Detroit's Red: Black Radical Detroit and the Political Development of Malcolm X

Abstract

This article examines the political development of Malcolm X domestically. Malcolm influenced and was influenced by activists in the United States. The long held notion that Malcolm's critiques of capitalism and imperialism only emerged after his trips abroad and the assumption that Black Americans had no part in his development are critically assessed. Acknowledging the impact his journeys to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East had on his political conceptions, this article locates Malcolm's burgeoning anti-capitalist stance through his relationships with Black radical Detroit.

Keywords:

• black power
• black radicalism
• detroit
• detroit activists
• Malcolm X

Notes

Nearly 3,000,000 copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X have been sold.

Spike Lee, Malcolm X (1992).

James Boggs, “Black Power,” Liberator, April 1967; James Boggs, “The Influence of Malcolm X on the Political Consciousness of Black Americans,” in Malcolm X: The Man and His Times, ed. John Henrik Clarke (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 50–55; Manning Marable, Living Black History: How Reimagining the African American Past Can Remake America's Radical Future (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006).

Muhammad Ahmad, We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organization 1960–1975 (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007); George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolution (New York: Schocken Books, 1967); William Sales, From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: 'Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity (Boston: South End Press, 1994).

Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 57.

Ahmad, We Will Return in the Whirlwind; Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour; Judson Jeffries, Black Power in the Belly of the Beast (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2006).

According to Manning Marable, in 2002 roughly 930 books, 360 films, and thousands of Internet educational resources were available on Malcolm X.

Representative of such work is George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X. Breitman's work has been submitted to criticism and challenged by subsequent scholars and activists who knew Malcolm. John Henrik Clarke's edited volume Malcolm X attempts to challenge Breitman's assertions. In a compilation of essays, personal reflections, speeches, and statements on Malcolm, each author offers another lens in which to view Malcolm. See also Albert Cleage, “Myths About Malcolm X: Two Views,” International Socialist Review 28, no. 5 1967.

For example see, Charles E. Wilson, “Leadership: Triumph in Leadership Tragedy” in Clarke, Malcolm X. Oba T'Shaka, The Political Legacy of Malcolm X (Los Angeles: Pan Afrikan Publications, 1983); W. Keorapetse Kgositsile, “Malcolm X and the Black Revolution: The Tragedy of a Dream Deferred,” in Clarke, Malcolm X; and Paul Lee, “A Study of the Evolution of Malcolm X's Black Nationalism” (1986). Dan Rather expresses similar sentiments on the CBS documentary on Malcolm X aired on December 3, 1992.

Printed in International Socialist Review 28 (September/October 1967): 33–60, and Clarke, Malcolm X.

Cleage, “Myths About Malcolm X,” 16.

Breitman's book serves three objectives: first, to preserve the intellectual property of Malcolm X; second, to correct the Alex Haley/Malcolm X Autobiography, which he found to be politically incomplete and misleading because it failed to explore Malcolm's transition near the end of his life; third, was to place Malcolm in a Trotskyist-Marxist political camp.

George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Schocken), 30–31.

Ibid., 30.

Breitman was an intellectual activist with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for almost forty-five years. He moved to Detroit in 1954, around the same time Malcolm X began his ministry with the Nation of Islam. He also worked for the Detroit Free Press. As a result of living in the predominantly Black community of Detroit, Breitman became interested in Black liberation as it related to the traditional worker's class struggle. Pathfinder Press, the publishing house initiated by the SWP, was the leading publishers of Malcolm's speeches and statement.

His assertion may have larger implications within the context of the complicated relationship between white Marxists and the Black radicals.

Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour; Judson Jeffries, Black Power in the Belly of the Beast (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 58; Boggs, Living for Change, 66.

Sales, From Civil Rights to Black Liberation, 75.

Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 31.

Luke Tripp, Working Class Radicalism in Detroit, 1960–1970, 6. Conference paper, October 4, 1994, 2.

Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying (Cambridge: South End Press), 3–4.

See The Illustrated News, September 30, 1963, featuring an announcement for the first public rally for the Freedom Now Party, an all-Black slate and platform, whose aim was liberation and freedom. Speakers at the rally included William Worthy, Rev. Albert Cleage, Richard Henry, Wilfred X, Luke Tripp, and Lamar Barron.

Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race, Industrial Decline, and Housing in Detroit, 1940–1960 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Tripp, Working Class Radicalism in Detroit, 6.

Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying.

Ibid., 4.

Tripp, Working Class Radicalism in Detroit, 4.

According to Grace Lee Boggs, the Illustrated News had a mass circulation; she claims the paper was read by tens of thousands of people. See Boggs, Living for Change, 121.

Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, 54; Max Stanford, “The Colonial War at Home,” Monthly Review, May 1964.

Boggs, Living for Change, 118–119.

Malcolm X FBI File, Summary Report, NY Office, 4/30/1958, 98–100.

Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, 57.

Boggs, Living for Change, 120.

GOAL was incorporated in Michigan as a nonprofit educational corporation in April 1962.

Malcolm X Papers, Box 15 Folder 11.

Boggs, Living for Change, 121.

Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 97.

Manning Marable, “Interview with Muhammad Ahmad,” January 31, 2003.

John Bracey, August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick, eds., Black Nationalism in America (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 509.

Malcolm X Papers, Box 15, Folder 19; Ahmad, We Will Return in the Whirlwind, 124–126.

Ahmad, We Will Return in the Whirlwind, 57.

See Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL) to Malcolm X, 26 October 1963, in Malcolm X Papers, Box 15, Folder 11.

Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X, 105–106.

Malcolm X Papers, Box 15, Folder 11.

Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements ed. George Breitman, (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), November 10, 1963; Boggs, Living for Change; Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour.

The Illustrated News, November 11, 1963; Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, 87–92.

“Differs with C. L. Franklin on Policy: Rev. Albert Cleage Resigns from DCHR,” The Illustrated News, October 28, 1963.

Ibid., November 25, 1963.

Ibid.

Ibid.

“Interview with Max Stanford (Muhammad Ahmad) by Jasmin Young,” March 4, 2009; Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, 92.

Boggs, Living for Change, 123.

Ibid., 124; Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, 75.

Boggs, Living for Change, 124.

Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, 93.

Malcolm X, The Autobiography, 353.

Jasmin Young, “Interview with Grace Boggs,” November 20, 2008; Grace Boggs, “Let's Talk About Malcolm and Martin.”

Jasmin Young, “Interview with Max Stanford,” March 4, 2009.

Eulogy of James Boggs given by Ossie Davis.

James Boggs was an autoworker for twenty-eight years. Through his work with the labor movement, Boggs developed a deep appreciation for the fundamental concepts of Marxism and socialism. With the publication of The American Revolution, James Boggs established himself as an important theoretician of Black Power. See Stephen Ward, “Ours Too Was a Fight for a Better World” (PhD dissertation, University of Texas, 2002), 49.

“Interview with Malcolm X by A. B. Spellman,” Monthly Review (May 1964): 14–24.

“The Colonial War at Home,” Monthly Review (May 1964): 1–14.

Malcolm X, Two Speeches By Malcolm X, 3rd ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1990), 58.

Ward, “Ours Too Was Fight for a Better World,” 53.

“Interview with Max Stanford (Muhammad Ahmad) by Jasmin Young,” March 4, 2009.

James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 128–129.

Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X, 213.

George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X on Afro-American History (New York: Merit Publishers, 1967), 4–5.

Malcolm X, “Ballot or the Bullet,” April 12, 1964.

I am borrowing the term “organic intellectual” from Antonio Gramsci, who used it to refer to an intellectual who cultivates strong roots in his or her community, working to maintain links with local issues and struggles that connect to the people and their experiences. See Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971).