The revolutionary pan-Africanist would have been 92 years this week. His struggles for the liberation of Black people from imperialism and its twin, racism, remain as relevant and inspirational as ever.
Many have wondered out loud, “What would El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X be doing at 92 years of age?” Our Black Shining Prince was born on 19 May 1925 and joined the ancestors on 21 February 1925. Before his passing the Nigerians gave him the name Omowale. In Yoruba it means child has come home.
No one can say for sure but as Malcolm X taught us, “Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research”. These words were uttered at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, during the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference on 10 November 1963. One of the founders of the League of Revolutionary Workers, General Gordon Baker Jr., was in attendance that night and can be heard yelling: “We’ll bleed” as Malcolm X tells the audience “You’re afraid to bleed.”
We do know that Malcolm X was on top of the technology of the time of his departure and was deeply interested in studying languages to bring Africa, Africans, Bandung forces (The first large-scale Afro–Asian Conference— a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, which took place on April 18–24, 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia), and the oppressed period together to create a better world. We know that he was leaning heavy towards Socialism and was attempting to unite the many to divide the few.
Shortly before he died he went on record saying: “Most of the countries that were colonial powers were capitalist countries, and the last bulwark of capitalism today is America. It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism. And if you find one and you happen to get that person into conversation and they have a philosophy that makes you sure they don’t have this racism in their outlook, usually they’re socialists or their political philosophy is socialism.”
However, at the time of his departure he still had no time for coons and buffoons. He was a firm supporter of Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army, so-called Mau Mau whose central leader was Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi and not the so-called Burning Spear Jomo Kenyatta.
Even as a member of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X had a non-Marxist class analysis of the struggle. Go back and listen to him talk about the house negro and the field negro on the Message to the Grassroots speech. He saw us as African captives aka colonial subjects.