Malcolm X Beyond the Mythology – w/ Clarence Lang

Teaching Hard History

Learning for Justice

History, Courses, Education

4.2 • 588 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2021

⏱️ 68 minutes

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Summary

Historian Clarence Lang joins us for a conversation about Malcolm X. We discuss his commitment to Black pride and self-determination and his rejection of the white gaze and the myth of American exceptionalism. Learn how teaching about the life and works of Malcolm X can illuminate the universe of possibilities of the civil rights movement—and the diversity of ideology, strategy and political thought within the Black freedom struggle.

Our latest Spotify playlist has even more Movement Music inspired by this episode.

Tyree Boyd-Pates posted some great photos of Malcolm Little in this Twitter thread. In the news, the Washington Post published a recently discovered letter attesting to FBI involvement in the assassination of Malcolm X. And here's a quick guide to teaching the Autobiography of Malcolm X from Penguin Random House.

And visit the enhanced episode transcript for additional classroom resources about Malcolm X.

Transcript

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0:00.0	He found his way into the world, in Omaha, Nebraska in 1925, as Malcolm Little, the son of Garveyite and a child of the Great Migration,
0:20.0	who lost his parents to the depredations of racial terrorists and the callous disregard of the state.
0:26.6	He found the streets in Boston and in Harlem in the 1940s as Detroit Red,
0:33.6	a street hustler who ran with gangsters and white women too and led his own ring of petty thieves.
0:41.3	He found religion and himself in a Massachusetts prison in the 1950s as Malcolm X, a convert to the nation of Islam and a devotee of the honorable Elijah Muhammad.
0:56.0	And he found his voice in Mecca in 1963 as Al-Haj Malik al-Shabaas,
1:03.0	a minister of Sunni Islam and a prophet of black nationalism.
1:09.0	But all too often, when we introduce brother Malcolm to our
1:14.3	students we do not start with his life as rich and as textured as it was
1:20.0	reflective of so many of the experiences of working-class black men and women in the
1:27.1	Jim Crow North.
1:28.3	Instead, we start with his death.
1:32.3	We introduce Brother Malcolm as the target of an assassination.
1:37.3	For some, a martyr in the cause for black liberation and for others a victim of his own strident rhetoric.
1:47.0	But to fully understand Brother Malcolm,
1:51.0	to appreciate his contributions to the black freedom struggle,
1:55.0	we have to start with his life,
1:58.0	and we have to teach his many lives,
2:01.6	lives that made him a prince,
2:05.6	our own shining black prince.
2:13.6	I'm Hassan Kwame Jeffries, and this is Teaching Hard History.
2:21.4	We're a production of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Learning for Justice Project,
	...

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