[Sam the Sham]

Malcolm was self-educated. I respect that greatly about him.

He occurred at precisely the historical moment when a black person could express anger to a white person without being shot or lynched or whipped on the spot. The federal government was moving strongly to end white racial terror in the South because it recognized that in the age of Third World nationalism, it was a terrible Cold War propaganda embarassment for the US. He was the first black leader since Marcus Garvey who was did not care about alliances with white liberals or even electoral politics at all for that matter.

[Honestfreedom]

I would be all for the self reliance message that Malcolm and the NOI preached. The problem is that the only way they seem to get their message out is by combining it with rabid Jew hatred and hatred of White people. It seems that there must be a way to preach self reliance without combining it with hate.

[wardaddy]

He occurred at precisely the historical moment when a black person could express anger to a white person without being shot or lynched or whipped on the spot.

Good lord....where did you learn such nonesense? Do you really think every black person who expressed anger at whites suffered that fate? Incredible....btw....I was there as a lad. Were You? Malcolm X was a punk.

[nopardons]

You forgot,or don't know about Father Divine!

[Rockingham]

That Jim Crow was an embarrassment in the Cold War was a common argument put forward by liberals and civil rights advocates then and now, but the claim had little persuasive force at the time. As with slavery, the end of Jim Crow was mostly a matter of Christian faith correcting a long-settled injustice and that the steady rise of Black Americans through hard work, discipline, and education subverted claims that they were innately inferior. Civil rights laws kicked over a rotten edifice that the country -- even the South -- had come to recognize could no longer be sustained as a matter of justice or fact. Avoiding embarrassment in debates at the UN was beside the point.