HOT LINK TOC Clarke, John Henrik (1915-1998) ........................................................................................................... 2

Cleage, Albert, Jr. (Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) .................................................................................. 3

(1911-2000) .............................................................................................................................................. 3

Delany, Major Martin Robison (1812-1885) .......................................................................................... 4

Fard, Wallace (ca. 1891-1934) ................................................................................................................ 5

Hampton, Fred (1948-1969) ................................................................................................................... 7

Karenga, Maulana (c. 1943- ) ................................................................................................................. 8

Newton, Huey P. (1942–1989) ................................................................................................................ 9

Turner, Henry McNeal (1834-1915) ...................................................................................................... 11

Walker, David (1785-1830) ................................................................................................................... 13

X, Malcolm (1925-1965) ........................................................................................................................ 13

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Clarke, John Henrik (1915-1998)

John Henrik Clarke, historian, black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, was a pioneer in the formation of Africana studies in the United States. Principally a self-trained historian, Clarke dedicated his life to correcting what he argued was the prevailing view that people of Africa and of African decent had no history worthy of study. Over the span of his career Clarke became one of the most respected historians of African and African American history. Clarke was born on New Year’s Day, 1915, in Union Springs, Alabama. He described his father as a “brooding, landless sharecropper,” who struggled to earn enough money to purchase his own farm, and his mother as a domestic. Clarke’s mother Willie Ella (Mays) Clarke died in 1922, when he was about seven years old. In 1932 Clarke left the South at age eighteen and he traveled by boxcar to Chicago. He then migrated to New York City where he came under the tutelage of noted scholar Arthur A. Schomburg. While in New York City’s Harlem, Clarke undertook the study of Africa, studying its history while working full time. In 1949 the New School for Social Research asked Clarke to teach courses in a newly created African Studies Center. Nineteen years later Clarke founded the African Heritage Studies Association in 1968, and was principally responsible for the creation of the Black and Puerto Rican Studies Department at Hunter College in New York City. He later lectured at Cornell University as a distinguished visiting Professor of African history. Clarke numerous works include A New Approach to African History (1967), African People in World History (1993), and The Boy Who Painted Jesus Black (1975). He died in New York City in 1998.

Sources: http://www.africawithin.com/clarke/dr_clarke.htm ;

http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/

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Cleage, Albert, Jr. (Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman)

(1911-2000)

Albert Cleage, jr., or Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, Black Nationalist and civil rights activist, was one of the most prominent black religious leaders in America. Agyemen preached a form of nationalism within the black community that stressed economic self-sufficiency and separation that relied on a religious awakening among black people.

Albert Cleage, Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 13, 1911. Cleage graduated from Wayne State University in 1937, earning a B.A. in sociology, and a M.A. in Divinity from Oberlin School of Theology in 1943. Cleage married Doris Graham and had two daughters. Cleage and Graham later divorced in 1955. Cleage ran for governor of Michigan in 1962 under the Freedom Now Party, and was a candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Representative from Michigan, 13th District, in 1966. Cleage later changed his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman.

His most recognized work was the Black Messiah (1968). In Messiah, Agyeman argued that Jesus was a black revolutionary who sought to lead a “Black Nation” to freedom. Agyeman believed the emergence of nationalist movements of the world’s colored majority would reveal the historic truth that Jesus was the “non-white leader of a non-white people struggling for national liberation against the rule of a white nation, Rome.” Agyeman understood the power of the church within the black community and thought the re-orientation from a “white” Jesus to a “black” Jesus would be a necessary step in the spiritual liberation of black America. Some believe the basis of Agyeman’s spiritual teachings was based on the theology rooted in Robert Young’s Ethiopian Manifesto (1829).

In 1967 Agyeman unveiled the portrait of the Black Madonna. He went on to found and lead the Pan African Orthodox Church, which was part of the Black Christian Nationalist Movement. This nationalist movement had 50,000 members nationwide.

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Sources: “Albert Cleage,” in African American Encyclopedia, Michael Williams, ed., (New York: 1989); “Albert Cleage,” in Encyclopedia of American Culture and History, Colin Palmer, ed., (New York: 2006); http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/albert_cleage.html

Delany, Major Martin Robison (1812-1885)

Martin Robison Delany was an African American abolitionist, the first African American Field Officer in the U.S Army, and one of the earliest African Americans to encourage a return to Africa. Delany was born in Charleston, Virginia (now West Virginia) to a slave father and a free mother. Delany’s mother took her children to Pennsylvania in 1822 to avoid their enslavement and persecution brought on by attempting to teach her children to read and write, which was illegal in the state at that time. In 1833 Martin Delany began an apprenticeship with a Pittsburgh physician and soon opened a successful medical practice in cupping and leeching (it was not necessary to be certified to practice medicine prior to 1850). In 1843 he began publishing a newspaper in Pittsburgh called The Mystery, Later Delany joined Frederick Douglass to produce and promote The North Star in Rochester, New York. Martin R. Delany entered Harvard Medical School in 1850 to finish his formal medical education (along with two other black students) but was dismissed from the institution after only three weeks as a result of petitions to the school from white students. Two years later he published The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered claiming that even abolitionists would never accept blacks as equals and thus the solution to the black condition lay in the emigration of all African Americans back to Africa. In 1859 Delany led an emigration commission to West Africa to explore possible sites for a new black nation along the Niger River, “We are a nation within a nation, we must go from our oppressors” he wrote. When the Civil War began in 1861 Delany returned to the United States. Jettisoning for a time his emigrationist views, Delany recruited thousands of men for the Union Army. In February 1865, after meeting with President Abraham Lincoln to persuade the

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administration to create an all-black Corps led by African American officers, Delaney was commissioned a Major in the 52nd U.S. Colored Troops Regiment. With that appointment he became the first line officer in U.S. Army history. When Reconstruction began Delany was assigned to the Freedman’s Bureau in South Carolina. There he called for black pride, the enforcement of black civil rights and land for the freedpeople. Delany became active in local Republican politics, losing a close election for Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina but later serving briefly as a judge in Charleston, South Carolina. As the Republicans lost power in the state Delany renewed his calls for emigration, becoming in 1878 an official in the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company. He also wrote in 1879 The Principia of Ethnology, a book that argued for race pride and purity. In 1880 Delany withdrew from the Liberian Exodus Company and moved first to Boston and then to Wilberforce College in Xenia, Ohio. Martin R. Delany, considered my many as the “father of black nationalism,” died in Xenia, Ohio on January 12, 1885.

Sources: Victor Ullman, Martin R. Delany: The Beginnings of Black Nationalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); Jim Haskins, Black Stars: African American Military Heroes (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, NewYork, 1998);

http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/delany/home.htm

Fard, Wallace (ca. 1891-1934)

Wallace Fard, also known as W. Farad Muhammad, the Prophet, was founder the first Temple of Islam which evolved into the Nation of Islam or the Black Muslims. Authentic, documented information about Fard is very scarce and there is only a four year period (1930-1934) in which dependable information exists. According to Fard (although there is no documentation to prove or disprove his account) he was born in Mecca to wealthy parents in the tribe of Koreish, the tribe of the Prophet Mohammad. According to FBI records Fard was born in 1891 in New Zealand. He arrived in the United States in 1913 and briefly settled in Portland, Oregon. Fard was arrested in California in 1918 for possession of alcohol (against the state law of prohibition) and again in 1926 for the possession of narcotics.

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After spending time in San Quentin Prison in California, Fard was released and moved to Detroit. Fard’s exact arrival date in Detroit is unknown, but once he arrived he made a meager living peddling umbrellas and silks door-to-door in Detroit’s African American community called “Paradise Valley.” At some point Fard began promoting a new faith he believed would liberate Detroit blacks spiritually, psychologically and financially. He began to preach that Christianity was a false religion. He particularly denounced “white devils” as exploiters of the black race and called on his followers to join his Temple of Islam and replace their last names with “X” in order to renounce their slave ancestry. During this period Detroit’s burgeoning African American population was ravaged by the Great Depression. Fard’s teachings became popular solace for many in the African American community. Fard’s First Temple of Islam included the Fruit of Islam, a military-like organization of black male converts, a Muslim Girls’ Training Corps Class and a University of Islam which, despite its name, was mainly focused on elementary and high-school level education. Fard disappeared in 1934. One of his disciples, Elijah Poole, who became the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, succeeded Fard and by World War II had built the Temple of Islam into a network of mosques across the United States.

Sources: Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982); http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/fard.htm

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Hampton, Fred (1948-1969)

Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was born on August 30, 1948 and raised in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois. In high school he excelled in academics and athletics. After Hampton graduated from high school, he enrolled in a prelaw program at Triton Junior College in River Grove, Illinois. Hampton also became involved in the civil rights movement, joining his local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His dynamic leadership and organizational skills in the branch enabled him to rise to the position of Youth Council President. There Hampton mobilized a racially integrated group of five hundred young people who successfully lobbied city officials to create better academic services and recreational facilities for African American children. In 1968, Hampton joined the Black Panther Party (BPP), headquartered in Oakland, California. Using his NAACP experience, he soon headed the Chicago chapter. During his brief BPP tenure, Hampton formed a “Rainbow Coalition” which included Students for a Democratic Society, the Blackstone Rangers, a street gang and the National Young Lords, a Puerto Rican organization. Hampton was also successful in negotiating a gang truce on local television. In an effort to neutralize the Chicago BPP, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Chicago Police Department placed the chapter under heavy surveillance and conducted several harassment campaigns. In 1969, several BPP members and police officers were either injured or killed in shootouts and over one hundred local members of the BPP were arrested. During an early morning police raid of the BPP headquarters at 2337 W. Monroe Street on December 4, 1969, twelve officers opened fire, killing the 21 year old Hampton and Peoria, Illinois Panther leader Mark Clark. Police also seriously wounded four other Panther members. Many in the Chicago African American community were outraged over the raid and what they saw as the unnecessary deaths of Hampton and Clark. Over 5,000 people attended Hampton’s funeral where Reverends Ralph Abernathy and

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Jesse Jackson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference eulogized the slain activist. Years later, law enforcement officials admitted wrongdoing in the killing of Hampton and Clark. In 1990 and later in 2004 the Chicago City Council passed resolutions commemorating December 4 as Fred Hampton Day.

Sources: Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ‟Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006); Huey P. Newton, War against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America (New York: Harlem River Press, 1996); John Kifner, “Police in Chicago Slay 2 Panthers,” New York Times, December 5, 1969; John Kifner, “Panthers Say an Autopsy Shows Party Official was Murdered,” New York Times, December 7, 1969.

Karenga, Maulana (c. 1943- )

Maulana Karenga, born in Salisbury, Maryland the early 1940s as Ronald Everett. He moved to California in the late 1950s, attended Los Angeles City College and went on to UCLA where he received a Master's degree in political science and African studies. In the early 1960s, he met Malcolm X and embraced black nationalism. After the Watts Revolt in 1965 he changed his name to “Maulana” (master teacher) Karenga, interrupted his doctorate studies and formed a nationalist organization called "Us," which became a part of the Black Power movement. When the Black Panther Party began organizing in Los Angeles in 1966, the two organizations became political rivals. That rivalry led to a bloody confrontation on the UCLA campus in 1969 which resulted in the deaths of two Panthers, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Higgins and the wounding of Us member Larry Stiner.

Three years before that confrontation with the Panthers, Karenga created “Kwanzaa” (first fruit) to provide an opportunity for blacks to celebrate their positive connection with Africa. The celebration’s central themes are cooperation and sharing the good in the world. Many symbols are involved in the Kwanzaa celebration which lasts from December 26 through January 1. On September 17, 1971, Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison relating to assault charges against members of the Us organization. After his release from prison, Karenga returned to his studies, received graduate degrees and is currently a professor at Cal State-Long Beach and the Chair of the Black Studies Department.

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Sources: Scot Brown, Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism (New York: New York University Press, 2003) Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting 'Til The Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006)

Newton, Huey P. (1942–1989)

Born in Monroe, Louisiana, the youngest and seventh son, Newton was named after the populist governor Huey Long. His parents moved to Oakland during World War II seeking economic opportunities. Newton attended Merritt College, where he met Bobby Seale. At Merritt, Newton fought to diversify the curriculum and hire more black instructors. He also was exposed to a rising tide of Black Nationalism and briefly joined the Afro-American Association. Within this group and on his own, he studied a broad range of thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, E. Franklin Frazier, and James Baldwin. Newton eventually developed a Marxist Leninist perspective, where he viewed the black community as an internal colony controlled by external forces such as white businessmen, the police, and city hall. He believed the black working class needed to seize the control of the institutions that most affected their community and formed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense with Bobby Seale in October of 1966 to pursue that goal. Newton became the Minister of Defense and main leader of the Party. Writing in the Ten-Point Program, the founding document of the Party, Newton demanded that blacks need the “power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.” That power would allow blacks to gain “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.” Taking advantage of a California law that allowed people to carry non-concealed weapons, the Panthers instituted armed patrols that monitored police activity in the black community. These patrols led to increasingly tense relations with the police and

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in October of 1967 Newton was arrested following a Panther-police shootout that resulted in the death of an Oakland police officer. Considered a political prisoner by many on the left, the Panthers orchestrated a Free Huey campaign led by the Party’s Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver. Charles R. Geary, a well-known attorney, headed Newton’s legal defense and in July of 1968 Newton was convicted of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. That conviction was overturned on appeal and in 1970 Newton was freed from prison. Newton’s leadership of the Black Panther Party in the early 1970s helped contribute to its demise. He led a number of purges of Party members, most famously in 1971 when he expelled Eldridge Cleaver in what was called the Newton-Cleaver split. In 1974 Newton was accused of assaulting a prostitute who later died. Instead of standing trial, he fled to Cuba. He returned to the U.S. in 1976, stood trial, but was acquitted. In 1978 he enrolled in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he earned his doctorate in 1980. His dissertation, “War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America,” was later published as a book. In August of 1989, Newton was killed in Oakland, allegedly when purchasing drugs.

Sources: Huey P. Newton, To Die For The People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton (New York, Random House, 1972); Newton, War against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America (New York: Harlem River Press, 1996); and Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting „til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006).

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Turner, Henry McNeal (1834-1915)

Black Nationalist, repatriationist and minister, Henry M. Turner was 31 years old at the time of the Emancipation. Turner was born in 1834 in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina to free black parents Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner. The self-taught Turner by the age of fifteen worked as a janitor at a law firm in Abbeville, South Carolina. The firm’s lawyers noted his abilities and helped with his education. However, Turner was attracted to the church and after being converted during a Methodist religious revival, decided to become a minister. He joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and became a licensed minister in 1853 at the age of 19. Turner soon became an itinerant evangelist traveling as far as New Orleans. By 1856 he married Eliza Peacher, the daughter of a wealthy African American house builder in Columbia, South Carolina. The couple had fourteen children but only four of them survived into adulthood.

In 1858 Turner entered Trinity College in Baltimore where he studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew and theology. Two years later he became the pastor of the Union Bethel Church in Washington, D.C. Turner cultivated friendships with important Republican Congressional figures including Ohio Congressman Benjamin Wade, Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, and Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Turner had already become a national figure when in 1863 at the age of 29 he was appointed by President Lincoln to the position of Chaplin in the Union Army. Turner was attached to 1st Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, making him the first African American chaplain in the history of the United States Army.

After the Civil War Turner returned to Georgia and quickly became active in Reconstruction-era politics. In 1867 he organized for the Republican Party in Georgia and the following year was elected a delegate to the Georgia State Constitutional Convention. In the same year he was also elected to the Georgia State Legislature. Although 27 African Americans were elected to that body, a coalition of white Democrats and Republicans declared the African American members disqualified and refused to seat them.

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President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Turner postmaster of Macon, Georgia. He was forced to resign in a few weeks under pressure from local Democrats. The U.S. Congress intervened and allowed Turner to reclaim his legislative seat in 1870 but he was not reelected in an election marred by fraud. Turner abandoned politics and moved to Savannah, Georgia where he served as pastor of St. Phillips AME Church. In 1876 he was appointed President of Morris Brown College in Atlanta. Four years later he was appointed a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Turner became the first AME Bishop to ordain a woman, Sarah Ann Hughes, to the office of deacon. He also wrote The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity in 1885 as a guide to the policies and practices of the AME Church.

By the late 1870s Turner became increasingly disillusioned with the inability of African Americans to achieve social justice in the United States. He proposed emigration back to African, an idea much discussed in the antebellum period but which all but disappeared during the Civil War and Reconstruction. By 1880 Turner had become one of the leading advocates of emigration, particularly to Liberia. He founded two newspapers, The Voice of Missions (1893-1900) and the Voice of the People (1901-1904) to promote emigration. Between 1895 and 1896, Turner organized two ship voyages to Liberia which carried over 500 emigrants to Liberia. Many of them returned disillusioned and thus undermined Turner’s emigrationist work.

Independently of his emigrationist efforts, Turner also promoted the AME Church abroad. Between 1891 and 1898 he traveled to Africa four times to promote the church in West and South Africa. He also sent AME missionaries to Cuba and Mexico.

Although he never completely relinquished his emigrationist ideas and remained in touch with numerous African leaders, Turner increasingly devoted the remainder of his life to church work. He died on May 8, 1915 in Windsor, Canada while traveling on AME Church business.

Sources: Stephen Ward Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African American Religion in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992); Edwin S. Redkey, Black

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Exodus, Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890-1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969); The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, African American Desk Reference (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1999); Kenneth Estall, ed., The African American Almanac 6th edition (Detroit: Gale Research, Inc. 1994).

Walker, David (1785-1830)

The fiery-militant David Walker was born on September 28, 1785, in Wilmington, North Carolina. His father was an enslaved African who died a few months before his son’s birth, and his mother was a free woman of African ancestry. Walker grew up to despise the system of slavery that the American government allowed in America. He knew the cruelties of slavery were not for him and said, “As true as God reigns, I will be avenged for the sorrow which my people have suffered.” He eventually moved to Boston during the 1820s and became very active within the free black community. Walker’s intense hatred for slavery culminated in him publishing his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in September 1829. The Appeal was smuggled into the southern states, and was considered subversive, seditious, and incendiary by most white men in both northern and southern states. It was, without a doubt, one of the most controversial documents published in the antebellum period.

Walker was concerned about many social issues affecting free and enslaved Africans in America during the time. He also expressed many beliefs that would become commonly promoted by later black nationalists such as: unified struggle for resistance of oppression (slavery), land reparations, self-government for people of African descent in America, racial pride, and a critique of American capitalism. His radical views prompted southern planters to offer a $3000 bounty for anyone who killed Walker and $10,000 reward for anyone who returned him alive back to the South. Walker was mysteriously found dead in the doorway of his Boston home in 1830, some people believed he was poisoned and others believed that he died of tuberculosis.

Sources: Thabiti Asukile, "The All-Embracing Black Nationalist Theories of David Walker's Appeal," Black Scholar, 29 (Winter 1999), 16–24.

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X, Malcolm (1925-1965)

Malcolm X, one of the most influential African American leaders of the 20th Century, was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925 to Earl Little, a Georgia native and itinerant Baptist preacher, and Louise Norton Little who was born in the West Indian island of Grenada. Shortly after Malcolm was born the family moved to Lansing, Michigan. Earl Little joined Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) where he publicly advocated black nationalist beliefs, prompting the local white supremacist Black Legion to set fire to their home. Little was killed by a streetcar in 1931. Authorities ruled it a suicide but the family believed he was killed by white supremacists.

Although an academically gifted student, Malcolm dropped out of high school after a teacher ridiculed his aspirations to become a lawyer. He then moved to Boston’s Roxbury district to live with an older half-sister, Ella Little Collins. Malcolm worked odd jobs in Boston and then moved to Harlem in 1943 where he drifted into a life of drug dealing, pimping, gambling and other forms of “hustling.” He avoided the draft in World War II by declaring his intent to organize black soldiers to attack whites which led to his classification as “mentally disqualified for military service.” Malcolm was arrested for burglary in Boston in 1946 and received a ten year prison sentence. There he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI). Upon his parole in 1952, Malcolm was called to Chicago by NOI leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Like other converts, he changed his surname to “X,” symbolizing, he said, the rejection of “slave names” and his inability to claim his ancestral African name. Recognizing his promise as a speaker and organizer for the Nation of Islam, Muhammad sent Malcolm to Boston to become the Minister of Temple Number Eleven. His proselytizing success earned a reassignment in 1954 to Temple Number Seven in Harlem. Although New York’s one million blacks comprised the largest African American urban population in the United States, Malcolm noted that “there weren't enough Muslims to fill a city bus. "Fishing" in Christian storefront churches and at competing black nationalist meetings, Malcolm built up the membership of Temple Seven. He also met his future wife, Sister Betty X, a nursing student who joined the temple in 1956. They married and eventually had six daughters.

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Malcolm X quickly became a national public figure in July 1959 when CBS aired Mike Wallace’s expose on the NOI, “The Hate That Hate Produced.” This documentary revealed the views of the NOI, of which Malcolm was the principal spokesperson and showed those views to be in sharp contrast to those of most well-known African American leaders of the time. Soon, however, Malcolm was increasingly frustrated by the NOI’s bureaucratic structure and refusal to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. His November 1963 speech in Detroit, “Message to the Grass Roots,” a bold attack on racism and a call for black unity, foreshadowed the split with his spiritual mentor, Elijah Muhammad. However, Malcolm on December 1, in response to a reporter’s question about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, used the phrase "chickens coming home to roost" which to Muslims meant that Allah was punishing white America for crimes against black people. Whatever the personal views of Muslims about Kennedy’s death, Elijah Muhammad had given strict orders to his ministers not to comment on the assassination. Malcolm defied the order and was suspended from the NOI for ninety days. Malcolm used the suspension to announce on March 8, 1964, his break with the NOI and his creation of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. Three months later he formed a strictly political group (an action expressly banned by the NOI), called the Organization of Afro American Unity. His dramatic political transformation was revealed when he spoke to the Militant Labor Forum of the Socialist Worker’s Party. Malcolm placed the Black Revolution in the context of a worldwide anti-imperialist struggle taking place in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, noting that “when I say black, I mean non-white—black, brown, red or yellow.” By April 1964, while speaking at a CORE rally in Cleveland, Ohio, Malcolm gave his famous “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech in which he described black Americans as “victims of democracy.” Malcolm traveled to Africa and the Middle East in late Spring 1964 and was received like a visiting head of state in many countries. While there, Malcolm made his hajj to Mecca and added El-Hajj to his official NOI name Malik El-Shabazz. The tour forced Malcolm to realize that one’s political position as a revolutionary superseded “color.” The transformed Malcolm reiterated these views when he addressed an OAAU rally in New York, declaring for a pan-African struggle “by any means necessary.” Malcolm spent six months in Africa in 1964 in an unsuccessful attempt to get international support for a United Nations investigation of human rights violations of Afro Americans in the United States. In February 1965, Malcolm flew to Paris to continue his efforts but

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was denied entry amidst rumors that he was on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hit list. Upon his return to New York, his home was firebombed. Events continued to spiral downward and on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

Source: Robert L. Jenkins and Mafanya Donald Tryman, The Malcolm X Encyclopedia (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002); Eugene V. Wolfenstein, The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Karl Evanzz, The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (New York: Thunder‟s Mouth Press, 1992); Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965).

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