Malcolm X, Black Power and their relevance to hair March 7, 2008

He has been called a hero, a leader and even the father of Black Power, but was Malcolm X really such a great man? Many disagree with the favourable pictures painted of him, branding him an extremist, crazy and even a racist spokesman of the fanatical Nation of Islam. Which description did the real X fall under, and what relevance did he have to black people and their hair?

Malcolm X was born in 1925 in Nebraska. His father is said to have been an outspoken Baptist speaker, that was strongly affiliated with an activist group called the Universal Negro Improvment Association. from a young age he was exposed to politics and the social inequalities of black people; living in that era social inequality was his world. His mother was light-skinned, and it is often documented that X often shunned her for that reason, claiming that she looked like a white woman. While X was still young three of his uncles were violently murdered by white men in racist attacks, (attacks of this kind are depicted in the film ‘Mississippi Burning’) . This has been suggested to fuel an element of hatred for white people in X, a hatred that would later be the ammunition of the Black Power movement. X was baptised Malcolm Little, but in 1952 changed his surname to X in the pursuit of freeing himself of his “slave name”. He chose X, as this was often the symbol branded on the arms of slaves. The Caucasion sounding names of black-Americans are usually the names of the slave masters of their ancestors, thus many blacks opted to changing their names. The most common example is Mohammed Ali, who was born Cassius Clay.

X spent a proportion of his life in prison for theft. It was while in Prison that he developed a profuse thirst for reading, and spent much of his time in the prison library. He acquired the nickname Satan among fellow inmates for his well known hatred of the God, the Bible and religion in general. After serving his sentence, he met Elijah Muhammad. The two of them would serve to publicise The Nation of Islam, and the growing political movement of Black Power.

The Nation of Islam is a religious, social and political organisation that promotes ideas of Black Supremacy. It preaches, like regular Islam that there is no other God but Allah. Their beliefs go further to suggest that the human form of Allah was witnessed in W. D. Fard, the creator of the Nation of Islam. The organisation is often rightly called racist, for example, they frequently refer to white people as “the devil” in their teaching.The nation of Islam seemed to capture the minds and hearts of many young black people of the time; it was new, it was liberal and it was the first organisation to state that black people were not inferior to white people, but in fact preech the opposite. It was almost as if the organisation was fashionable, Mohammed Ali, a strong public figure at the time was doing it, so eveyone else wanted to follow suit. There was a change of thinking, and this trancended into the way Black people saw themselves. They were no longer ashamed to be black, they were proud-This was the essence of Black Power and the birth of the afro hairstyle.

The afro became the symbol of Black Power, it strongly stated the common expression “Black is beautiful” which played a huge role in the liberation of black people. However, a dark-side can be suggested. The movement was so closely connected with the Nation of Islam, which has been shown to be openly racist. Malcolm X could be called a hero  on one hand, but he can also be called an istigator of hate and extremist views on the other. There are even FBI files on X that claim that he was in fact Schizophrenic.

Malcolm X was assasinated on February 21 1965. His extremist views and his affliation with the Nation of Islam served to kill him. Was this the death of a great man, an activist that caused black people to gain selfworth that trancended into the way they wear their hair? Or was this the end of a hateful man that promoted racism in Black people? What do you think?