Abstract
Why would anyone become a member of the Nation of Islam after the assassination of Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) on February 21, 1965, in New York’s Audubon Ballroom? More than any other leader, Malcolm X stood at the ideological vortex in the dynamic movement for black liberation. His fiercely smart rhetoric helped to shift the dominant political struggle from a strategy of civil rights liberalism to eclectic expressions of black nationalism. As the most charismatic and visible spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, Malcolm moved beyond the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s (the Nation of Islam’s undisputed leader from 1934 to 1975) call for economic self-sufficiency and his prophecy of divine intervention to a paradigm of activist nationalism. Combining an application of armed self-defense “by any means necessary” (in a political climate that hosted racist government repression in the form of the state police) along with a lethal critique of white folks as “devils,” Malcolm appealed to the most socially isolated, politically dispossessed, and economically desperate members of the black proletariat. It was Malcolm’s undivided commitment to create a powerful group of “believers” in the Nation of Islam that resulted in a substantial membership increase. In 1955, there were only 16 temples largely located in the urban North, but by 1960 over 50 temples were sprinkled throughout the United States with registered membership estimated between 50,000 and 250,000.1
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Notes
E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 378.
Claude Clegg, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 239;
William L. Van DeBurg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 2.
For example, see Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969).
Robert Reid-Pharr, “Speaking through Anti-Semitism: The Nation of Islam and the Poetics of Black (Counter) Modernity” Social Text 14:4 (winter 1996): 140.
Salim Mauwakkil, “The Nation of Islam and Me,” in The Farrakhan Factor: African-American Writers on Leadership, Nationhood, and Minister Louis Farrakhan, Amy Alexander, ed. (New York: Grove Press, 1998), 296.
An important millennial idea is that a “devil stands between God’s people and the heavenly kingdom.” See Perry E. Giankos, “The Black Muslims: An American Millennialistic Response to Racism and Cultural Denegration,” The Centennial Review 23: 4 (fall 1979): 439.
John Edgar Wideman, “Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography,” in Malcolm X: In Our Image, Joe Wood, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 113.
Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 294.
Gordon Parks, “The Violent End of the Man Called Malcolm X,” Life 58:9 (March 5, 1965): 29.
Gene Roberts, “The Story of Snick: From ‘Freedom High’ to Black Power,” New York Times Magazine, September 25, 1966, reprint in Black Protest in the Sixties: Essays from the New York Times Magazine, August Meier, John Bracey Jr., and Elliott Rudwick, eds. (New York: Markus Wierner Publication, 1991), 140–141; Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 1967).
Ula Y. Taylor, J. Tarika Lewis, and Mario Van Peebles, Panther: A Pictorial History of the Black Panther Party and the Story behind the Film (New York: New Market Press, 1995).
Huey Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), 77.
Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 181.
Malcolm X, February 1965: The Final Speeches, Steve Clark, ed. (New York: Pathfinder, 1992), 205.
Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Philadelphia, Penn.: Hakim Publishing, 1965), 35.
James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948–1985 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 360.
Alvin F. Poussaint, “A Negro Psychiatrist Explains the Negro Psyche,” New York Times Magazine, August 20, 1967, reprint in August Meier, Elliot Rudwick, and John Bracey, Jr., eds., Black Protest in the Sixties: Articles from the New York Times (New York: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1991), 138.
John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), 553.
Sonsyrea Tate, Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1997), 84.
T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 29.
Paulette Pierce, “Boudoir Politics and the Birthing of the Nation,” in Women Out of Place: The Gender of Agency and the Race of Nationality, Brackette F. Williams, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1996), 235.
Barbara Smith, “Some Home Truths on the Contemporary Black Feminist Movement,” in Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 255;
Daniel P. Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965).
Imamu Amiri Baraka, ed. African Congress: A Documentary of the First Modern Pan-African Congress (New York: William and Morrow, 1972), 177.
Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: A Delta Book, 1968), 160–161.
Haleh Afshar, “Why Fundamentalism? Iranian Women and Their Support of Islam,” Women: A Cultural Review 6:4 (1995): 27.
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© 2003 Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, with Matthew Countryman
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Taylor, U. (2003). Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam: Separatism, Regendering, and a Secular Approach to Black Power after Malcolm X (1965–1975). In: Theoharis, J., Woodard, K. (eds) Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940–1980. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-8250-6_8
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