“The fiery renegade of the Negro radical movement,” The Washington Post wrote Feb. 21, 1965, the day Malcolm X was shot and killed just as he rose to address a crowd of followers. A fiery renegade. Malcolm X was just that, urging a path far different than that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: matching white violence with black violence.
His life and his death and the lessons he left behind have always been marked by contention. “Was he an influential or a peripheral black leader? Was he anti-white or was he leaning toward reconciliation between the races after his famous trip to Mecca? Was he a prophet or an articulate demagogue? Was he a political chameleon to everyone?” Desson Howe wrote in The Post in 1992.
His story, better known dogged by violence, is perhaps more about a man willing to change. Wil Haygood wrote this year that Malcolm Little spent his youth roaming the streets as a drug dealer and a pimp, became Malcolm X in prison and a prominent leader in the Nation of Islam, and died as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz after his trip to Mecca, which led him to reconsider his separatist leanings. “Such a beautiful example of our ability to evolve,” Russell Simmons wrote on Twitter.
His life and his death and the lessons he left behind have always been marked by contention. “Was he an influential or a peripheral black leader? Was he anti-white or was he leaning toward reconciliation between the races after his famous trip to Mecca? Was he a prophet or an articulate demagogue? Was he a political chameleon to everyone?” Desson Howe wrote in The Post in 1992.
His story, better known dogged by violence, is perhaps more about a man willing to change. Wil Haygood wrote this year that Malcolm Little spent his youth roaming the streets as a drug dealer and a pimp, became Malcolm X in prison and a prominent leader in the Nation of Islam, and died as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz after his trip to Mecca, which led him to reconsider his separatist leanings. “Such a beautiful example of our ability to evolve,” Russell Simmons wrote on Twitter.
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