Malcolm X: Historical Perceptions

THESIS

The impetus for the development for this major work arose from the varied and largely, colorful interpretations of Malcolm X. The differences seem to have arisen from scholars and historians use and understanding of many different and varied sources and most important, their own perspective of the events as they unfolded. How historians approached Malcolm X is of paramount importance to future historians and more importantly, to the study of history. Principally, these differences of thought and perspective are greatly determined by the writer's context, which in turn is at the core of the focus question, concerning the historiographical issue whether each generation writes the same history in a new way. Furthermore the purpose of this thesis is, not only, to show whether each generation does write the same history in a new way, but whether through this process the growth of history is not stunted or hindered but allows future accounts to draw on past sources and derive new conclusions. The constitution of this essay will support this aim by discussing a number of scholars and historians - Edward Woods, James Elridge and Jonathan Kingsley - through showing the differing perspectives.

History is a subject that will remain constant even if we were, by some remarkable turn of fate, to fall short of events to appreciate. The previous century alone will remain of indisputable value to historians for the simple reason that there will always be new interpretations of historical events from every generation, and within each generation from remarkably different individuals with varying contexts. Due to this wonderful circumstance, a variety of intriguing perspectives emerge and spurs further an even greater quest for the truth.

The statement 'each generation writes the same history in a new and different way' derives great meaning in relation to the figure of Malcolm X due to the myriad of perspectives that have been based on his person and in turn, the multitude of primary source information that exists from the movement and figure of Malcolm X from speeches, interviews, pamphlets to books that illustrate a groundswell of information about the controversial figure.

The flowering of the Civil Rights Movement, a movement for allowing greater equilibrium for disadvantaged racial groups in the United States of America during the decades of the 1950s and 1960s enabled the "forging" of the controversial figure of Malcolm X. It is for this reason that Malcolm X is of increasing controversial importance. For although this period was of great importance in allowing greater self-determination to African-Americans and other disenfranchised racial groups, it was, to a certain extent, over-shadowed by the events of the Cold War and the Vietnam War at that particular time, however, in recent years as the "History from Below" school of history becomes vogue and as the post-modern movement asserts its influence over the study of history there has been a greater interest in the role and influence that Malcolm X had upon empowering African-Americans and "disturbing" the social fabric of America.

As can be expected, American society underwent massive changes and influences during the second half of the twentieth century. On one side there was the lingering suspicion of radicalism, equating any non-conformist attitude to "communist", "Red" or "un-American" activities, that ran rife throughout much of bourgeois and upper class America representing a conservative analogy that was firmly rooted in American society, and on the other, there was the kick-starting of a "leftist" revolution that created ripples throughout American society through the influence of "beatniks" of the 1950s and later, the "hippies" sub-cultures of the 1960s, who advocated principles that were in marked contrast to their more conservative elders. 'These two perspectives, according to the historian Carson Clayborne, divided the nation down social, cultural and ideological lines. '

The Second World War, no doubt, left an imprint on the way people of the time interpreted life, thus an historian's interpretation of the past would also have been particularly influenced. The change that this generation experienced is a prime example of how each generation will write the same history in a new way from a new perspective. The conservative American historian Edward Woods (1920-1999), who wrote at a time of considerable turbulence and disruption where in which 'The New Spring Time of the Peoples' of the 1950s and 1960s was at its height causing great concern within American society who equated radicalism with a violent anarchist or communist uprising/revolution. Again, like the "Red Scare' of the 1920s and the McCarthyism of 1950s, 'the fear of an outbreak of a socialist, communist or a race uprising led to re-assertion of conservatism coupled with so-called "traditional American" values within white upper and middle class America.' Woods, specifically through his Race, Desegregation and the American Way (1972) and The History of the American Civil Rights Movement (1973), deconstructs the figure of Malcolm X according to the duality of his movement, focusing on 'Black Nationalism' and later, the pacifist and non-violence philosophy that characterized his movement.

Edward Woods spills a great deal of ink throughout his books to promote the view that Malcolm was 'a dangerous extremist' who was 'bent on undermining the social, cultural and religious founding of the nation through "Black Nationalism"' as well as through 'the propagation of the Nation of Islam's dangerous and racist theology.' Woods virulently criticizes Malcolm X calling him a "Garveyite-era relic" (Marcus Garvey, a black nationalist leader who advocated the ostracizing of African-American and white society, and the return of the African-American people to their homeland, Africa). In particular, Woods attacks the 'Black Nationalism' of Malcolm X's movement describing it as "an ideological wasteland....devoid of any premise of humanity....focusing on hate, mistrust and suspicion....reminiscent of Hitler, in proclaiming the purity of a race and the untermensch attributes of another..."

Woods is also highly critical of the Nation of Islam (a black American religion that had been established in Detroit by Wallace Fard in 1930, and then led by Elijah Muhammed, a former Baptist preacher from Georgia. Elijah Muhammed was the sole authority for defining doctrine and practice in the Nation of Islam and advocated that his religion was a part of the Islamic movement,