A Day for Malcolm X

photo Dough Harris

"It wasn't nothing nice being in Harlem in 1968 and a follower of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I was on Malcolm's holy turf and all sides wanted to know where I was coming from. The Malcolmites were my fellow Black Arts Movement artists, but the politico ideologues and the Nation of Islam members came to check my Black Arts Movement readings to hear what I was saying. After all, his assassination caused a great majority of the North American African nation to suffer grief and trauma, perhaps similar to the anguish and grief Shia Muslims suffer in their annual ritual bloodletting as an act of mourning at the death of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of Prophet Muhammad. As in the split between Sunni and Shia Islam, North American Africans were divided, especially the Sunni or Orthodox Muslims, and for sure the followers of Malcolm X, whether Sunni Muslim or not. History has revealed the US government was the most critical actor in the death of Malcolm X. And after he was prevented from departing his plane in France, did not Malcolm say his adversaries were beyond the Nation of Islam since the NOI did not run France?

Nevertheless, in Harlem, I told the truth as I knew it. When Malcolm was assassinated, 1965, I was a student at San Francisco State University, and like most of us Black students, I considered myself a Black Nationalist and follower of Malcolm X. I didn't join the Nation of Islam until a brief association with Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and their Black Panther Party. After a problematic experience with Eldridge at the Black House, San Francisco, 1967, I fled into the Nation of Islam before going into exile as a draft resister who refused to be a running dog for American imperialism in Vietnam. I went to Canada, but soon returned to the US underground to Detroit, Chicago and Harlem, 1968.

When my Harlem mentor and guide, Askia Muhammad Toure', introduced me to Malcolm's widow, Dr. Betty Shabazz, she turned her head away from me, although she was more friendly when we met again years later when I was out with saw Amina and Amiri Baraka, our mutual friends. When I discovered she was a Gemini like myself, I loved everything about her because I understood everything about her! And astrologically, I understood Malcolm too, i,e., as a Taurus, he was a real man, loyal and true."

A Day for Malcolm