Abstract
IN 1992, filmmaker Spike Lee released Malcolm X to critical acclaim.4 The film had an enormous cultural impact, with celebrities and youth donning hats and T-shirts with the letter &;#x201C;X.&;#x201D;5 Soon after, Gerald Home&;#x2019;s article, &;#x201C;Myth and the Making of Malcolm X,&;#x201D; presented a critique of Lee&;#x2019;s rendering, arguing that the film participated in constructing a mythology of figures like Malcolm X that &;#x201C;neglect[s] highly relevant and persuasive evidence because it does not necessarily comport with the contemporary lessons that one is to draw from these myths.&;#x201D;6 Lee&;#x2019;s film, an intervention in a historiographical and popular record of the black freedom struggle that has &;#x201C;centered on Martin Luther King, Jr., with Rosa Parks and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) playing pivotal supporting roles,&;#x201D;7 creates an alternative mythology that, like the prevailing &;#x201C;King years&;#x201D; myth, fails to include the concurrent history of leftists like Claudia Jones, William Patterson, and Paul Robeson. Glaringly absent from Lee&;#x2019;s film, Horne contends, is Malcolm&;#x2019;s &;#x201C;embrace [of] a more progressive form of nationalism&;#x2014; when he followed in Patterson&;#x2019;s footsteps seeking to take the Black Question to the United Nations.&;#x201D; Also absent were his disputes with Louis Farrakhan, his relationships with &;#x201C;world leaders&;#x2014;especially on the African continent,&;#x201D; and his early interpretations of the 1955 Bandung conference of African and Asian leaders &;#x201C;as spelling doom for the &;#x2018;white devils.&;#x2019;&;#x201D;8
Whenever death may surprise us, it will be welcome, provided that … our battle cry reaches some receptive ear, that another hand stretch out to take up weapons. … Let the flag under which we fight represent the sacred cause of redeeming humanity, so that to die under the flag of Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of Bolivia, of Brazil, to name only a few of the scenes of today’s armed struggles, be equally glorious and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African, or even a European.
—Ernesto Guevara, cited by Huey P. Newton1
It is our goal to be in every single country there is. We look at a world without any boundary lines. We don’t consider ourselves basically American. We are multi-national; and when we approach a government that doesn’t like the United States, we always say, “Who do you like; Britain, Germany? We carry a lot of flags.”
—Robert Stevenson, Executive President of Ford, Business Week, cited by Huey Newton2
The first thing the American power structure doesn’t want any Negroes to start is thinking internationally.
—Malcolm X3
Yuri Nakahara Kochiyama, Passing It On—A Memoir, ed. Marjorie Lee, Akemi Kochiyama-Sardinha, and Audee Kochiyama-Holman (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2004), 173.
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NOTES
Huey P. Newton, “The Technology Question,” in The Huey P. Newton Reader, ed. David Hilliard and Donald Weise (1972; repr. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 261.
Ibid.
Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964), 147.
Gerald Home, “Myth and the Making of ‘Malcolm X’,” American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (1993): 441.
Ibid., 440.
Ibid. The exceptional work produced in the ten years since Horne’s article was published has begun to fill the void of which Horne speaks. See, for example, Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and US Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Cynthia Young, “Soul Power: Cultural Radicalism and the Formation of a U.S. Third World Left” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1999); Robin D. G. Kelley and Betsy Esch, “Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution,” Souls 1, no. 3 (1999); Robin D. G. Kelley, “‘But a Local
Phase of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–1950,” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (1999); Nikhil Pal Singh and Andrew F. Jones, “Introduction,” in Positions, East Asia Cultures Critique; Special Issue: The Afro Asian Century, ed. Nikhil Pal Singh and Andrew F. Jones (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003); Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
For more on the meeting between Malcolm and Castro in Harlem, see Rosemari Mealy, Fidel and Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting (Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press, 1997).
Ibid.; Yuri Kochiyama, “With Justice in Her Heart: A Revolutionary Worker Interview with Yuri Kochiyama,” Revolutionary Worker Online, no. 986 (1998).
I use the term “tricontinental” to describe both the region known as the “global South” or the “Third World” and the political formation that aligned itself with this region and its emergent anticolonial and antiracist politics. Borrowing from Robert Young, I also use the phrase to invoke identification with the 1966 Havana Tricontinental Conference, which initiated the first anti-imperialist alliance of the peoples of the three continents as well as the founding moment of postcolonial theory in its journal, the Tricontinental. While the term itself was not used by these activist-intellectuals, “tricontinentalism” offers a useful framework for understanding their global, antiracist, and anti-imperialist politics. Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell). See also Besenia Rodriguez, “‘De la Esclavitud Yanqi a la Libertad Cubana’: U.S. Black Radicals, the Cuban Revolution, and the Formation of a Tricontinental Ideology,” Radical History Review 92 (Spring 2005): 62–87.
Huey Newton, ed., To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton (New York: Random House, 1972), 32.
In early 1971, due to discord manipulated and intensified by Hoover’s FBI, Newton expelled several members from the BPP, including the Intercommunal Section run from Algiers by Eldridge Cleaver. In hindsight, the early seeds of these differences can be appreciated, for instance, in the divergent ways in which Newton and Hilliard, on the one hand, and Cleaver, on the other, viewed Malcolm X’s influence on their organization. Cleaver looked to Malcolm as one of his heroes, precisely because he saw him as “the father of revolutionary black nationalism.” Eldridge Cleaver, Revolution in the Congo (London: Revolutionary Peoples’ Communications Network, 1971), 7. Hilliard and Newton depart from Malcolm X precisely because of his nationalism and his focus on Africa to create a more expansive tricontinentalism, developing closer ties with antiracist groups of color in the United States and abroad. It is for these reasons that I focus on Huey P. Newton. For more on the internal divisions within the BPP and the FBI’s role in fomenting them, see J. Edgar Hoover, “Untitled FBI Memo re. COINTELPRO,” August 25, 1961. Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, Inc. and Black Panther Party Collections, Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Fred P. Graham, “F.B.I. Files Tell of Surveillance of Students, Blacks, War Foes,” New York Times, March 25, 1971; Tim Butz, “COINTELPRO: Psychological Warfare and Magnum Justice,” Counter- Spy (1976); Ernest Volkman, “Othello,” Penthouse, April 1980. Ross K. Baker,
“Panther Rift Rocks Whole Radical Left,” Washington Post, March 21, 1971; Earl Caldwell, “Internal Dispute Rends Panthers,” New York Times, March 7, 1971; Black Panther Party, “Expelled,” The Black Panther, February 13, 1971; Black Panther Party, “Enemies of the People,” The Black Panther, February 13, 1971; Black Panther Party, “Intercommunal Section Defects,” The Black Panther, March 20, 1971; Bobby Seale, “Bobby Seale: I am the Chairman of Only One Party,” The Black Panther, April 3, 1971.
Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots” (paper presented at the Northern Grass Roots Leadership Conference, Detroit, MI, November 10, 1964).
Ibid.
Melani McAlister, “One Black Allah: The Middle East in the Cultural Politics of African American Liberation, 1955–1970,” American Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1999): 633.
Shirley Graham Du Bois, Gamal Abdel Nasser: Son of the Nile, a Biography (New York: Third Press, 1972), 148.
Ted Roberts, “Cuba and the Non-Aligned Movement,” Center for Cuban Studies Newsletter 3, no. 4–5 (1976): 68–81.
Ibid.
Kumar Goshal, “War and Jim Crow Set Back at Bandung,” Freedom (May–June 1955).
Ibid.
Paul Robeson, “Greetings to the Asian-African Conference” (April, 1955). Paul Robeson Collection, Box 7:000150. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Bandung, Indonesia. Black History Matters 137.
Ibid.
Indeed, as Reuters and a New York Times reader noted, of the 2000 representatives in attendance at the Bandung Conference, no representatives and only two advisors were women. Laili Roesad, “Women Advisers at Bandung,” New York Times, April 22, 1955; Reuters, “No Women Delegates Among 600 at Bandung,” New York Times, April 18, 1955.
W. E. B. Du Bois, “The American Negro and the Darker World,” (1957). Paul and Eslanda Robeson Collection. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.
Ibid.
Ibid.
James Boggs, “Correcting Mistaken Ideas about the Third World” (March 14, 1974). James and Grace Lee Boggs Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University Archives, Detroit, Michigan. Box 3: 16.4.
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid.
Yuri Nakahara Kochiyama, “Third World,” Asian Americans for Action Newsletter, October 1970, 199.
Ibid., 199–200.
S. G. Du Bois, Gamal Abdel Nasser, 155; Erskine B. Childers, “The Road to Suez” (1962). Shirley Graham Du Bois Papers, Box 31:20. Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Cambridge, MA, 18.
Robin D. G. Kelley, “House Negroes on the Loose: Malcolm X and the Black Bourgeoisie,” Callaloo 21, no. 2 (1998): 431.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Huey P. Newton, David Hilliard, and Donald Weise, The Huey P. Newton Reader (New York; London: Seven Stories, 2002), 52.
David Hilliard, “Introduction,” in The Huey P. Newton Reader, ed. David Hilliard and Donald Weise (New York; London: Seven Stories, 2002), 11.
Ibid. Robert F. Williams, “Robert Williams Speaks at Panther Benefit,” The Black Panther, December 27, 1969; Robert F. Williams, “Robert Williams Speaks at N.C.C.E Panther Benefit; Detroit, Michigan,” The Black Panther, January 3, 1970.
Each May, the BPP’s newspaper, The Black Panther, published a commemorative issue celebrating Malcolm X’s birthday. See, for example, Black Panther Party, “The Heirs of Malcolm have picked up the gun and now stand millions strong facing the racist pig oppressor,” The Black Panther, May 19, 1970, cover.
Black Panther Party, “They Work Together to Oppress Us. We’ll Work Together to Resist,’ The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, February 5, 1972.
Hilliard, “Introduction,” 11. While Malcolm X identified largely with working-class black people and, often, with left-leaning causes, his increasing critiques of capitalism are rarely, if ever, discussed in Black Panther writings and references to his work. These critiques are highlighted to differing degrees by various scholars. See George Breitman, Malcolm X. The Man and His Ideas (New York: Merit Publishers, 1965); George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Merit Publishers, 1967); Eugene Wolfenstein, The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution (1981; repr. London: Free Association Books, 1989, 1981); Kelley, “House Negroes on the Loose.”
David Hilliard, “Part Three: The Second Wave,” in The Huey P. Newton Reader, ed. David Hilliard and Donald Weise (New York; London: Seven Stories, 2002), 179.
Huey Newton, “Revolutionary Intercommunalism,” in Revolutionary Intercommunalism and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, ed. Amy Gdala (1971; repr. Newton, Wales: Cyhoeddwyr y Superscript, Ltd., 2004), 27.
Ibid., 49.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 28.
Ibid., 49.
Ibid.
BPP Chief-of-Staff David Hilliard cites Oakland’s history as pivotal in shaping Newton and the BPP’s internationalism. Hilliard discusses the city’s rich union tradition and its racially and ethnically integrated political environment: “Solidarity is the watchword, and we are surrounded by examples collectively asserting their power. The internationalism is emphasized by the fact that Oakland, like Mobile, is an integrated community. You don’t simply find whites and blacks, but yellows, browns, Native Americans too. These groups coexist in a particular way. New York is famous for its many ethnic communities. But whenever I visit there, I’m surprised at how groups don’t mix: the city is multiracial, not intraracial. But on July 4, when the young people of Oakland crowd the park by the bay to watch the fireworks, the array of skin shades is beautiful and impressive; couples claim five and six strains in their blood.” David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glory: the Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1993), 68.
“ideas of intercommunalism,” which they saw as “an enlightenment for many third-world people in Japan.” Newton, in turn, expressed his desire to accept the Committee’s invitation to Japan, regretting that he could not do so during his visit to the People’s Republic of China. Newton wrote, “We were very glad to know that our Comrades in Japan have embraced the philosophy of revolutionary intercommunalism, for truly this will be a uniting factor between our people and yours. … Our struggles, as you yourselves clearly pointed out, are one struggle; our enemies are the same enemy; our victories shall be common” and reprinted the Committee’s letter in the December 4, 1971, issue of The Black Panther. Matsuko Ishida and Japan Committee to Support the Black Panther Party to Huey Newton, September 25, 1971, Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, Inc. and Black Panther Party Collections, Box 7 (series 2): 3. Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University; Matsuko Ishida and Japan Committee to Support the Black Panther Party to Huey Newton, September 25, 1971, Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, Inc. and Black Panther Party Collections, Box 7 (series 2): 3. Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University; Huey Newton to Japan Committee to Support the Black Panther Party, November 29, 1971, Dr. Huey Black History Matters ^ 139 P. Newton Fd. Collection, Box 7 (series 2): 3; Huey Newton to Masao Omata, November 29, 1971, Dr. Huey P. Newton Fd. Collection, Box 7 (series 2): 3.
For an excellent treatment of the Panthers’ policing of the police, which were aimed at capturing the imagination of local black communities by “subverting the state’s official performance of itself … turning the police … into the ‘symbols of uniformed and armed lawlessness,’” see Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), esp. 199–211.
Ibid.
Black Panther Party for Self Defense, “Panthers Move Internationally: Free Huey at the U.N.,” The Black Panther, September 14, 1968; Black Panther Party, “Take Black Genocide Before U.N.,” The Black Panther, March 21, 1970.
Black Panther Party, “Interview: With William Patterson and Charles Garry,” The Black Panther, July 5, 1969; Party, “Take Black Genocide Before U.N.”; Charles W. Cheng, “The Cold War: Its Impact on the Black Liberation Struggle Within the United States, Part 1 of 2,” Freedomways 13, no. 3 (1973).
See, for example, Black Panther Party for Self Defense, “Chinese Government Statement,” The Black Panther, July 20, 1967; Black Panther Party for Self Defense, “United States ‘Democracy’ in Latin America,” The Black Panther, July 20, 1967; Black Panther Party for Self Defense, “Mexican- Americans Fight Racism,” The Black Panther, May 4, 1968; Black Panther Party for Self Defense, “Eyes of the Third World on U.S. Racism,” The Black Panther, May 4, 1968; Black Panther Party, “Chilean Workers Struggle Against Exploitation,” The Black Panther, October 12, 1968; Black Panther Party, “Mexican Students Fight Against Repression,” The Black Panther, October 12, 1968; Black Panther Party, "Palestine Guerrillas,” The Black Panther, October 19, 1968; Black Panther Party, “Anti-U.S. Rallies,” The Black Panther, October 19, 1968; Black Panther Party, “Che Guevara on Vietnam,” The Black Panther, October 19, 1968; Black Panther Party, “Cubans Support Movement,” The Black Panther, October 19, 1968; Huey Newton, “Los Siete de la Raza,” The Black Panther, June 28, 1969; Black Panther Party, “Boycott Lettuce,” The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, September 23, 1972; Black Panther Party for Self Defense, “Bootlicker Tshombe Captured,” The Black Panther, July 20, 1967; Black Panther Party, “Bolivians Fight,” The Black Panther, February 2, 1969; Black Panther Party, “Bolivian ‘Niggers’ U.S.-Style Racism and Capitalism in Bolivia,” The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, April 22, 1972; Black Panther Party, “Cuban Revolution 10 Years Old,” The Black Panther, February 2, 1969; Black Panther Party, “The Heroic Palelestinian [sic] Women,” The Black Panther, July 26, 1969; Black Panther Party, “The Week of the Heroic Guerrilla,” The Black Panther, October 9, 1971. Black Panther Party, “Important Statements of a Brazilian Revolutionary Leader,” The Black Panther, August 1, 1970; Black Panther Party, “International Communique No. 1,” The Black Panther, October 12, 1968.
George Murray, “George Murray, Minister of Education, Black Panther Party, Relates Revolutionary History in the Making at Havana, Cuba Press Conference,” The Black Panther, October 12, 1968.
Ibid.
Ibid., 27.
Mark Lane and Huey Newton, “Huey Newton Speaks,” September 1, 1970, Dr. Huey P. Newton Fd. Collection, Box 57 (series 1): 7. Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, 6.
Ibid.
Huey Newton, “Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention: Resolutions and Declarations, Washington, DC,” November 29, 1970, Dr. Huey P. Newton Fd. Collection, Box 11 (series 2).
The idea for a Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention emerged from the Conference for a United Front against Fascism, organized by the BPP and other community organizations and held in Oakland July 18–20, 1969. See Black Panther Party, “A United Front Against Fascism,” The Black Panther, June 28, 1969; Eldridge Cleaver, “On the Constitution” (1970). Dr. Huey P. Newton Fd. Collection, Box 30 (series 2): 6.
Black Panther Party and Youth International Party, “Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention” (1970). Publications Relating to the Black Panther Party. Tamiment Library, New York University, New York.
Huey Newton, “Huey’s Message to the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention Plenary Session, Philadelphia” (September 5, 1970). Dr. Huey P. Newton Fd. Collection, Box 11 (series 2): 14.
Within Black Atlantic political history, Selassie is perhaps most well known for being perceived as God incarnate among Rastafari and for leading an independent Ethiopia while it was under attack by Italy’s Mussolini. By 1960, particularly after a failed revolutionary Marxist coup in December, Selassie became increasingly conservative, aligning with the United States, United Kingdom, and other Western nations. Black Panther Party, “Agnew Visits his Country Estate—Ethiopia,” The Black Panther, July 19, 1971.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Huey P. Newton, “Uniting Against the Common Enemy”; The Black Panther, October 23, 1971.
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© 2008 Manning Marable and Vanessa Agard-Jones
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Rodriguez, B. (2008). “Long Live Third World Unity! Long Live Internationalism”. In: Marable, M., Agard-Jones, V. (eds) Transnational Blackness. The Critical Black Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230615397_12
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