By Abayomi Azikiwe
On June 4, 1964, Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) gave an interview with Philadelphia talk show host Joe Rainey over W-DAS where he discussed various aspects of his evolving worldview influenced by his recent travels to several African and West Asian states.
What clearly comes through in the interview is Malcolm’s commitment to building a movement inside the United States which would be in close alliance with the progressive forces on the continent.
In one segment of the interview Malcolm refers to the expatriate African American community in Ghana where he visited several weeks earlier. He noted that many of the people who had taken up residence in the West African state which at the time was led by President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, a staunch Pan-Africanist and socialist, had been strong fighters against the racist system before leaving the U.S.
Nkrumah had an open-door policy towards African Americans which was, in part, due to his time spent in the U.S. between 1935-1945 when he was a student at Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania. Nkrumah had met with and worked alongside other activists from Africa, the Caribbean and the U.S. Some of the organizations Nkrumah worked with were the African Students Association, the Universal Negro Improvement Association-African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), the Council on African Affairs (CAA), among others.
Nonetheless, what Malcolm pointed out in the interview with Joe Rainey was that the African Americans then residing in Ghana, a revolutionary state at the time, were “living happy.” Malcolm accused them of not doing enough to support the Black struggle which was then raging inside the U.S.
He noted that other Africans living in Ghana from colonial and neo-colonial territories across the continent had established offices aimed at assisting the existing work for national liberation. Malcolm urged those African Americans living in Ghana to follow suit by considering themselves as the overseas outpost for the domestic struggle in the U.S.
Some of those then living in Ghana were Leslie Alexander Lacy, Maya Angelou, Julian Mayfield, Vicki Garvin, among others. Shirley Graham Du Bois, then widow of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), had been given Ghanaian citizenship along with her husband Dr. Du Bois in 1961.
Dr. Du Bois was appointed as the Director of the Encyclopedia Africana, an historical project commissioned by the Nkrumah government. After Du Bois’ death on August 28, 1963, his widow was appointed as the first Director of Ghana National Television which was launched in 1965.
It was Shirley Graham Du Bois who arranged for Malcolm X to hold a private meeting with Nkrumah during his visit in May 1964. Malcolm referred to his meeting with Nkrumah during the Joe Rainey interview.
Malcolm’s impact on the expatriate community in Ghana was also mentioned in his final speech delivered in Detroit at Ford Auditorium on February 14, 1965. He said that as a result of his discussions with African Americans living in Ghana several months earlier, the first chapter of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) was formed.
Founding the OAAU and Following Visits to Africa, West Asia and Western Europe
When Malcolm returned to the U.S. in late May 1964, he had not only authenticated his religious status with the hajj to Mecca, the leader had traveled as an independent organizer free from the constraints imposed by his previous twelve years of work with the NOI. On June 28, he held the founding meeting of the OAAU at the Audubon Ballroom in upper Manhattan in New York City.
The OAAU provided a secular platform for advancing Malcolm X’s political ideas. The address delivered by Malcolm on June 28 at the Audubon called for the adoption of a program of African unity globally and for the organized self-defense of African Americans in the U.S.
Just over a week later, Malcolm would leave the U.S. again on July 9 departing New York for Cairo, Egypt. Later that month, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which was formed only one year earlier, held its second annual summit in Cairo.
Malcolm X, on behalf of the OAAU, attended the summit as an observer with the intent of conducting intensive lobbying to build support for the struggle of African Americans. Malcolm circulated an eight-page memorandum to the delegates which outlined the plight of African Americans and the need for international solidarity.
At the OAU Summit which began on July 17, 1964, Malcolm X met with numerous governmental officials and representatives of liberation movements on the continent. His second international trip to Africa in less than three months prompted a notice from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Secret Service, Naval Intelligence, among others.
Despite attempts by the U.S. government to publicly ignore and downplay the OAAU memorandum, the actual concern was clearly revealed in a New York Times article dated August 13, where M.S. Handler noted:
“The State Department and the Justice Department have begun to take an interest in Malcolm X’s campaign to convince African states to raise the question of persecution of American Negroes at the United Nations. The Black Nationalist leader started his campaign July 17 in Cairo, where the 33 heads of independent African states held their second meeting since the Organization of African Unity was founded in Addis Ababa 14 months ago…. Malcolm’s eight-page memorandum to the heads of state at the Cairo conference requesting their support became available here only recently. After studying it, officials said that if Malcolm succeeded in convincing just one African Government to bring up the charge at the United Nations, the United States Government would be faced with a touchy problem. The United States, officials here believe, would find itself in the same category as South Africa, Hungary and other countries whose domestic politics have become debating issues at the United Nations. The issue, officials say, would be of service to critics of the United States, Communist and non‐Communist, and contribute to the undermining of the position the United States has asserted for itself as the leader of the West in the advocacy of human rights.”
Malcolm X would remain in Africa until late November 1964. A considerable period of this time was spent in Egypt where he received enormous support from the government of President Gamal Abdel Nassar. He would visit other African and West Asian states including Ghana, Saudi Arabia, the Gaza Strip in Palestine and Lebanon.
On December 3, 1964, he appeared before the Oxford Union in a debate on “extremism in the defense of liberty.” Although he was met with thunderous applause and out-debated his conservative opponent, the Oxford Union still voted against his position.
His speech called for the right to self-defense against racist violence. In the address he made reference to the crimes being committed by the Belgians and the U.S. in Congo.
Several days before, while visiting Paris to address the African community in France, Malcolm reflected on his position on gender equality saying:
“If you are in a country that’s progressive, the woman is progressive. If you are in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it is because the woman is aware of the importance of education. But in every backward country you’ll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed it’s because the women don’t have education. So one of the things I became thoroughly convinced of in my recent travels is the importance of giving freedom to the woman, giving her education, and giving her the incentive to get out there and put that same spirit and understanding in the children. And I frankly am proud of the contributions that our women have made in the struggle for freedom, and I’m one person who’s for giving them all of the leeway possible, because they have made a greater contribution than many of us men.”
Just days prior to his martyrdom, Malcolm X was again invited to speak in France and the United Kingdom during the second week in February 1965. In an attempt to enter France, he was denied admission without explanation from the French authorities.
In the UK, Malcolm conducted several speaking engagements and appeared on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television. In the English Midlands, racial incidents had occurred in the town of Smethwick where Blacks were denied admission to bars and restaurants.
Malcolm X, in full view of the British press, on February 12 traveled to Smethwick and attempted to enter a building where African and Asian people were denied service and subjected to violence. The owners of the building on Marshall Street remained inside while Malcolm X circled the building.
Just one week earlier, Malcolm visited Alabama where he spoke at the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Tuskegee. He then traveled with members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to Selma where he addressed a youthful audience at the church that served as the base for the voting rights rallies and marches which were ongoing at the time.
These developments were placing Malcolm X even more at the center of the Pan-African struggles taking place from the African continent to Western Europe and the U.S. He would be assassinated on Sunday February 21, 1965, prior to addressing a public meeting at the Audubon Ballroom.
After six decades, the ideas and organizational work of Malcolm X remains relevant today. Although his murder was framed by the corporate media as the result of his conflict with the NOI, much evidence has surfaced which indicates that the conspiracy surrounding his martyrdom stemmed from fears within the U.S. government that his efforts would weaken its capacity to maintain imperialist hegemony worldwide.
Be the first to comment