Malcolm X: Unpicking an enduring legacy from a Black British perspective
100 years since his birth, 60 years since his death, Malcolm X's impact continues to be felt in the UK.
“He changed the whole idea of what Blackness was. Before Malcolm, we didn’t call ourselves Black.”
These were the words from author and playwright Bonnie Greer, one of the speakers at an event to celebrate the centenary of Malcolm X’s birth at The British Library last week.
The WritersMosaic talk, Malcolm X - by any means necessary, was an opportunity to explore the revolutionary’s global legacy as a resistance leader, and unpick the American’s enduring influence on this side of the pond.
Greer grew up in Chicago during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, but for many Black Brits of the same generation, racial identity may have felt less clearly defined.
“I grew up in Stevenage, and there weren't a whole lot of segways into Malcolm X in Stevenage” said journalist and author Gary Younge, who was also a panellist at the event. “I liked the idea of him before I knew too much about him. White people liked Martin Luther King so much, I assumed there must be something wrong with him.”
At the time, while at university, Younge recalls that he had little to no references for Black British revolutionary figures. So much of what he learnt back then was an American import.
How do you carry yourself as a Black man with the certain knowledge that you will face indignity in your life? Younge found himself asking himself this question when he was 20 years old. A poster of Malcolm X, pictured with a gun, provided an answer of sorts – a model for carrying yourself with defiance.
Malcolm X was killed 60 years ago. In February 1965, two weeks before he was shot dead in Harlem, he visited the UK – speaking at Oxford Union before travelling to Smethwick in the West Midlands. One of the last acts of his life was to speak out, in this ordinary, unassuming town, against British racism, exposing the parallels between what was happening here and what was happening in the US.
His comments (“I have heard that the Blacks…are being treated in the same way as the Negroes were treated in Alabama”) were met with vehement criticism from those who insisted the “race problems” in England and America were fundamentally different. An argument that remains all too familiar for anti-racism campaigners in the UK today.
You can watch a recording of the event here.