Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2: A production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Son, Josh,
Speaker 2: And there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, just being quiet
Speaker 2: as a church mouse. And this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: It's because he told her to zip it.
Speaker 2: I was gonna leave that part out. You're gonna get
Speaker 2: hate mail for that one.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised we're just now getting to this.
Speaker 3: I went through a Malcolm X phase in college. I
Speaker 3: wasn't one of those guys walking around Georgia with a
Speaker 3: Malcolm X hat on.
Speaker 2: You weren't wearing like, Okay, I have a great story,
Speaker 2: but please go ahead.
Speaker 3: It was after I saw the movie because I was
Speaker 3: a big you still am big Spike Lee guy. So
Speaker 3: I saw the movie in ninety two and then read
Speaker 3: the autobiography that with Alex Haley right after that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and was just super into a story at the time.
Speaker 3: It's been a while, though.
Speaker 2: Well, I have just entered my Malcolm X's face. I uh,
Speaker 2: just researching him. I accidentally got radicalized, and I've got
Speaker 2: his autobiography on the way. It should get here today. Great,
Speaker 2: but it's it's crazy, Chuck, because like, especially as just
Speaker 2: white people of our generation, if you hadn't already gotten
Speaker 2: into him and like seing the Spike Lee movie and
Speaker 2: read his autobiography and just started to read his speeches
Speaker 2: and stuff, if you just kind of knew him like
Speaker 2: I had up to this point, Like you knew him
Speaker 2: as the guy who said, like by any means necessary,
Speaker 2: that he was he was militant, that he was essentially
Speaker 2: the foil to doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and that
Speaker 2: he and King kind of represented these two this fork
Speaker 2: in the road that America had to kind of choose between,
Speaker 2: because there was at this point in like the fifties,
Speaker 2: starting in the fifties, there was no way for America
Speaker 2: to just stand there at the crossroads any longer. Like
Speaker 2: like America as a whole had to make a choice
Speaker 2: which way we're gonna go race war or integration, peaceful integration.
Speaker 2: And that's what Malcolm X represented to white America. Race war,
Speaker 2: like black militants taking over killing white people mercilessly, ruthlessly
Speaker 2: because white people had it coming. Or you know, everybody's
Speaker 2: much more familiar with the Martin Luther King Junior way,
Speaker 2: but there's so much more to it than that, and
Speaker 2: just researching this this guy, I like, I'm I don't
Speaker 2: even want to say a fan, because I think that
Speaker 2: kind of undermines like the respect I have for him now,
Speaker 2: Like he's he's an amazing figure.
Speaker 1: It turns out, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: And you know, when I was in high school, there
Speaker 3: was a big This Is you know, I graduated eighty nine,
Speaker 3: the movie was ninety two, so this was leading up
Speaker 3: to the film, which obviously put things on a much
Speaker 3: bigger sort of platform. But it was a big deal
Speaker 3: in the eighties. Like, there was a big sort of
Speaker 3: at least in the South. I don't know how it
Speaker 3: was everywhere else, but there was a big movement among
Speaker 3: you know, the black students at my school to get
Speaker 3: in touch with the African heritage. Malcolm X hats were
Speaker 3: all over the place in my school, and he was
Speaker 3: just sort of in the forefront, I guess, kind of
Speaker 3: like my junior and senior year. So it was striking
Speaker 3: to me that we didn't learn about him in high school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you step back and really think about it,
Speaker 2: it's not very surprising, you know.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean looking back at the substandard public school
Speaker 3: education I got.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, but also the white washed and sanitized version
Speaker 2: where it's like, Okay, we'll tell you about Martin Luther
Speaker 2: King Junior, but don't ask about Malto's. Yes, you don't
Speaker 2: want to know about him.
Speaker 3: He was a rough dude, but he yes, or anyone else.
Speaker 3: It was just Martin Luther King exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He did the whole thing by himself, it turns out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I remember that same era as well. Okay,
Speaker 2: so I say we get into this because we could
Speaker 2: probably sit here and do an intro and it would
Speaker 2: end up being the entire thing. Well, let's jump in
Speaker 2: and everybody else can kind of make up their own
Speaker 2: minds about how you feel about Malcolm X and just
Speaker 2: kind of asit decide to start. I would definitely recommend
Speaker 2: going and watching the documentary on him. That American experience
Speaker 2: did I think in the nineties, make it plain. And
Speaker 2: then I read a bunch of articles and the best
Speaker 2: one I read was the Achievement of Malcolm X by
Speaker 2: John J. Simon. That was in the Monthly Review. That
Speaker 2: was a really good comprehensive one too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and see that's Spike Lee movie Exception. I've not
Speaker 3: seen it, man, you gotta check it out.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: I will. Okay, So we're talking about Malcolm X. If
Speaker 2: you hadn't figured that out by now, and you may
Speaker 2: or may not know that Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little.
Speaker 2: That was his given name. He was born back in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty five in Omaha, Nebraska, and from the outset,
Speaker 2: he was essentially raised in a very black conscious family,
Speaker 2: so he was aware of the state of racial affairs
Speaker 2: in the United States as a very young person and
Speaker 2: oppression that black people lived under at the time and
Speaker 2: still do him many ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. His dad, Earle was a Baptist lay speaker,
Speaker 3: his mother Louise Little. They were both members of the
Speaker 3: Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was a Marcus Garvey joint
Speaker 3: someone else we never learned about in high school. And
Speaker 3: they moved to Milwaukee for a little while. Then eventually
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty eight, when little Malcolm was three, landed
Speaker 3: in Michigan, and they landed in a white neighborhood and
Speaker 3: that was a big problem because they were not wanted there,
Speaker 3: and Earle Little was not the kind of guy to
Speaker 3: just pack up and leave because his neighbors didn't want
Speaker 3: him there, so he stayed and the community had a
Speaker 3: clause in their hoa covenant that said that basically no
Speaker 3: one was allowed to sell a house to non white people,
Speaker 3: and so they sued to a victim. And while that
Speaker 3: was kind of going through, even before the eviction was finalized,
Speaker 3: a group of white men burned their house to the
Speaker 3: ground without any firefighters even showing up.
Speaker 2: Right, So whether they wanted to move or not, they
Speaker 2: had to now, and they moved a little further out
Speaker 2: of where they lived, still in the Lansing area, And
Speaker 2: I don't know when the house burned, but just within
Speaker 2: a year or two maybe less. Malcolm was six years
Speaker 2: old and his father died. He died in a mysterious,
Speaker 2: bizarre streetcar accident where he was run over by a streetcar.
Speaker 2: And that's just the official line on the whole thing.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think it was. It ended up being
Speaker 2: ruled a suicide. But according to Malcolm his family, his mother,
Speaker 2: like his father, was murdered, probably by a clan affiliated
Speaker 2: group called the Black Legion who operated in Michigan back then,
Speaker 2: and that was pretty much what the family was convinced of,
Speaker 2: that his father had been murdered. Then, on top of that,
Speaker 2: no one would admit that his father was murdered, which
Speaker 2: I'm sure makes that kind of experience that much harder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there was actual evidence that was ignored.
Speaker 3: He had clearly been beaten and placed on the tracks,
Speaker 3: so it was kind of just brushed under the table.
Speaker 3: It was very upsetting for a young Malcolm because that
Speaker 3: was like the rumor. It was all around the school
Speaker 3: and everything, so he was hearing all these stories and
Speaker 3: it was, you know, definitely a big early sort of
Speaker 3: kind of forking the road for him, and that his
Speaker 3: family was left without their dad.
Speaker 1: They, like you said, ruled it a suicide.
Speaker 3: But I think she got like one thousand dollars in
Speaker 3: one life insurance payment. Louise did, which would be about
Speaker 3: twenty five grand a day, but was denied because of
Speaker 3: the suicide claim, a much larger insurance claim. So she
Speaker 3: didn't have a lot of dough to feed.
Speaker 1: What was eight kids?
Speaker 2: Eight kids, man, and now she suddenly on her own
Speaker 2: and she had a nervous breakdown, is what you would
Speaker 2: call it. I think that she was diagnosed as paranoid
Speaker 2: and was transferred to this state hospital in Kalamazoo where
Speaker 2: she stayed. This is in the mid thirties. She stayed
Speaker 2: there until nineteen sixty four, I think like twenty six
Speaker 2: years or something like that, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: Malcolm and his seven siblings are without parents. They're orphans essentially,
Speaker 2: and they become wards of the state and they're broken up.
Speaker 2: So just in a very short time couple of years,
Speaker 2: Malcolm goes from having a stable home life to his
Speaker 2: father being murdered, his mother having a nervous breakdown and
Speaker 2: being institutionalized, and his siblings being spread out throughout the
Speaker 2: foster system around Lansing. That's just what happened to him.
Speaker 2: And if you know a little bit about Malcolm X,
Speaker 2: you might know that he started out as a criminal.
Speaker 2: What's astounding, Chuck, is this is not when his life
Speaker 2: of crime began. He actually went the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: Route, well a little both.
Speaker 3: He started stealing stuff when he was nine because he
Speaker 3: had to do something to provide for their family. But
Speaker 3: he never got caught there And you know, wil Gover's
Speaker 3: his former formal rap.
Speaker 1: Sheet here in a minute.
Speaker 3: But he was sent to a juvenile detention center in Mason, Michigan.
Speaker 3: It was about ten miles south of Lansing, and he
Speaker 3: went to a white school, and he did a great job.
Speaker 3: He was he's a really you know, was a really
Speaker 3: smart guy, a really smart kid, and made really good grades.
Speaker 3: He was very charismatic from the beginning. He was elected
Speaker 3: class president. Yeah, and had dreams of going to law
Speaker 3: school before his white teacher said a pretty terrible thing
Speaker 3: to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an English teacher. And this is a
Speaker 2: one of the probably one of the This is the
Speaker 2: second pivotal moment in his life where he had the
Speaker 2: rug pull out from under him, He had the wind
Speaker 2: taken out of his sales. He got punched in the
Speaker 2: bread basket you want to put it because the English teacher.
Speaker 2: He told the English teacher that he was dreaming of
Speaker 2: becoming a lawyer, and the English teachers like, I think
Speaker 2: America would accept you more as a carpenter, Like that's
Speaker 2: the kind of profession you need to go in, you
Speaker 2: need to be realistic about. And then essentially being a
Speaker 2: black person in America, it's not, the teacher said, but
Speaker 2: the point was the same, and it just completely sucked
Speaker 2: the life and enthusiasm for learning that he had up
Speaker 2: to that point right out of him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he quit school. He never went to school again
Speaker 3: after that. And he had a very promising academic career
Speaker 3: in front of him, which is super sad. So at
Speaker 3: fifteen he goes to live with his half sister in
Speaker 3: Boston and eventually would get a job working at the railroad.
Speaker 3: So he started traveling around some and by seventeen found
Speaker 3: himself living in Harlem. And this is where he got
Speaker 3: the name that stuck with him. You know, during his
Speaker 3: sort of early tea or later teenage years.
Speaker 1: I guess Red.
Speaker 3: He had this red hair, so he was either Detroit
Speaker 3: Red or Big Red because he was a tall guy.
Speaker 1: He's six foot four.
Speaker 3: In just a little fun side note, while he was
Speaker 3: in Harlem, he was working at a chicken shack with
Speaker 3: a guy named John Sandford, and he was Chicago Red
Speaker 3: and Malcolm was Detroit Red. And he was trying. John
Speaker 3: Sandford was trying to be a stand up comic and
Speaker 3: that ended up being Red Box.
Speaker 2: That's right of Sandford in something. Yeah, I love that
Speaker 2: little fact. So yeah, he was. He became a I
Speaker 2: guess he'd call him a petty criminal, but he was.
Speaker 2: He took all of that kind of charisma and charm
Speaker 2: and initiative and turned it. He directed it toward a
Speaker 2: life of crime. He's often described as a pimp, although
Speaker 2: he was never a pimp. He seemed more like the
Speaker 2: kind of guy who just knew where to get whatever
Speaker 2: you wanted, and that included sex workers, that included drugs.
Speaker 2: He loved pot, he loved gambling, and he actually committed
Speaker 2: a lot of his crimes like burglary, theft, that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff just to support his habits, which eventually turned
Speaker 2: into cocaine, which even back then was more expensive. And again,
Speaker 2: he loved to gamble, so he needed to keep both
Speaker 2: of those things up, and that was a large reason
Speaker 2: why he was such a prolific criminal during this time.
Speaker 2: Another reason is that he just the options that he
Speaker 2: had hadn't really panned out very well for him. Like
Speaker 2: he had a few jobs up to this point, but
Speaker 2: he realized, like, I'm not going to get anywhere serving
Speaker 2: sandwiches on a train, I'm not going to get anywhere
Speaker 2: shining shoes, Like I might as well make away for myself,
Speaker 2: and the only way to make away for myself in
Speaker 2: this situation is crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. He was arrested a couple of times.
Speaker 3: He was arrested at nineteen allegedly stealing his half sisters
Speaker 3: for coat, whom he lived with pretty low hanging fruit.
Speaker 3: Got arrested again when he allegedly mugged a friend of
Speaker 3: his at gunpoint, and neither one of those amounted too much.
Speaker 3: But finally he was arrested for a third time after
Speaker 3: he'd been doing a series of burglaries of wealthy homes
Speaker 3: with a kind of a small crew. It was him,
Speaker 3: it was another black man and three white women. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I mentioned everyone's race there, because when they got
Speaker 3: caught on this one, the three white women just got
Speaker 3: slaps on the wrist and basically got let go, and
Speaker 3: the two men were sentenced to eight to ten in
Speaker 3: the Hoofscow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they would have gotten much worse than that
Speaker 2: documentary make it plain. The other guy, his friend, Malcolm Jarvis.
Speaker 2: He said that they tried to get the women to
Speaker 2: say that the Malcolm X and Malcolm Jarvis had raped
Speaker 2: them and had all they had to do was say that,
Speaker 2: and they would have been convicted of that and sentenced
Speaker 2: to a couple more decades for that. And luckily they
Speaker 2: were tight enough with these women that they said, no,
Speaker 2: we're not going to do that, despite the pressure that
Speaker 2: they were under.
Speaker 3: Two Yeah, for sure. So prison is where a lot
Speaker 3: happened to him. In prison sort of one of his
Speaker 3: first big transformations. He spent about almost seven years there
Speaker 3: for that burglary, and he was about twenty years old
Speaker 3: at the time, and it was in prison where he
Speaker 3: really kind of found himself for the I guess for
Speaker 3: the first time as an adult, and that he remembered like, Hey,
Speaker 3: I'm a smart guy, and I used to love academia
Speaker 3: and learning. So he started he became a voracious reader
Speaker 3: again in prison. He apparently tried to memorize the Dictionary
Speaker 3: in prison and was reading anything he could get his
Speaker 3: hands on, including, eventually which would really transform his life,
Speaker 3: the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, who was a leader of
Speaker 3: the Nation of Islam at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and before he kind of came on to those
Speaker 2: teachings from his siblings, I think who encouraged him to
Speaker 2: start looking into that. And he had a real aversion
Speaker 2: to any kind of religion. He was actually known as
Speaker 2: Satan by the other prisoners in the correctional facility he
Speaker 2: was in. But the reason he was able to read
Speaker 2: so much, Chuck, is because he happened to be in
Speaker 2: MCI Norfolk in Massachusetts, and it's well known to have
Speaker 2: a lot, like a huge library, connections with like MIT
Speaker 2: and Harvard and all that stuff. So it was actually
Speaker 2: the perfect prison for him to land in. So he
Speaker 2: was able to kind of educate himself from that point on.
Speaker 2: And then when he finally did start taking up the
Speaker 2: teachings of Elijah Mohammad, it just clicked. And it was
Speaker 2: even further, I guess reinforced when he started writing letters
Speaker 2: to Elijah Mohammad and Elijah Muhammad started writing back to him.
Speaker 2: That really encouraged him big time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know why because he didn't have to write
Speaker 3: letters to get those books like Andy Defrain, Yeah in
Speaker 3: the Shawshing.
Speaker 2: Redemption, No, they just threw them at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was of course because it was Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: So yeah, he started, you know basically it became a
Speaker 3: pinpal with Elijah Mohammed and really became a hardcore Muslim
Speaker 3: pretty quickly after reading you know, his works, and became
Speaker 3: an ascetic. So that means no drugs, no booze, no pork,
Speaker 3: no movies or music, no gambling, no dancing, like the
Speaker 3: real straight and narrow. And you know, we'll later find
Speaker 3: out that that became a bit of a riff later on,
Speaker 3: because he didn't think Elijah Muhammad at one point was
Speaker 3: sort of walking the walk where as he really was
Speaker 3: from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, like and he did throughout too. Like
Speaker 2: the FBI tried and tried and tried to get something
Speaker 2: on him, and they couldn't get anything. Like, He's just
Speaker 2: that upstanding and moral from that point on. I also,
Speaker 2: I had never even thought to wonder, but I had
Speaker 2: no idea why his last name was X. I was
Speaker 2: pretty surprised to learn this, But it makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense.
Speaker 3: You didn't know that, no, Okay, I thought that would
Speaker 3: have been sort of just the basic common knowledge.
Speaker 1: But maybe not.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it is, but I'm I'm pretty uncommon, right, You're.
Speaker 1: An uncommon podcaster.
Speaker 3: So yeah, he dropped the name little because and a
Speaker 3: lot of people in the Nation of Islam did and
Speaker 3: do this because that was he thought that was his
Speaker 3: slave name, so he rid himself of that name and
Speaker 3: replaced it with an X.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also one of the reasons he despised religion.
Speaker 2: He despised Christianity in general because he considered that the
Speaker 2: slave religion that was given to the African slaves to
Speaker 2: essentially keep them in line, and so it was actually
Speaker 2: it was a big deal that he became this devotee
Speaker 2: of this religion and this particular religion. Just really quick,
Speaker 2: if you're not familiar with the Nation of Islam, it
Speaker 2: is not the same thing as Islam that was that
Speaker 2: emerged out of the Middle East several hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: It bears like a slight resemblance to it, but it
Speaker 2: is essentially a completely altered version that has a lot
Speaker 2: of theology that seems very odd to outsiders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they were Muslim, but you know, I
Speaker 3: know you've and this is stuff I didn't know that
Speaker 3: you found some stuff about Elijah Muhammad's original beliefs that
Speaker 3: I was I was just sort of shocked by.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've heard white devils before. I mean, you
Speaker 2: have to was listening to like ICEQB. He always talks
Speaker 2: about white devils. But that is actually a teaching from
Speaker 2: the Nation of Islam from Elijah Muhammad, and it predates him.
Speaker 2: The Nation of Islam had been around for a few
Speaker 2: decades before Elijah Muhammad was its prophet. But the reason
Speaker 2: that they call white people white devils is because, according
Speaker 2: to black Muslim theology. There was a genius named yaka
Speaker 2: Black Genius who created white people by bleaching black people
Speaker 2: and he mutated them into white, blue eyed devils. And
Speaker 2: the reason why is he wanted to basically put the
Speaker 2: black race to the test, so he put them in
Speaker 2: a subjugated position because he allowed these white people to
Speaker 2: be devils, to basically act like white people have treated
Speaker 2: black people since time immemorial. And that this rain would
Speaker 2: last about six millennia, and that the six millennia were
Speaker 2: almost up, and that this was the time when the
Speaker 2: black race would rise and take over from the white devils.
Speaker 2: Who would who would really regret the stuff that they
Speaker 2: had done up to that point after.
Speaker 3: That ye, which would have placed it about nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3: And so white Americans hearing this at the time, they
Speaker 3: thought that's when like the race war was coming.
Speaker 1: Was was nineteen seventy or thereabouts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we talked about that before and like, I
Speaker 2: never really understood it, but this is a big, big
Speaker 2: reason that white America was like, there's go to be
Speaker 2: a race war. It's like coming, it's inevitable. That was
Speaker 2: a big part of it. So, yeah, this was and
Speaker 2: this wasn't like metaphorical. This is from what I understand,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a literal interpretation of where white people
Speaker 2: came from six thousand years ago. So this was the
Speaker 2: This was what Malcolm X was being indoctrinated into. And
Speaker 2: he was a smart guy, so he he had to
Speaker 2: submit himself, like he had to take parts of his
Speaker 2: brain and just turn them off. The suspicious part of him,
Speaker 2: as far as like what he was being taught had
Speaker 2: to be turned off, the critical thinking part, as far
Speaker 2: as anything goes with the religion that he took on.
Speaker 2: He was able to compartmentalize, turn it off, and throw
Speaker 2: himself fully into it. And he was for the first
Speaker 2: decade essentially that he was a black Muslim, the best
Speaker 2: thing that ever happened to the Nation of Islam by far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, that seems like a pretty good place
Speaker 1: for a break.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll be right back, everybody with more on
Speaker 3: Malcolm X. So Malcolm X is granted parole in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty two. He gets out of prison a completely different
Speaker 3: person than who entered prison almost seven years earlier, and
Speaker 3: he was on a mission to recruit and get as
Speaker 3: many people as he could to join the Nation of
Speaker 3: Islam and had a direct sort of go get him
Speaker 3: tiger from Elijah Muhammad, And so as soon as he
Speaker 3: was paroled, he joined Temple Number one in Detroit. He
Speaker 3: traveled to Chicago to meet Elijah Mohammad in person, and
Speaker 3: he said, like I said, he said, you know, go
Speaker 3: out there and do your thing. Like he knew he
Speaker 3: had a sort of a shining star because he was again,
Speaker 3: he was taugh he was handsome, he was charismatic, he
Speaker 3: was super smart. And within a year there were only
Speaker 3: about four hundred members of the Nation of Islam at
Speaker 3: the time. Within a year he brought that to about
Speaker 3: a thousand, but that would grow to six thousand by
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty five, and then in the early nineteen sixties
Speaker 3: about seventy five thousand, up from a four hundred when
Speaker 3: Malcolm X came on the scene. So a lot of that,
Speaker 3: not all of it, obviously, but a lot of that
Speaker 3: is really due to him being the face you know,
Speaker 3: I guess sort of the second face and then ultimately
Speaker 3: the face of the Nation of Islam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, his rhetoric, the things he was saying,
Speaker 2: and like you said, the charisma and just how well
Speaker 2: spoken he was, and the points he makes, it's like,
Speaker 2: you can be white and he's talking about you being
Speaker 2: a white devil. Sorry, you all white people are white devil's.
Speaker 2: He was uncompromising in that right. It wasn't like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean some of them are okay. No, white people
Speaker 2: were okay in this philosophy. And he in addition to
Speaker 2: that rhetoric, he also just knew how to work the
Speaker 2: media and what you know, levers to pull, and he
Speaker 2: pushed Elijah Muhammad way out of his comfort zone to
Speaker 2: allow him to do new stuff with the Nation of
Speaker 2: Islam that helped bring in tons and tons of people.
Speaker 2: One of the first big ones was a documentary from
Speaker 2: Mike Wallace of all People back in nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 2: called The Hate that Hate Produced, and it just basically said,
Speaker 2: look at these guys, but at the same time, listen
Speaker 2: to what these guys have to say. And it exposed
Speaker 2: the world to black Muslims and it really helped drive
Speaker 2: up membership.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, he was not trying to make friends
Speaker 3: in his job, even within his own community. You know,
Speaker 3: we talked about him being a hardliner and ascetic, and
Speaker 3: he said that everyone should practice asceticism. And you know,
Speaker 3: he went to Philadelphia at one point in nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: five and said, all right, everyone here is.
Speaker 1: Needs to get their act together. You need to lose weight.
Speaker 3: Even he had leaders in Philadelphia weighing their members twice
Speaker 3: a week, and there were penalties if you didn't lose
Speaker 3: the poundage that he required because he wanted everyone to
Speaker 3: look a certain way. About a year later, in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty six, he met civil rights activists Betty Sanders when
Speaker 3: she joined his temple, and two years later when he
Speaker 3: called her from a gas station phone and proposed. They
Speaker 3: married in January nineteen fifty eight, and later that year
Speaker 3: had the first of what would be six daughters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all daughters, right, the whole, all along the way,
Speaker 2: even twins. I think the last ones born were twin daughters.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you said that he wasn't really trying to
Speaker 2: make friends, and he didn't care whether he ticked people off.
Speaker 2: So the old guard, the existing guard of the Nation
Speaker 2: of Islam, who had been around long before Malcolm X
Speaker 2: came along, they were not happy with this. They did
Speaker 2: not like to be told that they were dowe and
Speaker 2: to diet or else they'd be suspended. But he was
Speaker 2: attracting people who were very much in line with himself.
Speaker 2: So very quickly, as he started to build up the
Speaker 2: roles of the members of Nation of Islam, the philosophy
Speaker 2: and the viewpoint of that group started to shift away
Speaker 2: from the establishment that had been there up to that
Speaker 2: point to this much more radical, much more politically active
Speaker 2: version of the Nation of Islam. That was the Malcolm
Speaker 2: X brand of Nation of Islam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Elijah Muhammad told him to stay out
Speaker 3: of politics because he was a complete separatist. He didn't
Speaker 3: want to be involved in anything that the White America
Speaker 3: was doing. But you know, Malcolm X basically started doing
Speaker 3: his own thing. One of the big sort of early
Speaker 3: things he did that ended up being a huge deal
Speaker 3: was he founded their newspaper. It was called Mohammad Speaks,
Speaker 3: and it became a really it had a pretty wide distribution,
Speaker 3: and you know, I remember, even growing up seeing on
Speaker 3: the streets of Atlanta members of the Nation of Islam.
Speaker 3: I feel like they were giving him away. I don't
Speaker 3: think they were selling them. But he had pretty firm
Speaker 3: quotas established for members to give these things out and
Speaker 3: had a pretty wide circulation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he also would do things like debate white people.
Speaker 2: He did at Oxford, he did at Harvard on race relations.
Speaker 2: He would take questions from white reporters. All of this
Speaker 2: stuff was like not what Elijah Muhammad was jibing with,
Speaker 2: but Malcolm X was getting such results that Elijah Muhammad
Speaker 2: would just kind of be like, I don't want to
Speaker 2: do in that. But then when Malcolm went ahead and
Speaker 2: did it, there wouldn't be any real consequences for it. Right. So,
Speaker 2: as he's doing this is becoming more and more emboldened.
Speaker 2: And one of the things he sets his sight on, Chuck,
Speaker 2: is that the American essentially the racial struggle in the
Speaker 2: United States that was really beginning to become part of
Speaker 2: the American preoccupation. At the same time in the fifties,
Speaker 2: it was really civil rights movement was really starting to
Speaker 2: take shape. And this, again, this was totally opposite from
Speaker 2: what you were saying Elijah Muhammad wanted, which was isolation,
Speaker 2: separatism not just from white America, from non black Muslim
Speaker 2: black America too. Like he had no inclination to join
Speaker 2: the civil rights Elijah Muhammad to join the civil rights
Speaker 2: fight because they weren't black Muslims. So therefore they were
Speaker 2: essentially lesser versions of Black Americans.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3: You know, part of the complications of Malcolm X is
Speaker 3: that he had some anti Semitic views at times.
Speaker 1: He had some.
Speaker 3: Pretty dark views of Jews in America and I guess
Speaker 3: all over the world, but specifically America. And this was
Speaker 3: especially sort of a you know, a thumb in the
Speaker 3: eye of Jewish people, because they were a lot of
Speaker 3: Jewish people were the white people that were kind of
Speaker 3: really heavily involved in the civil rights movement. Obviously, there
Speaker 3: were all kinds of people, but Jewish people were leading
Speaker 3: the charge for white America and the civil rights movement
Speaker 3: for the most part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why they were also really highly critical of
Speaker 2: the naacp is because they essentially said white people had
Speaker 2: they'd allowed white people to join the white people had
Speaker 2: taken over and were now steering the boat. So you
Speaker 2: could not be white and be joined the Nation of Vislam.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, they would not let you in. Still won't
Speaker 2: as far as I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But the media was loving this.
Speaker 3: The media loves to pit people against one another, so
Speaker 3: they had two really clear like you, I think you
Speaker 3: described him as spoils early on in doctor Martin Luther
Speaker 3: King and Malcolm X because it couldn't be any more different,
Speaker 3: not only in kind of the way they looked and
Speaker 3: how they talked and the things they were saying, but
Speaker 3: their ultimate goals. So you know, they painted doctor King
Speaker 3: as a saint, they paid in Malcolm X as a pariah,
Speaker 3: and the I don't know if it's irony, but something
Speaker 3: you can't forget is that, you know, Malcolm X was
Speaker 3: making some waves, but his reach was nothing compared to
Speaker 3: what doctor King was doing. He Doctor King was much
Speaker 3: more of a threat, if you you know, as how
Speaker 3: they would have called it back then to white America
Speaker 3: and integration than Malcolm X was because he was he
Speaker 3: was a fringe revolutionary at the time, so he was
Speaker 3: you know, he was kind of fortunate to be in
Speaker 3: the newspapers at all, even though you know, the media
Speaker 3: was painting them as enemies and they kind of you know,
Speaker 3: enemies is a weird word. They didn't hang out. Doctor
Speaker 3: King didn't return calls. He was offered like debates for
Speaker 3: Malcolm X and stuff like that, and he kind of
Speaker 3: just didn't want anything to do with that brand because
Speaker 3: he had such a sort of a good thing going
Speaker 3: he had some momentum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was worried also that you know, it
Speaker 2: would it would scare the white coalition that he'd helped
Speaker 2: build to support this civil rights movement away from the
Speaker 2: civil rights movement all of a sudden. He's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and also this guy's philosophy too, we're going to incorporate
Speaker 2: the race war. Yeah. He had every reason to stay
Speaker 2: away from Malcolm X, and frankly kind of wisely did.
Speaker 2: But like you said, this was the media saying, like,
Speaker 2: you got Malcolm X, you got MLK, and that was
Speaker 2: like both of them kind of fostered that idea because
Speaker 2: if you had Malcolm X, and you know, you didn't
Speaker 2: listen to MLK, then we were going to go the
Speaker 2: Malcolm X way as far as America was concerned in
Speaker 2: the near future. So we should probably go the way
Speaker 2: that Martin Luther King is suggesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, reading this stuff, I always was hoping
Speaker 3: that I would find out that they were secretly in
Speaker 3: cahoots with one another, Yeah, doing sort of a good
Speaker 3: a good cop bad cop thing, because they were both
Speaker 3: well aware of that, and I think they, judging from
Speaker 3: what some of the quotes I've seen, they were both
Speaker 3: aware that it was helping the cause ultimately. And even
Speaker 3: Malcolm X, even though that's not what he was after,
Speaker 3: he knew that there were gains coming on that side
Speaker 3: because he was so scary to white America exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it was kind of like how food
Speaker 2: companies price fixed. They don't have secret meetings, but they
Speaker 2: just kind of make signals in the market in public,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of what they think they were doing.
Speaker 2: They were working together without actively working together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like food companies fixing grocery prices.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and I mean, he was like really outspoken
Speaker 2: about what he thought about doctor Martin Luther King. He
Speaker 2: called them a fool and Uncle Tom. He also said
Speaker 2: that he was subsidized by the white man, that the
Speaker 2: essentially again that white people had taken over the real
Speaker 2: levers of power with the civil rights movement and that
Speaker 2: it was completely useless now. But even if that weren't
Speaker 2: the case, he was such a critic of the civil
Speaker 2: rights movement because he's he was basically saying, like, if
Speaker 2: you're starting a revolution and the revolution's goal is to
Speaker 2: love your enemy, like that's ridiculous, that's stupid, Like that's
Speaker 2: never going to work. It doesn't even make sense. So
Speaker 2: what are you doing? Like, all you're doing is distracting
Speaker 2: and continuing to keep subjugated the people who you're supposedly
Speaker 2: trying to liberate and integrate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he called the March on Washington the farce on Washington.
Speaker 3: Malcolm X did, and he said the quote was, whoever
Speaker 3: heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing we shall overcome while
Speaker 3: tripping and swaying along arm in arm with the very
Speaker 3: people they're supposed to be angrily revolting against. Right, So,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not taking sides, but he's making a
Speaker 3: lot of good points at the time. You know, I
Speaker 3: think the idea that you can catch more flies with
Speaker 3: honey than vinegar is true, But it was I think
Speaker 3: they almost needed there almost needed to be two sides
Speaker 3: of the same coin happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I no know.
Speaker 3: It's pretty interesting how it all worked out. And if
Speaker 3: you're wondering if the federal government was concerned, they absolutely were.
Speaker 3: This started in nineteen fifty, when Malcolm X was still
Speaker 3: in prison. He wrote a letter to Harry Truman, who
Speaker 3: was president, and said, I'm a communist, I'm a post
Speaker 3: of the Korean War, and President Truman said, maybe we
Speaker 3: should get a file going on this guy with the FBI,
Speaker 3: and they did that a couple of years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had also captured the attention of the NYPD
Speaker 2: around that time where there was a protest because the
Speaker 2: Harlem police had brutalized a member of the Nation of
Speaker 2: Islam and there was just a bunch of people came
Speaker 2: out on the street and were shouting about it because
Speaker 2: the guy had been beaten so badly, off skull been
Speaker 2: cracked open, and they wouldn't disperse. So Malcolm X was
Speaker 2: inside essentially negotiating that the guy should get care and
Speaker 2: taken to the hospital with the police officials and managed
Speaker 2: to get them to agree to that, but the crowd
Speaker 2: was still angry, wouldn't disperse, and the cops were trying
Speaker 2: it wasn't very effective. So Malcolm X went outside and
Speaker 2: apparently didn't say a word, just waved his hand and
Speaker 2: the crowd stopped yelling and just dispersed. And apparently the
Speaker 2: I think the police commissioner witnessed this and was like
Speaker 2: that that's too much power for any one man to have,
Speaker 2: especially somebody who believes that the black race is going
Speaker 2: to take over from the white race, and that the
Speaker 2: white races all devils like that scared them tremendously and
Speaker 2: it also really caught their attention. He It put him
Speaker 2: on their radar essentially forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: And as far as the FBI goes he you know,
Speaker 3: like I said, they started a file on him, which
Speaker 3: they also had on Martin Luther King and you know,
Speaker 3: John Lennon and everybody else. We've talked about all this stuff.
Speaker 3: But there was something they found out later from the
Speaker 3: files was at one point Jay Edgar Hoover told the
Speaker 3: New York Agency Office they needed to do something about
Speaker 3: Malcolm X. But like you said, early on, they had
Speaker 3: a hard time doing anything because in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: an informant said that Malcolm X was of high moral character.
Speaker 3: He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink, he's always on time
Speaker 3: for appointments. He's kind of a stand up guy if
Speaker 3: you if you're not listening to what he's saying.
Speaker 1: White America. Of course, that didn't matter.
Speaker 3: But they couldn't pin anything on him essentially, and they
Speaker 3: even think, and I don't think it's a spoiler to
Speaker 3: say that he was assassinated. But I feel like everyone
Speaker 3: knows that, but they even think that the FBI, because
Speaker 3: they had so many informants inside the Nation of Islam,
Speaker 3: that they knew about the plot to assassinate him and
Speaker 3: just let it happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that too, and not just the FBI,
Speaker 2: but also the NYPD just let it happen. So just
Speaker 2: real quick, Chuck, I say, we take a break in
Speaker 2: a second and talk about his break with the Nation
Speaker 2: of Islam. But I just wanted to kind of give
Speaker 2: a thumbnail catch of like what he was saying. You
Speaker 2: can go listen. You should start with maybe the ballot
Speaker 2: or the bullet It is a great speech that gets
Speaker 2: his point across from this era. But essentially what he
Speaker 2: was saying is black people have to learn to do
Speaker 2: for themselves. Integrating and then saying like you know, hey,
Speaker 2: let's all just share from the same pot with white
Speaker 2: people isn't going to work because white people will always
Speaker 2: hang it over you. So we have to figure out
Speaker 2: how to do it ourselves. Using the Nation of Islam.
Speaker 2: That's how you prop somebody up, get them on the
Speaker 2: right path, put them on the moral path in a
Speaker 2: way from temptation, and then after that, you teach them
Speaker 2: black nationalisms, so now they feel good about being a
Speaker 2: black person, and then from that point on they have
Speaker 2: the dignity and the motivation to make something for themselves
Speaker 2: as a community. That was his goal. That's ultimately what
Speaker 2: he was preaching. That was the kernel of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: So we're going to take that break and we're going
Speaker 3: to come back with the sad end and the split
Speaker 3: from the Nation of Islam right after this.
Speaker 2: So Chuck Malcolm X has become He's the face of
Speaker 2: the Nation of Islam to the press, to the public.
Speaker 2: People like they know the name Elijah Muhammad. You might
Speaker 2: even have seen him speak, but it's way likeli er
Speaker 2: that you've seen Malcolm X speak, and that's who you
Speaker 2: associate is the head. So if you're the protege and
Speaker 2: you become that the power kind of shifts like that.
Speaker 2: The mentor doesn't usually like that kind of thing. Then
Speaker 2: on top of it, the mentor Elijah Muhammad was starting
Speaker 2: to get on in age, and so the people around
Speaker 2: Elijah Muhammad, including his blood family, were worried that Malcolm
Speaker 2: X would actually take over. So there was a lot
Speaker 2: of reason for there would be jealousy, backbiting, court intrigue,
Speaker 2: and get rid of Malcolm X one way or another,
Speaker 2: and that's essentially what happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, his kids thought that they were going
Speaker 3: to be next in line basically. And you know, I
Speaker 3: mentioned the FBI had lots of people on the inside
Speaker 3: of the Nation of Islam. They use those people to
Speaker 3: kind of stoke that strife internally and you know, try
Speaker 3: and disrupt it from within, and we're fairly successful at
Speaker 3: that because it was not smooth sailing at this point.
Speaker 3: So you know, the real fracture comes. You know, all
Speaker 3: this is sort of leading up to what I think
Speaker 3: was the real fracture was when Malcolm X finds out
Speaker 3: about Elijah Muhammad having three children out of wedlock with
Speaker 3: three very young members of the Nation of Islam and
Speaker 3: essentially started looking upon him as a false prophet that
Speaker 3: was just sort of a guy in power that was
Speaker 3: using that power to Philander and he was like, I
Speaker 3: don't think he's fit to lead the Nation of Islam anymore.
Speaker 3: And in nineteen sixty three of April of that year,
Speaker 3: he can fronted Elijah Muhammad about this, and that was
Speaker 3: not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted to hear.
Speaker 2: No for sure, and now like now, Malcolm X was
Speaker 2: a big problem because this is not something that Elijah
Speaker 2: Muhammad wanted out to the public. It would immediately discredit him.
Speaker 2: And so do you remember kind of at the beginning,
Speaker 2: I was saying how Malcolm X had to kind of
Speaker 2: compartmentalize and turn off critical thinking and stuff like that
Speaker 2: to allow himself to submit to Elijah Muhammad. After this,
Speaker 2: after he realized that this guy's actually not the real deal,
Speaker 2: he was able to kind of grow and spread like
Speaker 2: one of those sponge dinosaurs that you put water on
Speaker 2: and they grow, or a different analogy would be like
Speaker 2: Apache Chief in the Justice League when he grows like
Speaker 2: really really big. Essentially, that happened the moment he realized
Speaker 2: that Elijah Muhammad was a false prophet and he was
Speaker 2: able to finally grow and become the Malcolm X that
Speaker 2: he always had the potential to be. He had thrown
Speaker 2: off the shackles placed on him. He gotten out from
Speaker 2: under the thumb of the leader of the Nation of Islam.
Speaker 2: But that also, unfortunately meant he had no place in
Speaker 2: the Nation of Islam any longer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the final nail in the coffin was
Speaker 3: when Kennedy was assassinated, he got explicit direction from Elijah
Speaker 3: Muhammad to shut up about it, to not say anything
Speaker 3: to the press, to just let this pass because it
Speaker 3: was such a monumental thing for all of America, certainly
Speaker 3: for white America. And he was like, we need to
Speaker 3: stay out of this if we know it's good for us.
Speaker 3: And Malcolm X did not do that. He went to
Speaker 3: the reporters and he said that Kennedy's death was quote
Speaker 3: a case of chickens coming home to roost end quote
Speaker 3: and Elijah Muhammad was super upset. He said, you're suspended
Speaker 3: for three months. A month into that, he removed him
Speaker 3: from most of his leadership roles and that was the
Speaker 3: writing was on the wall that that was really the
Speaker 3: beginning of the final split.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just one little aside about that, chuck him
Speaker 2: saying a case of chickens coming home to rest. There
Speaker 2: is so much more background and subtext to it and
Speaker 2: all the stuff he was saying that led up to that.
Speaker 2: But that's the pull quote, right, that's the thing that
Speaker 2: you just pull in. It sounds like a pretty awful
Speaker 2: thing to say, or at least heartless, but if you
Speaker 2: go back and read that stuff you like, you find
Speaker 2: there's so much more context to the stuff he was
Speaker 2: he's quoted for, and like you said, kind of toward
Speaker 2: the beginning, a lot of it seems pretty reasonable when
Speaker 2: you listen to the words he's saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: You know, after he was expelled basically not formally expelled,
Speaker 3: but you know, removed from his formal duties, he went
Speaker 3: down to stay with Cassius Clay future Muhammad Ali at
Speaker 3: his place in Miami, and he stayed there per week.
Speaker 3: He was giving him a spiritual guidance leading up to
Speaker 3: his heavyweight bout with Sonny Liston, and he had not
Speaker 3: cleared this with Elijah Mohammad, and Elijah Muhammad got mad
Speaker 3: about that as well and left him off the guest
Speaker 3: list for convention in February, where Cassius Clay you know,
Speaker 3: had his coming out as Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 1: So that was a very meaningful snub at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was disappointed in Muhammad Ali because he was
Speaker 2: basically like, oh that sucks, man, Sorry, see you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So now this was the break, This was the schism,
Speaker 2: and at this point now the Nation of Islam is
Speaker 2: doing everything they can to mock and discredit Malcolm X
Speaker 2: and say that he was a turncoat and a Benedict
Speaker 2: Arnold and a hypocrite, and Malcolm xis gave it right back.
Speaker 2: One of the first things he did was to tell
Speaker 2: the media that Elijah Muhammad had kids out of wedlock
Speaker 2: with teenage girls that were around him. He said that
Speaker 2: he had eight kids with six teenage secretaries, and he
Speaker 2: just told it to the press and that was a
Speaker 2: really big deal. And I think at that point he
Speaker 2: realized like he had just taken his life into his
Speaker 2: own hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's all basically sort of early through spring
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty four. Later in nineteen sixty four, a very
Speaker 3: important trip happened when he made the Haj to Mecca,
Speaker 3: and this was, you know, kind of the final, big
Speaker 3: life changing moment for him. He came back a Sunni
Speaker 3: Islam member and he had changed his name from Malcolm
Speaker 3: X to El Haj Malik l Schabaz, and I believe
Speaker 3: even his wife and daughters took the name Shabbaz, like
Speaker 3: you know, throughout the rest of their lives as well.
Speaker 3: And while he was there, he had a transformation, another
Speaker 3: transformation kind of like he did in prison. But the
Speaker 3: other way, he came full circle and said, quote, he
Speaker 3: had encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of
Speaker 3: this earth, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like
Speaker 3: I've never seen before. And he essentially flipped and said,
Speaker 3: you know what, there are good white people and we
Speaker 3: can and should work together. And he came back and
Speaker 3: started to do that work and really poured himself for
Speaker 3: the first time into the legit official civil rightsman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he told Martin Luther King, like I'm all in.
Speaker 2: He founded the Organization of Afro American Unity. He was
Speaker 2: trying to essentially teach Black Americans about their African heritage,
Speaker 2: but that at the same time he had also zoomed
Speaker 2: in on this idea that he needed to take this
Speaker 2: struggle for American civil rights to the world like the
Speaker 2: UN or the African Congress and basically say, hey, this
Speaker 2: is the same thing. This is part of the black
Speaker 2: struggle worldwide, Like this is part of this global problem.
Speaker 2: It's not separate, it's not its own thing. So we
Speaker 2: need to figure out like all these other countries need
Speaker 2: to get involved too and start pressuring the US to
Speaker 2: do something about it, which is a pretty clever idea actually,
Speaker 2: and it was not something that Martin Luther King was
Speaker 2: doing at the time from what I understand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure they would eventually meet. That was a
Speaker 3: very famous single meeting with Martin Luther King Junior and
Speaker 3: Malcolm X. It was not something they planned because it's
Speaker 3: not like Martin Luther King Junior got on board immediately
Speaker 3: and was like, oh, great, you're joining the movement. Like
Speaker 3: I don't think he still really liked him that much.
Speaker 3: But they literally bumped into each other in the hallway
Speaker 3: when they were at the Senate when the Civil Rights
Speaker 3: Bill was being debated there at the Capitol Building, and
Speaker 3: it was like, oh, it's you, and they shook hands.
Speaker 3: I think he told him in person, I'm throwing myself
Speaker 3: into the heart of the civil rights struggle face to face.
Speaker 3: There was a photographer there, so there's a very famous
Speaker 3: picture of them together. And then later that year in
Speaker 3: July sixty four's when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 3: and it was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. And
Speaker 3: that was not the end for Malcolm X though he
Speaker 3: thought he was just getting started.
Speaker 2: Very sadly, Yeah, so this was you said, that was
Speaker 2: May of nineteen sixty four. Within just a few months,
Speaker 2: he would be dead. And it's just so sad that
Speaker 2: he underwent that transformation and all of a sudden his
Speaker 2: potential is really starting to blossom. He turned into like
Speaker 2: a full butterfly for the first time, and he's struck down.
Speaker 2: The first thing that happened that kind of just foreshadowed
Speaker 2: his death was his house was firebombed by he was
Speaker 2: quite sure members of the Nation of Islam. Apparently one
Speaker 2: of the bombs was thrown through a window that would
Speaker 2: have landed in and on the three of his little
Speaker 2: girls in their room, but luckily it shattered on the
Speaker 2: outside of the window and didn't make it through, but
Speaker 2: it burned his house essentially down. And this was a
Speaker 2: house that was owned by the Nation of Islam, so
Speaker 2: they went as far as to accuse him of burning
Speaker 2: it down because they had evicted him from the house,
Speaker 2: and so out of spite, he burned it down, which
Speaker 2: was obviously not true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is full circle because I don't think we
Speaker 3: mentioned that when their house was burned down when he
Speaker 3: was a little kid, they actually accused his dad, Earl
Speaker 3: of burning his own house down. So the same thing
Speaker 3: happened all those years later. That was on February fourteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty five. On February eighteenth, they formally evicted him,
Speaker 3: and then on February twenty first, he was murdered. He
Speaker 3: was shot and killed in front of his in front
Speaker 3: of Betty, in front of the girls. I think there
Speaker 3: were four girls at the time, because Betty was pregnant
Speaker 3: with the twins that would be born after his death.
Speaker 3: And this was in Harlem at an organization of Afro
Speaker 3: American Unity meeting, and they arrested three members of the
Speaker 3: Nation of Islam. One confessed and said the other two
Speaker 3: weren't involved, but the all three were convicted, even though
Speaker 3: later on, I think in twenty twenty one, the other
Speaker 3: two were exonerated after the Attorney General of New York
Speaker 3: saw that they had buried some exculpatory evidence back when
Speaker 3: it happened.
Speaker 2: Right, So you were talking about how the FBI let
Speaker 2: it happen. The NYPD apparently helped pave the way by
Speaker 2: arresting a couple of his bodyguards on bs charges. So
Speaker 2: he was short security on that day and at his funeral,
Speaker 2: like he had made quite a name for himself. I
Speaker 2: think fifteen hundred people showed up, which is a pretty
Speaker 2: good turnout for your funeral. And Ossie Davis, who was
Speaker 2: very much in with the Martin Luther King version of
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement, he led at Malcolm X's funeral
Speaker 2: because he was just that moved by him, even though
Speaker 2: he didn't see eye had eye on a bunch of stuff, Like,
Speaker 2: he realized what a loss this was for the black
Speaker 2: community in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: You know, I mentioned that the twins were born after
Speaker 3: he died. They you know, obviously grew up without their dad,
Speaker 3: and the other girls weren't that much older, and they
Speaker 3: always just knew him as dad. He you know, I
Speaker 3: think the ones that were kind of didn't even know
Speaker 3: him at all. They weren't raised by Betty as like, hey,
Speaker 3: your dad was a revolutionary, he was this or that.
Speaker 3: Apparently they'd learned about him mainly in school because Betty
Speaker 3: always wanted him just to be a dad and my husband,
Speaker 3: and so they were. You know, they went on to
Speaker 3: do a lot of great things as well. We should
Speaker 3: probably do one on Betty Shabaz at some point. She
Speaker 3: was a great woman, and his daughters all, you know,
Speaker 3: became activists in their own way as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I kind of mentioned like how just sad
Speaker 2: this is that he was struck down, especially at the
Speaker 2: time he was struck down. But if you look back
Speaker 2: at like the timeframe of all this stuff, this guy
Speaker 2: changed the world or left such an indelible mark that
Speaker 2: people are still learning from him all these years later,
Speaker 2: over essentially the course of ten years. That was about
Speaker 2: the timeline that we're talking about, from when he took
Speaker 2: up the Nation of Islam's teachings to when he was
Speaker 2: assassinated by the Nation of Islam. It was just about
Speaker 2: a decade and that's how much of an impact that
Speaker 2: he made over just that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a pretty great quote that who is
Speaker 1: this was this Julia.
Speaker 2: That helped us with you, Yeah, Julia helped uspeak time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she found a great quote from a poet Maya Angelou,
Speaker 3: who Malcolm X visited in at her home in Ghana
Speaker 3: at one point and basically kind of summarizing what guts
Speaker 3: it took to make that transformation in full public public view,
Speaker 3: after being so public and militant. She said that it
Speaker 3: takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to
Speaker 3: say say everybody, you remember what I said yesterday, Well
Speaker 3: I found out that's wrong, and she just thought that
Speaker 3: was an amazing thing to be able to do. And
Speaker 3: it really was. You know, not a lot of people
Speaker 3: can can own up to kind of being on what
Speaker 3: they thought later was the wrong path.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, it is remarkable. So you can go
Speaker 2: read the autobiography of Malcolm X. Also, I've seen that
Speaker 2: Malcolm X be is a really great book. I think
Speaker 2: it's his collected speeches. There's the Spike Lee movie, there's
Speaker 2: Make It Plain, the PBS documentary, and then there's just
Speaker 2: tons of like his speeches are just all over YouTube.
Speaker 2: So if you're interested in this at all, like there's
Speaker 2: a lot you can still learn from Malcolm X, even
Speaker 2: with him being dead all these years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't recommend the book and the movie enough.
Speaker 3: The book sold four hundred thousand copies. The Year was
Speaker 3: released in nineteen sixty seven and has sold five million
Speaker 3: to date. And the movie was a big kit too.
Speaker 3: It grows close to fifty million bucks, which is not
Speaker 3: bad for a long, you know, true story biopic like
Speaker 3: you know, with political overtones. It had a couple of
Speaker 3: Academy Award nominees. Certainly Denzel because he was amazing as always,
Speaker 3: and the great Ruth E. Carter for costume design. Even
Speaker 3: though neither one would win, it was fairly controversial when
Speaker 3: al Pacino won for Scent of a Woman over Denzel Real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: People thought it was a pretty big snub, including Spike Lee.
Speaker 3: He thought it was due to the controversy of the film,
Speaker 3: obviously in the character, and he also thought it was
Speaker 3: a bit of a makeup call for Pacino losing so
Speaker 3: many times, so he would get some due though later
Speaker 3: in twenty ten, when the film was added to the
Speaker 3: National Film Registry as being culturally, historically, or esthetically significantly beautiful.
Speaker 2: That's a great ending, Charles, You got anything else?
Speaker 1: That's it?
Speaker 2: Well, that's it for Malcolm X. Chuck just said that's it,
Speaker 2: So obviously everybody, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one's a little long, but it's one of
Speaker 3: the great emails we've gotten. Because after we did our
Speaker 3: what I think was a really fun episode on the
Speaker 3: Fire Festival debacles, we heard, you know, in that we
Speaker 3: talked about the Magnesis credit card and we heard from
Speaker 3: an actual holder of that credit card, which was great.
Speaker 2: Did you see this, so I haven't seen that yet.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fantastic.
Speaker 3: So hey, guys here and you talk about this credit
Speaker 3: card brought me back to some very special memories of
Speaker 3: my early days in New York. When I first moved
Speaker 3: there in twenty fourteen, I stumbled upon the Magnesis and
Speaker 3: thought it sounded like the perfect way to meet new people.
Speaker 3: Since I was new, there in excess the cool and
Speaker 3: exclusive parties and parts of the city, so I applied
Speaker 3: and was surprised.
Speaker 1: To be accepted as a member.
Speaker 3: I quickly found myself at fun rooftop parties with open bars,
Speaker 3: great tickets to shows and sports games, and snagging reservations
Speaker 3: for restaurants that were impossible to book, all of which
Speaker 3: seemed to be too good to be true for the
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty dollars annual feet, which should have
Speaker 3: been my first clue that something was wrong. The first
Speaker 3: reel crack came when I took advantage of an offer
Speaker 3: to get floor seats to a Beyonce concert for only
Speaker 3: two hundred dollars and had to obtain the tickets by
Speaker 3: meeting a quote Magnesis concierge and the parking lot outside.
Speaker 1: Of the indue.
Speaker 3: The tickets I got felt like they had just been
Speaker 3: bought from a scalper, and they probably were.
Speaker 1: But it did work out and it was a great show.
Speaker 1: Not long after, I had.
Speaker 3: Will call tickets to an NBA game through a quote
Speaker 3: partnership they had with the team. When my friends and
Speaker 3: I showed up to grab the seats, know and behind
Speaker 3: the ticket counter, I had ever heard of Magnesis. That
Speaker 3: was a moment I started asking questions, and when I
Speaker 3: reached out about the issue and about canceling my membership,
Speaker 3: they actually refunded it almost immediately. In fact, they refunded
Speaker 3: my fees so quickly it was almost alarming, like they
Speaker 3: were hoping I'd just.
Speaker 1: Quietly go away.
Speaker 3: Thankfully, I managed to exit the whole thing before the
Speaker 3: house of cards came crashing down. So hearing you guys
Speaker 3: explain how the whole thing worked was fascinating and weirdly nostalgic.
Speaker 3: Despite the sketchiness at the end, I actually do have
Speaker 3: some pretty fun memories from that brief period when it
Speaker 3: felt like I had unlocked some secret VIP version of
Speaker 3: New York City.
Speaker 1: Look forward to your next stop at the Bell House,
Speaker 1: and that is from Kevin.
Speaker 2: Kevin, that really was one of the all time best
Speaker 2: emails we've gotten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was hoping a Magnusis member would write in,
Speaker 1: and we got it.
Speaker 2: Look at you. You should be playing the lotto.
Speaker 1: That probably should.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Kevin. If you want to be like
Speaker 2: Kevin and send us one of our all time great emails,
Speaker 2: we always love those. You can wrap it up, spank
Speaker 2: it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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