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Truth about Malcolm X
New York Daily News (printed in Chicago Sun-Times today) ^ | Monday, February 21st, 2005 | Stanley Crouch

Posted on 02/26/2005 9:19:28 AM PST by Chi-townChief

Forty years ago today, Malcolm X was shot down in front of his family and an audience of followers at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. When he died, Malcolm X had been estranged from the Nation of Islam for about a year and had begun to call Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the cult, a liar, a fraud and a womanizer. Those were mighty hot words to direct at the Nation of Islam, which was feared throughout the black community as a known gathering place for violent criminals of all sorts who had been converted in prison, the way Malcolm himself had. Before his ascent in the cult world of homemade Islam, Malcolm Little had been known as "Big Red," a street hustler with a big mouth, a cocaine habit and a willingness to get rowdy and wild if the occasion called for it.

Sent to prison for a series of burglaries, Malcolm turned to Islam, or a version of it, promoted as the "black man's true religion" which held the secrets to liberation from white domination and black self-hatred. A convert, he began the liberation by replacing his "slave name" with an Islamic name or an X.

Malcolm X appeared on the national scene in 1959, presented by the media as the face of what white racism had done to black people. He was a minister of hate who used fiery rhetoric to teach that the white man was a devil invented 6,000 years ago by a mad black scientist. White audiences were appalled or darkly amused by this cartoon version of Islam, but more than a few black Americans were influenced by the Nation of Islam and by its dominant mouthpiece - light-skinned, freckle-faced, red-haired Malcolm X, the voice of black rage incarnate.

Some Negroes left the Christian church, others changed their names. A number stopped eating pork and demanded beef barbecue, and a good many eventually stopped frying their hair and became more nationalistic and hostile to whites, in their own rhetoric and in the rhetoric they liked to hear.

Malcolm X proved how vulnerable Negroes were to hearing another Negro put some hard talk on the white man. The long heritage of silence, both in slavery and the redneck South, was so strong that speech became a much more important act than many realized. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized this, observing that many of those who went to hear Malcolm X were less impressed with his ideas than they were with the contemptuous way he spoke to white power.

Since his death, Malcolm X has been elevated from a heckler of the civil rights moment to a civil rights leader - which he never was - and many people now think that he was as important to his moment as King. He was not, and Malcolm X was well aware of this. But in our country, where liberal contempt for black people is boundless, we should not be surprised to see a minor figure lacquered with media "respect" and thrown in the lap of the black community, where he is passed off as a great hero.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: malcolmx; stanleycrouch
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To: Sam the Sham
Your abject ignorance and hate,are beyond words.

You are the one who knows no factual history;just biased bilge,which you spread like tar.

81 posted on 02/26/2005 2:02:23 PM PST by nopardons
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To: Sam the Sham

Still more blinkered mewlings from your closed mind.


82 posted on 02/26/2005 2:03:36 PM PST by nopardons
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To: Sam the Sham

Sam, your assertions are preposterous. African slaves were mostly enslaved by their own people or other tribes.
African slaves in America were freed and given citizenship by American white people.


83 posted on 02/26/2005 2:06:37 PM PST by Abcdefg
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To: nopardons
And Roy Campanella's father was WHITE.Nothing at all was done to him!

What a stupid comment !

Since the dawn of human history privileged males could always use unprivileged females as their concubines, courtesans, geishas, right of the first night, slave girls, comfort girls, mistresses, etc. It has always been okay since 1620 for a white man to sleep with a black women. African Americans would look a whole lot more African if that weren't true. Conversely it has never been okay until recently for a black man to show any attraction to a white woman. Even now, this much time after 1965, how often do you see black movie stars playing romantic lead with white leading ladies ? Because it is still an issue. It is okay for Halle Berry to do a love scene with Pierce Brosnan. It is not okay for Will Smith to do a love scene with Reese Witherspoon. He CAN do a love scene with Eva Mendes because Latina isn't quite "white".

84 posted on 02/26/2005 2:09:45 PM PST by Sam the Sham
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To: Abcdefg
Sam, your assertions are preposterous. African slaves were mostly enslaved by their own people or other tribes. African slaves in America were freed and given citizenship by American white people.

Start working on the rest of the alphabet and read a history book.

85 posted on 02/26/2005 2:11:40 PM PST by Sam the Sham
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To: Clemenza

I don't agree that Malcolm wanted NOTHING!


86 posted on 02/26/2005 2:18:28 PM PST by CyberAnt (Pres. Bush: "Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.")
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To: Sam the Sham

Sam, you should stop the "hate whitey" nonsense.


87 posted on 02/26/2005 2:20:11 PM PST by Abcdefg
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To: Sam the Sham
It was NOT a "stupid comment" at all! Roy's father was a nobody. He fell in love with and married a black woman,tight here in America and was NOT tortured,lynched,no hounded out of his neighborhood. You are the one who claimed that until 1965 (using the Terrill example),no black male could even look at a white woman without being murdered.

And unlike you,I knew,PERSONALLY,Roy Campanella and his family. His children and my brother and I were all friends. His step son,who is a very black black and I,who am white,were good friend! In the 1950s,David was part of a group of kids and nobody batted an eye,looked at us funny,nor tried to lynch David,because he and I danced together.And that had NOTHING at all to do with the fact that his father was famous.

Frankly,you don't know what you're talking about. You just post bigoted propaganda and then claim that others don't know anything,when it is you,YOU, who have a terribly skewed vision of things.

ARE YOU BLACK,OR JUST A WANNABE WITH A FLY UP YOUR NOSE?

88 posted on 02/26/2005 2:22:31 PM PST by nopardons
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To: nopardons

Campanella. Campanella. Obviously he was white, right ? So of course he was not tortured or lynched or killed, right ? Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, isn't it ? It has always been okay for a white man to sleep with a black woman. Always. That is a perk of privilege.


89 posted on 02/26/2005 2:48:19 PM PST by Sam the Sham
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To: Sam the Sham

Actually he was dark skinned like the actor Giancarlo Esposito. Their parents were married.


90 posted on 02/26/2005 2:50:24 PM PST by cyborg (http://mentalmumblings.blogspot.com/)
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To: cyborg

I meant his Italian father.


91 posted on 02/26/2005 2:55:51 PM PST by Sam the Sham
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To: nopardons; Sam the Sham

You guys trigger an old memory - when I was very young, growing up in Cleveland in the 50s, we had a couple of black guys on the block who were married to white English women; they were in the service and brought the women back to the U.S. with them. My father, being a WWII vet as well, would b/s with these guys on occasion.

What is still funny to me is that my grandmother, God rest her, could never get over how white their kids were; I know this kind of talk is thought of as racist now but I still get a laugh when I think about it.


92 posted on 02/26/2005 2:56:57 PM PST by Chi-townChief
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To: Sam the Sham

Yes but things were a little different in the North, actually A LOT different.


93 posted on 02/26/2005 2:58:26 PM PST by cyborg (http://mentalmumblings.blogspot.com/)
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To: Sam the Sham
He married a black woman and there were still laws against that in the South,in the early part of the 20th.century. Fortunately,he didn't live in the South.

History is definitely not your mietre!

BTW,Jews were also lunched in the South;so were Catholics.

Reading comprehension and knowledge of factual history is way beyond you. Please do get some help for that,as well as for your decided bigotry!

Father Divine married a white 19 year old girl in 1946. He wasn't lynched.

Jack Johnson had a myriad of white mistresses and several white wives,in the early part of the 20th century. He wasn't lynched.

Sydney Pottier has had a white wife for almost 5 decades. He wasn't lynched.

The Zulus,on South Africa had black slaves almost into the 20th century,under white rule.

I and others can give you more examples,which disprove your blatantly racist posts until the cows come home. YOU DON'T KNOW ANY FACTUAL HOSTORY TO SPEAK OF!

94 posted on 02/26/2005 3:00:24 PM PST by nopardons
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To: Chi-townChief; Sam the Sham

That happened after WW I as well and none of those men were lynched;even though Sam keeps claiming no such thing ever happened. LOL


95 posted on 02/26/2005 3:03:25 PM PST by nopardons
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To: wtc911

I'm just an old fashioned imperialist.....big stick sort of guy.

That was around long before Neos or Paleos or even the USA.

Get your enemies first and make others fear you. My foreign policy perspectives are not very nuanced.

I like Wolfowitz just fine.

I will cop to being Paleo socially (I know ...you woulda never guessed..lol) although I'm a hair libertarian on pot and private sexuality

My issue with what is deemed Neo on this forum...and which I believe this forum has become...a NeoConservative platform...is that Neos eschew the culture war more than they will admit. They put Bill Bennett and others out there as a face of sorts but behind that I often see a more pragmatic reply to cultural degeneration than I prefer.

The FROBLs here who have been so vocal and encouraged of late are absolute NeoCons. That is not to be confused with Jewish like many here like to do as a smear when they have nothing in their quiver to defend NeoCon thought. Criticize Neos and you are smeared as anti-Jewish. Quite the contrary, several of the FROBLs lead opponents here are in fact Jewish.


96 posted on 02/26/2005 3:44:31 PM PST by wardaddy (I don't think Muslims are good for America....just a gut instinct thing.)
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To: nopardons

Was each and every black man lynched ? No. Was it safe ? Not in the least. Did those black men have to think very, very carefully about where they went with a white woman ? At all times.

You can marry a white girl as Father Divine did if you never leave Harlem, as he didn't, and if you have an army of followers as he did.

Marrying Sammy Davis Jr ended Mai Britt's Hollywood career. And your ignorance is total because you are apparently unaware that before Mai Britt he was involved with Kim Novak. The studio bosses didn't think she needed that kind of publicity so some of Sam Giancana's guys paid Sammy a visit and "explained" things to him. Inger Stevens would have been ruined if her marriage to a black man got out (as Sue Lyons was). Marrying Sidney Poitier ended Joanna Shimkus' career. Certain things are somewhat safe in very liberal environments, but never outside.

Your ignorance is incredible. Barely possible for powerful, influential blacks doesn't mean safe.

And as I taught you, Jack Johnson only evaded prison by leaving the country. Transporting a white woman across state lines was violation of the Mann Act because it could "only" be for prostitution.


97 posted on 02/26/2005 3:49:41 PM PST by Sam the Sham
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To: Sam the Sham; bourbon; onyx

Emmitt Till is one example...but not about expressing anger at a white person....and Emmitt was killed 50 years ago.

I submit to you that not EVERY black person who expressed anger at a white was harmed or killed.

Do you have proof to the contrary?

Let's turn it around while we are musing. Do you think every white person who foolishly walks thru a black ghetto today at nite is mugged or raped or murdered?

And if so, is it because they are white?

If not then why are they more victimized?...opportunity?....I don't buy that.

I look forward to the day when a white can stroll through a black ghetto at nite and not be in harm's way for being white?

A day w/o poverty would be nice but highly unlikely.
Do you think there are still white bogeyman still out there lurking?

Do you think there are black bogeymen lurking for whites?

Which one is more? black on white bogeymen or white on black bogeymen?

This is an old game. I already know the answers. If you don't, you should toss all that victimhood claptrap you got brainwashed with and get out more.


98 posted on 02/26/2005 3:54:05 PM PST by wardaddy (I don't think Muslims are good for America....just a gut instinct thing.)
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To: Sam the Sham
Been following your dialog in this thread..
You had me totally fooled.. but I'm not very smart..
Surely not as smart as you...

You're about the highest grade troll as I've ever noticed on FreeRepublic...
That surely means something.. Was that a compliment.?.
Dunno.. it sounded a bit like one.. FR does indeed deserve a higher grade of troll..
Might be a trend... but hope not... I like my trolls incoherent..

99 posted on 02/26/2005 3:58:43 PM PST by hosepipe (This Propaganda has been edited to include not a small amount of Hyperbole..)
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To: Sam the Sham

You're right.


100 posted on 02/26/2005 4:00:27 PM PST by cyborg (http://mentalmumblings.blogspot.com/)
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