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Chrishayden
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Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1178
Registered: 03-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 27, 2005 - 01:46 pm: | 
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REVIEW: museum exhibit-malcolm x: a search for the truth
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/arts/design/19malccut.html?
Museum Review
The Personal Evolution of a Civil Rights Giant
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
The New York Times
In the 1940's, Malcolm Little a k a Detroit Red (and, later,
a k a Malcolm X, a k a El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) wanted to
impress co-conspirators in petty crime with his ruthlessness
and daring. He loaded his pistol with a single bullet,
twirled the cylinder, put the muzzle to his head and fired.
The gesture demonstrated that he was unafraid of death and
therefore not afraid of much else. And when he recounts the
story in his 1965 autobiography ("as told to" Alex Haley),
the reader is also impressed - though evidence of his
brilliance, fury and self-destructiveness is, by then, hardly
necessary.
A new exhibition about Malcolm X opens at the Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture today (which would have
been his 80th birthday). And though it doesn't mention this
theatrical gesture in its survey of one of the most
significant black leaders in American history, Malcolm's
public displays of passion and position sometimes seem as
courageous, dangerous, and even, yes, foolish, as his game of
Russian roulette.
The exhibition, "Malcolm X: A Search for Truth," seeks to map
out the major themes of his life in a "developmental journey"
reflecting his "driving intellectual quest for truth." It
offers evidence that has been unavailable: personal papers,
journals, letters, lecture outlines - rescued from being sold
at auction in San Francisco and on eBay in 2002.
Those papers, which the Shabazz family had lost control of
when monthly fees for a commercial storage facility were left
unpaid, were returned to them, and then lent for 75 years to
the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center in Harlem. The
documents are lightly sampled in this first public showing,
but they will eventually offer greater insight into Malcolm
X's developmental journey: from child of a Black Nationalist
father murdered in his prime, to a star elementary school
pupil in a largely white school; to a hustler and criminal;
to a convert, while in prison, to Elijah Muhammad's eccentric
brand of Islam; to a radical minister who built Muhammad's
Nation of Islam into a major national movement, declaring the
white race to be the devil incarnate; and finally, to a
political leader who, cut off by Muhammad, turned to
traditional Islam and was rethinking his views, just as he
was assassinated in New York's Audubon Ballroom in 1965 at
the age of 39.
His brief life stands as a challenge no matter one's
perspective, an overweening presence in the roiling currents
of American racial debates. After all, Islam is a force in
the American black community partly because of Malcolm X
(who, after his 1964 hajj to Mecca, changed his name to El-
Hajj Malik El-Shabazz). Advocates of reparations for slavery
echo his arguments. Less radically, so do believers in the
encouragement of black-run businesses and schools. And by
seeking to internationalize race, particularly in the
mid-1960's, Malcolm X helped set the stage for the doctrines
of Third Worldism, which asserts that Western enslavement of
dark-skinned peoples is played out on a world scale.
Even those who dissent from such views can recognize in
Malcolm X's fearsome intelligence and self-discipline a kind
of a developmental quest, ultimately left incomplete. The
exhibition, which also includes material from the Schomburg
and other collections, tells that story chronologically,
using textual summaries and photographs to create a context
for the personal papers.
Those papers include letters from Malcolm to his brother,
Philbert Little, describing his first embrace of the Nation
of Islam, as well as a disturbing sequence of letters about
his final embrace, suggesting how Muhammad tried to rein him
in. And above the display cases, the walls are lined with
photographs chronicling the life: an elementary-school
photograph of Malcolm, glimpses of the bodies of Nation of
Islam followers killed by Los Angeles police in 1962, views
of halls packed with devoted listeners, and finally, glimpses
of the fallen chairs and stark disorder of the Audubon
Ballroom after Malcolm X was murdered. An epilogue to the
exhibition displays court drawings of the trial of the
accused assassins, along with objects found on his body,
including a North Vietnamese stamp showing an American
helicopter getting shot down.
But, despite the new personal documents, there is something
familiar about the exhibition, which does not offer new
interpretations and misses an opportunity to delve more
deeply into the difficulties in Malcolm's quest. In his
autobiography, Malcolm X spoke of the importance of speaking
the "raw, naked truth" about the nature of race relations. He
also recognized one of the tragic consequences of
enslavement: the erasure of the past. The name "X" was
provided to initiates as a stand in for a lost original name.
Names could also be readily changed because they were little
more than expressions of newly formed identities.
In fact, invention became crucial. For Malcolm X, it was a
matter of control: mastering one's past, determining one's
character and, finally, controlling one's future. Documents
describe how members of the Nation of Islam were expelled for
any backsliding, including adultery. In one letter, Malcolm
almost provides a motto for his kind of charismatic
discipline:
"For one to control one's thoughts and feelings means one can
actually control one's atmosphere and all who walks into its
sphere of influence."
But this also means that the truth can seem less crucial than
the kind of identity being constructed, the kind of past
being invented. After reading the autobiography, we learn
from Alex Haley's epilogue that Malcolm actually confessed
that his story of Russian roulette was not what it seemed: he
had palmed the bullet. Everybody had been hustled, the
readers included. The adoption of Nation of Islam ideology,
with its invented history and its evil scientist named Yacub
breeding the white race, is another kind of hustle.
Curiously, the exhibition itself doesn't make enough of such
distinctions. In a wall display, labeled "Messengers of Hope
and Liberation," major figures like W. E. B. Du Bois have no
more stature than such figures as Wallace D. Fard. Fard was
the greater influence on Malcolm X, since he created the
Nation of Islam mythology, but he may not have had any
African heritage at all and, as Karl Evanzz argues in his
recent book, "The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah
Muhammad," he had even encouraged the practice of human
sacrifice.
As if reluctant to be too judgmental, there is also not
enough explanation of the quarrel with Elijah Muhammad,
though the photographer Gordon Parks quoted Malcolm X saying,
just before his death: "I did many things as a Muslim that
I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then - like all Muslims - I
was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to
march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of
himself if he's ready to pay the cost. It cost me 12 years."
That kind of statement is too blunt for this exhibition,
which makes suggestions but seems reluctant to draw too many
distinctions. But even the differing interpretations of
Malcolm's final transformation might have been outlined with
more clarity. It is intriguing to read, in one 1964 letter
from Malcolm's office to Martin Luther King Jr., an
_expression of apology for "unkind things" said in the past.
And the trial of the accused assassins from the Nation of
Islam merits more explanation, particularly because a
conspiracy theory of F.B.I. involvement has long simmered,
even as Muhammad was known to have encouraged threats against
Malcolm X and had already sent one disciple to kill him. The
quest for truth, surely, goes on, but part of it means facing
squarely the extent of certain kinds of hustle.
"Malcolm X: A Search for Truth" is at the Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture, 515 Lenox Avenue, at 135th
Street, Harlem, (212) 491-2200, through Dec. 31.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1203
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 01, 2005 - 01:51 am: |
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There's nothing else about Malcolm X....other than what his autobiography and speeches showcased....that I want to know.
The tone of this article is NOT in honor of Malcolm, his life or his legacy, so I find it meaningless.
Malcolm X was the second coming of Sojourner Truth and Harriett Tubman in my book. He can do NO WRONG and I don't give a shit about his flaws, disappointments, etc.
I love Malcolm X and WISH I could live up to his stature.
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Libralind2
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 100
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 01, 2005 - 06:50 pm: |
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Loves me some Malcolm
LiLi |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3133
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 01, 2005 - 09:46 pm: |
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LiLi,
There you go...AGAIN...feining for cute dead guys. |
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