024, Aaron Bonderson of Nebraska Pubic Media reported: “On Sept. 12, 2022, Malcolm X became the first Black man or woman voted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. By May, a bust of Malcolm X will be inside the Nebraska State Capitol, along with 26 other Nebraskans.” Moreover, as Jake Anderson reports in a 19 May, 2025 story, in MSN, “Omaha is celebrating its hometown hero and civil rights icon on Monday. It’s Malcolm X Day. The city issued a proclamation in honor of the 100th anniversary of the civil rights leader’s birth. Malcolm X was born in Omaha in 1925.”
Malcolm X’s birth was a boon to humanity. He was not just an American phenomenon, but also a pan-African star, and, above all, an exemplary human being.