Malcolm X—60 Years after His Assassination

Mar 3, 2025

60 years ago in February, Malcolm X was assassinated while speaking to a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), an organization he had recently helped found. Whoever pulled the trigger, the U.S. government was involved, at least indirectly, and maybe directly—as recently opened FBI files would indicate.

Born Malcolm Little, he had seen his father lynched in Michigan. Like many others of his generation, he gained his first education in the streets, becoming involved as a teenager in street crime, gambling, later burglary, for which he was sent to prison. While in prison, he read and learned from Elijah Muhammad’s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks. Nation of Islam militants were the first people he heard call on black people to defend themselves.

Paroled from prison at the age of 27, he joined the Nation of Islam and threw himself into activity to win new people, first in Detroit, where he was chiefly responsible for tripling the membership in less than a year, then to Chicago, where he studied with Elijah Muhammad. He was sent to help establish other temples in both Boston and Philadelphia, then Harlem, which was to become his base and provide him with a permanent platform.

His influence eventually outpaced that of the Nation of Islam. The assassination was aimed at smothering it.

Speaking to the Poor Black Masses

He was undoubtedly one of the most powerful and militant popular speakers this country has ever known. With his directness, the analogies he took from daily experience, the biting humor he used to confront his audience about their own hesitations and illusions, he found the way to speak to the poor black masses in a way that no one else had done.

He defined himself in a famous analogy he often used: that of the house slave and the field slave. (This version is from Message to the Grass Roots.)

There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes—they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food—what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master’s house—quicker than the master would….

If you came to the house Negro and said, ‘Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate,’ the house Negro would look at you and say, Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this? ...

On that same plantation, there was the field Negro. The field Negroes—those were the masses…. The field Negro was beaten from morning to night; he lived in a shack, in a hut; he wore old, castoff clothes. He hated his master. I say he hated his master. He was intelligent…. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try to put it out; that field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he’d die. If someone came to the field Negro and said, Let’s separate, let’s run, he didn’t say Where we going? He’d say, Any place is better than here.

You’ve got field Negroes in America today. I’m a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man’s house on fire, you don’t hear the little Negroes talking about our government is in trouble. They say, THE government is in trouble. Imagine a Negro saying, OUR government!—that’s a Negro that is out of his mind, a Negro that is out of his mind.

Expressing the Depth of the Masses’ Anger

Malcolm X took his uncompromising stance toward a racist society from the Nation of Islam of that period. While still speaking for the Nation in 1963, Malcolm X was asked, “Do you hate the white man?”

He responded: “How can anybody ask us do we hate the man who kidnapped us four hundred years ago, brought us here and stripped us of our history, stripped us of our culture, stripped us of our language, stripped us of everything that you could use today to prove that you were ever part of the human family, brought you down to the level of an animal, sold you from plantation to plantation like a sack of wheat, sold you like a sack of potatoes, sold you like a horse and a cow, and then hung you up from one end of the country to the other—and then you ask me do I hate him? Why, your question is worthless.” (From The Black Revolution, a speech given at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.)

Over the years, Malcolm X’s ideas evolved. He began to qualify his denunciation of white society. For example, in a speech given in Detroit, April of 1964, Malcolm X had this to say: “All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man. Now in speaking like this, it doesn’t mean that we’re anti-white, but it does mean we’re anti-exploitation, we’re anti-degradation, we’re anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn’t want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us.” (From The Ballot or the Bullet)

But whatever changes he went through, he never adopted the cynical patriotism of American society, he never celebrated its so-called “democracy.” For example, in that same speech, he declared: “No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver—no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”

People Who Won’t Be Pushed Around

From its beginnings, the Nation of Islam had insisted that black people had not only the human right, but also the moral duty to defend themselves and their community. The Nation of Islam established self-defense squads to protect its own activities and its own members. In general, the police did not touch activities organized by the Nation of Islam and left their temples alone. This was noticed in black communities which had long suffered under the arbitrary and vicious use of police violence. The defense squads, called the Fruit of Islam (FOI), reinforced what Malcolm said in his speeches: the black population should not let itself be pushed around. “We do not look for trouble. In fact, we are taught to steer clear of trouble. We do not carry knives or guns. But we are also taught that when one finds something that is worthwhile getting into trouble about, he should be ready to die, then and there, for that particular thing.”

Events in Los Angeles in 1962 brought the Nation to a kind of watershed. Although there had already been signs to the contrary, black people in and out of the Nation of Islam had believed that the Nation would not allow an attack on itself to go unanswered. But in April of 1962, Los Angeles cops raided and shot up the Los Angeles temple, killing the secretary of the temple, and wounding seven other Muslims. The seven wounded men and seven others were placed under arrest and later tried. Muslims congregated at the temple; and not only Muslims, people from the neighborhood came there also. Muslims from all over the country streamed into Los Angeles or phoned, saying they were ready to come. But not only did the Nation not organize any kind of response to this aggression; Malcolm X was eventually sent out to Los Angeles to demobilize the Nation’s militants, ordering them to wait on Allah for vengeance. For Malcolm himself, it felt like a betrayal of those he had long addressed.

For a whole period, the Nation of Islam, on the basis of its uncompromising stance, had attracted the most radicalized section of the black population. But just when the population was becoming even more radicalized, the Nation of Islam began to retreat into its religious side, and to make its first obvious compromise with American society. Malcolm’s voice began to be stifled.

When John F. Kennedy was killed in November 1963, Malcolm was asked about it. Denouncing U.S. involvement in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Viet Nam, he commented, “Being an old farm boy myself, I was never sad to see chickens coming home to roost.” Elijah Muhammad disciplined Malcolm X, ordering him to keep silent for 90 days.

Whatever differences had been evolving inside the Nation, this brought them in the open. In March of 1964, it became obvious that Malcolm X would not be reinstated. He announced the formation of The Muslim Mosque Inc. In May of 1964, he announced the formation of a non-religious organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).

Nine months later he would be dead.

In the last year of his life, Malcolm X made it clear that he was ready to bring down American society, if that was what it took for black people to escape oppression. “We have to create a situation that will explode this world sky high unless we are heard from when we ask for some kind of recognition as human beings. This is all we want—to be a human being. If we can’t be recognized and respected as a human being, we have to create a situation where no human being will enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (From The Second OAAU Rally)

He only indirectly said—and that only at the very end of his life—that the poor black population, the masses, could never be free until that society was brought down.

If Malcolm X had lived, would he have come to the point that he could have given the clear goal of overturning capitalist society to the black masses? Would he have developed the perspective that the black masses, almost all of them workers, could have led the assault on capitalist society in which all the laboring poor would have an interest?

No one can say for sure. In that time period, such a possibility existed. And Malcolm himself had already gone through some important changes in his thinking. What he could have done, we can’t know.

But we do know that he addressed the poor masses as a leader worthy of their respect, someone like themselves. He gave them the concrete aims needed in the fight to defend themselves. The struggles that broke out rested on those aims—starting in 1964 with the Harlem police riot, followed by Watts and others in 1965, Cleveland in 1966, Detroit and Newark in 1967, and widespread in 1968. To a very important extent, the people out in the streets in that period were Malcolm X’s legacy.

Yes, the ruling class of this country wanted him silenced. But his words remained. His legacy lives—for new generations to make their own and go beyond.