50th year since Malcolm X's assassination

[Greed]

Hundreds to mark 50th year since Malcolm X's assassination
Associated Press
By FRANK ELTMAN
18 minutes ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Activists, actors, and politicians will remember civil rights leader Malcolm X with a ceremony at the New York site in Harlem where he was killed 50 years ago.

About 300 people are expected to hear remarks Saturday from one of Malcolm X's six daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, as well as U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel and other elected officials.

The ceremony is being held at the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in Harlem, formerly known as the Audubon Ballroom. Malcolm X was shot to death there Feb. 21, 1965, as he was preparing to address several hundred of his followers.

By the time he died, the Muslim leader had moderated his militant message of black separatism and pride but was still very much a passionate advocate of black unity, self-respect and self-reliance. Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of murder in his death. He had repudiated the Nation of Islam less than a year earlier.

In an interview with The Associated Press on the eve of the anniversary observance, Ilyasah Shabazz said she was pleased that the site is now a place for people to get a sense of empowerment.

"One of the great things about Malcolm is that he redefined the civil rights movement to include a human rights agenda," she said. "So while we are focusing on integrating schools, integrating housing and all these other things, Malcolm said that we demand our human rights 'by any means necessary.' And that means ... that we have to address these problems. That we have to identify them, and absolutely discuss them."

At 3:10 p.m., a moment of silence will be held to commemorate the time of his shooting. Actor Delroy Lindo will also read a eulogy to Malcolm X that was written by the late actor and activist Ossie Davis.

Veteran social and political activist Ron Daniels will give the keynote address.

Malcolm X, whose full name was El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was 39 when he was killed.

http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-mark-50th-since-malcolm-xs-assassination-065822218.html

 

[QueEx]

Malcolm X Speaks of the Soulful,
Soothing Power of Jazz
A recently auctioned letter from an imprisoned Malcolm X reveals
his spiritual connection to jazz and reverence for jazz artists.

Malcolm X Ed Ford, World Telegram Staff Photographer, Library of
Congress/New York World-Telegram and Sun Collection​

By: Todd Steven Burroughs
February 20, 2015


Malcolm X is being remembered this week across black America on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. It is a sober time to commemorate the murder of a sober, serious man who fought for the liberation of African people. But he was a man—one who had a great sense of humor, a winning smile, and a great love for his people and the classic music they created: what’s now known as standard jazz.

There was a recent public auction of a March 9, 1950, letter by Malcolm X, in which he discusses the art form and some of the artists he knew and loved, including the late luminary and jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt. In his six-page, two-sided, handwritten letter to “My Dearly Beloved Brother Raymond,” Malcolm X, in jail for his crimes as Detroit Red, talks the talk of the newly converted, in his case, to the Nation of Islam.

For three pages he talks about the greatness of Elijah Muhummad’s teachings and how they had purified him to seek and see truth. But then, as letters tend to do, it rambled. On Page 4 he segued into jazz:

“No wonder we do some of the things we do ... no wonder we drink, dope and all sorts of things to soothe our soul ... no wonder we so continuously have sought the lures of night life to create some sort of peace within ourselves ... no wonder we have so longingly turned so often to music for its comforting effects.”

Malcolm continues, talking about music’s spiritual power:

Music, Brother, is ours ... it is us ... and like us it is always here ... surrounding us ... like the infinite particles that make up Life, it cannot be seen ... but can only be felt ... Like Life!!! No, it is not created ... but like the never-dying Soul ... eternally permeates the atmosphere with its Presence ... ever-waiting for its Master ... the Lordly Musician ... the Wielder of Souls ... to come and give it a Temple ... mould it into a Song. Music without the Musician is like Life without Allah ... both being in need of the house ... a home ... The Temple ... the Complete Song and its Creator.​

Sonny [Stitt] & Milt Jackson played together up in Flint, Mich. in ’45 just after Sonny left [Mr.] ‘B’ [jazz singing great Billy Eckstine]. All of them know me well, but few know me under my own name. Is ‘B’ a Muslim? I heard Diz [legendary jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie] was. Please tell me the fellows who are. There are many who belong to the Ahmadiyya Movement, but I want to know how many and which ones that are in show Biz belong to ours, under Mr. Elijah Mohammed.


Detroit Red/Malcolm X was no stranger to jazz or its greatest practitioners. The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Told to Alex Haley, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in continuous print this October, is replete with Detroit Red’s casual, first-name association with, he brags, every major black jazz artist of the mid-1940s, including Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, Lester “Prez” Young, Don Byas, Ray Nance, Sonny Greer, Sy Oliver and Charles Melvin “Cootie” Williams. He knew many of them so well because he sold marijuana to many of them, he confessed.

Katea Denise Stitt, 50, is the daughter of Sonny Stitt. She carries on the family’s jazz tradition, as interim program director at 89.3 WPFW-FM, a public radio station in Washington, D.C., dedicated to jazz and leftist talk.

Her reaction to the appearance and content of the letter, which was shared with her by a family friend, jazz historian William Brower? “A huge smile, followed by a bit of melancholy in wishing I could have had discussion about Malcolm X with my father.” (Sonny Stitt died in 1982 when Katea Stitt was still a teen.)

As can be typical in the relationship between parents and children, Katea Stitt told The Root that her famous father never mentioned Detroit Red and his subsequent globally historic identity to her: “He never told me about knowing Malcolm X, although he did mention the Nation, and Elijah Muhammad, in terms of proper diet, living, etc. He would reference the book How to Eat to Live when discussing health with us.”


In an email to The Root, she wrote, “I was thrilled to read it [the letter], not only because he speaks so warmly of my father, but his thoughts on the significant role of music, and that of the musician, were immensely moving. To have him refer to my father and jazz, no less, in that way is mind-blowing to me!”


Stitt told her 13-year-old daughter, Johanna, about the letter and her family’s casual connection with this historic figure.


“We talk about her grandfather all the time; she is pretty open and receptive, thankfully,” Stitt said. “She had questions about the other musicians referenced, and who Malcolm was, etc. At the end of our discussion, her words were, ‘That's really cool, Mom!’”


Stitt added: “Through the letter, we get a different glimpse of Malcolm as a cultural icon and thinker, in addition to a political one. ... It was just wonderful to experience a part of Malcolm X that is not heralded enough, in my opinion: his deep love for, and commitment to, all humanity.”


_________
Todd Steven Burroughs, an independent researcher and writer based in Hyattsville, Md., is the author of Son-Shine on Cracked Sidewalks, an audiobook on Amiri Baraka and Ras Baraka through the eyes of the 2014 Newark, N.J., mayoral campaign. He is the co-editor, along with Jared Ball, of A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X and the co-author, with Herb Boyd, of Civil Rights: Yesterday & Today.
​

http://www.theroot.com/articles/his...al_connection_to_jazz_and_jazz_musicians.html

 

[QueEx]

Malcolm X: Letter From Prison in 1950
​

This recently auctioned letter, dated March 9, 1950, from Malcolm X was
written to “My Dearly Beloved Brother Raymond.” Raymond has never been identified​

​

 

[thoughtone]

1961

 

[Greed]

On 50th anniversary of Malcolm X's assassination, his family tackles the enduring con

On 50th anniversary of Malcolm X's assassination, his family tackles the enduring controversy of his legacy
By Caitlin Dickson
February 21, 2015 3:48 PM
Yahoo News

Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination ahead of a speech at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in 1965. Hundreds of people, including his relatives, politicians and activists are expected to fill the now-renamed Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center to honor the civil rights leader in the place where he died.

It may seem like relatively little fanfare compared to the federal holiday observed annually on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. But while the two men are both immortalized in history for their civil rights activism, Malcolm X is often remembered as the violent counterpart to King’s pacifist.

Though he abandoned his separatist views following a trip to Mecca the year before he died, Malcolm X had already been labeled by opponents as “angry,” “extremist” and a “radical militant” — a reputation that has, to his family's dismay, seems to have withstood time.

In an interview with CBS Saturday, Malcolm X’s oldest daughter, Attallah Shabazz, said she thinks time has warped her father’s message.

“I understand people needing to hold on to the strength they associate to him,” Shabazz told CBS’s Vladimir Duthiers. “However they do him a disservice, an injustice, when they excerpt him and redefine him in their way and not as he is.”

More than forty years after Malcolm X was killed, a black man was elected as president of the United States. And just days before the 50th anniversary of his assassination, that president called on the global community to take a stand against “extremism” — a concept that played a major role in Malcolm X’s legacy.

Malcolm X, who pushed for “equality by any means necessary,” was seen by many as an extremist. Rather than shying away from such criticisms, he tackled them head on, most notably as a guest participant in the renowned Oxford Union’s 1964 debate on the very topic.

The debate's proposition was: “Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater had made this brazen declaration just months earlier in his acceptance speech for his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention. That irony of the statement's origin was not lost on the renowned civil rights activist when he chose to argue in favor of the white conservative politician’s words. That Goldwater’s message somehow changed as soon as it came out of Malcolm X’s mouth was exactly his point.

“As long as a white man does it, it’s all right. A black man is supposed to have no feelings,” he said. “But when a black man strikes back he’s an extremist; he’s supposed to sit passively and have no feelings, be patient, and love his enemy no matter what kind of attack — verbal or otherwise, he’s supposed to take it. But if he stands up in any way and tries to defend himself, then he’s an extremist.”

Less than three months after his speech at Oxford, Malcolm X was shot and killed in Harlem by members of the Nation of Islam, the African-American Islamic movement which he’d disavowed earlier that year.

In the 50 years since his assassination, “extremism” has become more of a global concern than ever. But is the kind of religious extremism we associate today with motivating violent militant groups like the Islamic State and deadly terrorist attacks like the one that killed 12 people at a satirical newspaper in Paris, the same kind of extremism that Malcolm X was talking about? The kind that he had previously been accused of?

How would the aggressive orator’s commitment to “equality by any means necessary” be received today? Would the kinds of statements or affiliations that earned him labels like “radical” or “extremist” over half a century ago even raise eyebrows in 2015? The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that tracks hate groups and extremists in the United States, still counts the Nation of Islam — the black separatist group to which Malcolm X was once devoted and then later disowned — among the country’s most prominent extremist organizations. But the hateful rhetoric espoused by that group’s leadership is hardly a top concern in the era of beheadings and suicide bombings.

The brutality exhibited by groups like IS and al-Qaida over the past two decades has certainly raised the bar in terms of what we expect from “extremists.” But do we actually apply any less prejudice in perceiving those who promote extremism now than when Malcolm X spoke at Oxford Union in 1964? After all, the biggest domestic threat to the United States comes not from those Islamic terrorist organizations that dominate headlines, but from right-wing, anti-government extremist Americans.

A New York Times op-ed by Ilyasah Shabazz — another of Malcolm X’s six daughters — offers a deeper understanding of her father’s legacy through the lens of today’s issues. She considers not how he would be perceived by today’s public, but what he would say about the “renewed spirit of civil rights activism after the tragic events in Ferguson, Mo., on Staten Island and in countless other parts of the country.”

While Shabazz admits that her father’s “ability to boil down hard truths into strong statements and catchy phrases presaged our era of hashtag activism,” she predicts Malcolm X would criticize today’s protesters for lacking a specific target and relying too heavily on slogans rather than action.

“I imagine he would applaud the ‘Hands Up’ gesture for its sheer dramatic effect, but also critique it as rank capitulation that ironically accommodates the very goal of police brutality — to intimidate and immobilize black citizens, forcing them into a defenseless posture if they hope to survive,” Shabazz writes. “He’d agree that ‘Black Lives Matter,’ indeed — but also note that the uniformed police officers who disagree are not likely to be persuaded by a hashtag.”

While police brutality hasn’t exactly changed in the 50 years since Malcolm X’s death, writes Shabazz, other things, like minorities’ place in American society and “access to the system,” have.

“We have the ability to become law officers and judges, and the ability to register and vote,” she says. “He would encourage activists to take advantage of this access, to take power inside the system as well as outside it.”

“Grass-roots work is not flashy, and rarely celebrated on the national media level, but that is where change begins.”

http://news.yahoo.com/50th-annivers...owing-concerns-over--extremism-204830209.html

 

[QueEx]

Re: On 50th anniversary of Malcolm X's assassination, his family tackles the enduring