# Malcom X  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Malcom X - Show: Stuff You Should Know - Owner / Host: iHeartPodcasts - Episode publish date: 2026-03-26 - Episode AI description: A vivid look at Malcolm X’s journey from a childhood scarred by racist terror to hustling in Harlem, prison, and a radical reinvention. It explores the Nation of Islam, media fame, clashes over integration versus self-reliance, his transformative trip to Mecca, global civil rights ambitions, and the forces that led to his assassination. - Mentioned books: [Malcolm X speaks](https://share.snipd.com/book/3ffdf70c-2fe1-4725-831d-ac06f656e69f) by [Malcolm X](https://share.snipd.com/person/2437bc3f-20f5-480e-a0c6-8056d65c1a92), [The Autobiography of Malcolm X](https://share.snipd.com/book/20f25873-d3d9-4cf7-b4b2-0ca9a453c806) by [Malcolm X](https://share.snipd.com/person/2437bc3f-20f5-480e-a0c6-8056d65c1a92) - Duration: 55:34 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/459b47fe-51a5-48db-bedb-221ac5a95062) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/145ea529-ce54-40de-ab9d-10dd8b65f7e4) - Export date: 2026-07-08T01:11:15 ## Snips ### [How Malcolm X Got Reduced To A Foil](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8e93d553-1ed0-4fd6-b306-17b69a0941bf) 🎧 03:12 - 06:35 (03:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/cd2ea20a-d685-4f20-b85a-d0a0bdd8b1d0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Josh Clark says Malcolm X gets flattened into a false choice against Martin Luther King Jr. instead of understood as a far more complex figure. - White America cast him as the face of race war, while schools largely erased him from the civil-rights story. #### 💬 Quote > Malcolm X represented to white America [...] race war. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark on Malcolm X's public image #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** Well, I have just entered my Malcolm X phase. Awesome. I just researching him. I accidentally got radicalized and I've got his autobiography on the way. It should get here today. Oh, great. But it's it's crazy, Chuck, because like especially as just white people of our generation. If you hadn't already gotten into him and like seen the Spike Lee movie and read his autobiography and just started to read his speeches and stuff, if you just kind of knew him like I had up to this point, like you knew him as the guy who said, like, by any means necessary, that he was militant, that he was essentially great. the foil to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Um, and that he and King kind of represented these two, this fork in the road that America had to kind of choose between because there was at this point in like the 50s, starting in the 50s, there was no way for America to just stand there at the crossroads any longer. Like America as a whole had to make a choice. Which way are going to go? Race war or integration? Right. Peaceful integration. And that's what Malcolm X represented to white America. Race war. like black militants taking over, killing white people mercilessly, ruthlessly because white people had it coming. Or, you know, everybody's much more familiar with the Martin Luther King Jr. way. But there's so much more to it than that. And researching this guy, I don't even want to say a fan because I think that kind of undermines the respect I have for him now. He's an amazing figure, it turns out. Yeah, **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** for sure. And when I was in high school, there was a big, this is, I graduated in 89, the movie was 92. So this was leading up to the film, which obviously put things on a much bigger sort of a platform. But it was a big deal in the 80s. Like there was a big sort of, at least in the South, I don't know how it was everywhere else, but there was a big movement among, you know, the black students at my school to get in touch with their African heritage. Malcolm X hats were all over the place in my school. And he was just sort of in the forefront, I guess, kind of like my junior and senior year. So it was striking to me that we didn't learn about him in high school. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. But if you step back and really think about it, it's not very surprising, you know? Well, **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** I mean, looking back at the substandard public school education I got, correct. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. But also the whitewashed and sanitized version where it's like, OK, we'll tell you about Martin Luther King Jr., but don't ask about Malcolm X. You don't want to know about him. He a he was a rough dude. But yeah, or anyone **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** else. It was just Martin Luther King. **Josh Clark:** Exactly. Yeah. He did the whole thing by himself, it turns out. Yeah. So, yeah, I remember that same era as well. Okay. So I say we get into this because we could probably sit here and do an intro and it would end up being the entire thing. Right. Well, let's jump in and everybody else can kind of make up their own minds about how you feel about Malcolm X. And just kind of as an aside to start, I would definitely recommend going and watching the documentary on him that American Experience did, I think, in the 90s called Make It Plain. --- ### [Racist Violence Destroyed His Early Home Life](https://share.snipd.com/snip/746a6c60-aa5d-42d8-a0cf-2bd891f54a84) 🎧 07:05 - 11:00 (03:54) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ea36d4fa-23f4-4155-a523-4f790b2f2cf7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm Little's childhood was shattered by racist terror, his father's death, and his mother's long institutionalization. - White men burned the family home, Earl Little's death was ruled suicide despite evidence, and the siblings were split through foster care. #### 💬 Quote > A group of white men burned their house to the ground without any firefighters even showing up. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's childhood #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** He was born back in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. And from the outset, he was essentially raised in a very Black conscious family. So he was aware of the state of racial affairs in the United States as a very young person and the oppression that Black people lived under at the time and still do in many ways. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. His dad, Earl, was a Baptist lay speaker. His mother, Louise Little, they were both members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was a Marcus Garvey joint, someone else we never learned about in high school. And they moved to Milwaukee for a little while. Then eventually in 1928, when little Malcolm was three, landed in Michigan. And they landed in a white neighborhood. And that was a big problem because they were not wanted there. And Earl Little was not the kind of guy to just pack up and leave because his neighbors didn't want him there. So he stayed. And the community had a clause in their HOA covenant that said that basically no one was allowed to sell a house to non-white people. And so they sued to evict them. while that was kind of going through, even before the eviction was finalized, a group of white men burned their house to the ground without any firefighters even showing up. **Josh Clark:** Right. So whether they wanted to move or not, they had to now. And they moved a little further out of where they lived, still in the Lansing area. And I don't know when the house burned, but just within a year or two, maybe less, Malcolm was six years old and his father died. He died in a mysterious, bizarre streetcar accident where he was run over by a streetcar. And that's just the official line on the whole thing. In fact, I think it was, it ended up being ruled a suicide. But according to Malcolm, his family, his mother, like his father was murdered probably by a Klan affiliated group called the Black Legion who operated in Michigan back then. And that was pretty much what the family was convinced of, that his father had been murdered. Then on top of that, no one would admit that his father was murdered, which I'm sure makes that kind of experience that much harder. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, I mean, there was actual evidence that was ignored. He had clearly been beaten and placed on the tracks. So it was kind of just brushed under the table. Uh, it was very upsetting for a young Malcolm cause that was like the rumor. It was all around the school and everything. So he was hearing all these stories. Uh, and it was, you know, definitely a big early sort of, um, kind of fork in the road for him, uh, and that his family was left without their dad. They, like you said, ruled it a suicide. But I think she got like a thousand dollars in one life insurance payment. Louise did, which would be about twenty five grand a day, but was denied because of the suicide claim, a much larger insurance claim. So she didn't have a lot of a lot of dough to feed, you know, what was eight kids. **Josh Clark:** Eight kids, man. now she's suddenly on her own. And she had a nervous breakdown is what you would call it. I think that she was diagnosed as paranoid and was transferred to the state hospital in Kalamazoo, where she stayed. This is in the mid 30s. She stayed there until 1964. I think like 26 years or something like that. And all of a sudden, Malcolm and his seven siblings are without parents. They're orphans, essentially. And they become wards of the state and they're broken up. So just in a very short time, a couple of years, Malcolm goes from having a stable home life to his father being murdered, his mother having a nervous breakdown and being institutionalized, and his siblings being spread out throughout the foster system around Lansing. --- ### [A Teacher Crushed His Dream Of Law School](https://share.snipd.com/snip/179f57e3-5569-4aa6-a2ab-8ef2972c4eb6) 🎧 11:29 - 12:45 (01:15) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/2b36c5ed-6f05-411f-8298-b48fb3d0e173" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm excelled in school and wanted to become a lawyer until a white teacher told him to be realistic and become a carpenter. - Josh Clark calls it a pivotal punch that drained his enthusiasm for education and preceded his permanent exit from school. #### 💬 Quote > I think America would accept you more as a carpenter. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark recounting what Malcolm X's teacher told him #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** he was sent to a juvenile detention center in Mason, Michigan. It was about 10 miles south of Lansing. And he went to a white school and he did a great job. He was he's a really, you know, was a really smart guy, a really smart kid and made really good grades. He was very charismatic from the beginning. He was elected class president and had dreams of going to law school before his white teacher said a pretty terrible thing to him. Yeah, **Josh Clark:** it was an English teacher. And is a one of the one of the this is the second pivotal moment in his life where he had the rug pulled out from under him. He had the wind taken out of his sails. He got punched in the breadbasket, however you want to put it. Because the English teacher, he told the English teacher that he was dreaming of becoming a lawyer. And the English teacher is like, I think America would accept you more as a carpenter. Like that's the kind of profession you need to go in. You need to be realistic about. And then essentially being a black person in America. It's not what the teacher said, but the point was the same. And it just completely sucked the life and enthusiasm for learning that he had up to that point right out of him. --- ### [Prison Turned Malcolm Into A Disciplined Thinker](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6a6d1ef3-9267-4739-90bb-6535efbfbbc3) 🎧 16:10 - 22:56 (06:45) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d6e47ee4-8b4c-4e8f-aaa1-50b8f505ac0d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Prison transformed Malcolm from a hustler into a self-educated, disciplined convert whose intellect supercharged the Nation of Islam. - At MCI Norfolk he read voraciously, corresponded with Elijah Muhammad, dropped "Little" as a slave name, and embraced strict ascetic rules. #### 💬 Quote > He became a voracious reader again in prison. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's prison transformation #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. So prison is where a lot happened to him in prison, sort of one of his first big transformations. He spent about almost seven years there for that burglary. And he was about 20 years old at the time. And it was in prison where he really kind of found himself for the, I guess, for the first time as an adult. And that he remembered like, hey, I'm a smart guy and I used to love academia and learning. So he started, he became a voracious reader again in prison. He apparently tried to memorize the dictionary in prison and was reading anything he could get his hands on, including eventually, which would really transform his life, the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, who was the leader of the Nation of Islam at the time. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. And before he kind of came on to those teachings from his siblings, I think, who encouraged him to start looking into that. And he had a real aversion to any kind of religion. He was actually known as Satan by the other prisoners in the correctional facility he was in. But the reason he was able to read so much, Chuck, is because he happened to be in MCI Norfolk in Massachusetts. And it's well known to have a lot, like a huge library, connections with like MIT and Harvard and all that stuff. So it was actually the perfect prison for him to land in. So he was able to kind of educate himself from that point on. And then when he finally did start taking up the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, it just clicked. And it was even further, I guess, reinforced when he started writing letters to Elijah Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad started writing back to him. That really encouraged him big time. Yeah. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** You know why? Because you didn't have to write letters to get those books like Andy Dufresne. Yeah. In the Shawshank Redemption. No, they just threw them at you. Yeah, he was, of course, because it was Massachusetts. So, yeah, He started, you know, basically became a pen pal with Elijah Muhammad and really became a hardcore Muslim pretty quickly after reading, you know, his works and became an ascetic. So that means no drugs, no booze, no pork, no movies or music, no gambling, no dancing, like the real straight and narrow and, you know, will lay threw find out that that became a bit of a riff later on because he didn't think Elijah Muhammad at one point was sort of walking the walk, whereas he really was from the beginning. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, for sure. Like and he did throughout to like the FBI tried and tried and tried to get something on him and they couldn't get anything. Like he's just that upstanding immoral from that point on. I also I had never even thought to wonder, but I had no idea why his last name was X. I was pretty surprised to learn this, but it makes a lot of sense. You **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** didn't know that? No. OK, I thought that would have been sort of just the basic common knowledge. No. But maybe not. **Josh Clark:** I mean, maybe it is, but I'm pretty uncommon, Chuck. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** You're an uncommon podcaster. So, yeah, he dropped the name Little because, and a lot of people in the Nation of Islam did and do this because he thought that was his slave name. So he rid himself of that name and replaced it with an X. Yeah. **Josh Clark:** He also, one of the reasons he despised religion, he despised Christianity in general because he considered that the slave religion that was given to the African slaves to essentially keep them in line. And so it was actually, it was a big deal that he became this devotee of this religion. And this particular religion, just really quick, if you're not familiar with the Nation of Islam, it is not the same thing as Islam that emerged out of the Middle East several hundred years ago. It bears like a slight resemblance to it, but it is essentially a completely altered version that has a lot of theology that seems very odd to outsiders. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah. I mean, they were Muslim, but, you know, I know you've, and this is stuff I didn't know, that you found some stuff about Elijah Muhammad's original beliefs that I was sort of shocked by. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. So you've heard white devils before. I mean, all you have to do is listen to Ice Cube. He always talks about white devils. But that is actually a teaching from the Nation of Islam, from Elijah Muhammad. and it predates him. The nation of Islam had been around for a few decades before Elijah Muhammad was its prophet. But the reason that they call white people white devils is because according to black Muslim theology, there was a genius named Yaqab, black genius, created white people by bleaching black people. And he mutated them into white, blue-eyed devils. And the reason why is he wanted to basically put the black race to the test. So he put them in a subjugated position because he allowed these white people to be devils, to basically act like white people have treated black people since time immemorial, and that this reign would last about six millennia, and that the six millennia were almost up, and that this was the time when the black race would rise and take over from the white devils who would really regret the stuff that they had up to that point after **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** that. Yeah, which would have placed it about 1970. And so white Americans hearing this at the time, they thought that's when like the race war was coming, was 1970 or thereabouts. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, and we talked about that before. And like, I never really understood it, but this is a big, big reason that that white America was like, there's going to be a race war. It's like coming. It's inevitable. That was a big part of it. So, yeah, this is and this wasn't like metaphorical. This is from what I understand. It's a it's a literal interpretation of where white people came from 6000 years ago. So this was what Malcolm X was being into. And he was a smart guy. So he had to submit himself. Like he had to take parts of his brain and just turn them off. The suspicious part of him as far as like what he was being taught had to be turned off. The critical thinking part. As far as anything goes with the religion that he took on, he was able to compartmentalize, turn it off, and throw himself fully into it. --- ### [Why White America Feared Nation Of Islam](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0917c268-2c85-415a-93b2-e5e06d29463f) 🎧 20:34 - 23:06 (02:31) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/97583bb8-1556-49c0-a5bb-4f48df684b20" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Nation of Islam theology taught that white people were literally engineered as devils, which helps explain white America's fear of Malcolm X. - Josh Clark says this belief fed real expectations of a coming race war around 1970, not a merely metaphorical conflict. #### 💬 Quote > This wasn't like metaphorical. This is [...] a literal interpretation of where white people came from. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark on Nation of Islam theology #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** Yeah. So you've heard white devils before. I mean, all you have to do is listen to Ice Cube. He always talks about white devils. But that is actually a teaching from the Nation of Islam, from Elijah Muhammad. and it predates him. The nation of Islam had been around for a few decades before Elijah Muhammad was its prophet. But the reason that they call white people white devils is because according to black Muslim theology, there was a genius named Yaqab, black genius, created white people by bleaching black people. And he mutated them into white, blue-eyed devils. And the reason why is he wanted to basically put the black race to the test. So he put them in a subjugated position because he allowed these white people to be devils, to basically act like white people have treated black people since time immemorial, and that this reign would last about six millennia, and that the six millennia were almost up, and that this was the time when the black race would rise and take over from the white devils who would really regret the stuff that they had up to that point after **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** that. Yeah, which would have placed it about 1970. And so white Americans hearing this at the time, they thought that's when like the race war was coming, was 1970 or thereabouts. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, and we talked about that before. And like, I never really understood it, but this is a big, big reason that that white America was like, there's going to be a race war. It's like coming. It's inevitable. That was a big part of it. So, yeah, this is and this wasn't like metaphorical. This is from what I understand. It's a it's a literal interpretation of where white people came from 6000 years ago. So this was what Malcolm X was indoctrinated into. And he was a smart guy. So he had to submit himself. Like he had to take parts of his brain and just turn them off. The suspicious part of him as far as like what he was being taught had to be turned off. The critical thinking part. As far as anything goes with the religion that he took on, he was able to compartmentalize, turn it off, and throw himself fully into it. And he was, for the first decade, essentially, that he was a black Muslim, the best thing that ever happened to the nation of Islam by far. --- ### [He Built Nation Of Islam Into A Mass Movement](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e4b3704d-6632-4825-a68b-76a78257beb4) 🎧 26:12 - 28:25 (02:12) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e6d75792-f3d6-49f2-98a9-bb690a1fddf7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm X became the growth engine and public face of the Nation of Islam almost immediately after prison. - Membership rose from about 400 to 75,000 by the early 1960s, helped by his recruiting and Mike Wallace's 1959 documentary. #### 💬 Quote > A lot of that is really due to him being the face [...] of the Nation of Islam. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's organizational impact #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** So Malcolm X is granted parole in 1952. He gets out of prison, a completely different person than who entered prison almost seven years earlier. And he was on a mission to recruit and get as many people as he could to join the Nation of Islam and had a direct sort of go-get tiger from Elijah Muhammad. And so as soon as he was paroled, he joined Temple No. 1 in Detroit. He traveled to Chicago to meet Elijah Muhammad in person. And he said, like I said, he said, you know, go out there and do your thing. Like he knew he had sort of a shining star because he was, again, he was tall, he was handsome, he was charismatic, he was super smart. And within a year, there were only about 400 members of the Nation of Islam at the time. Within a year, he brought that to about 1,000. But that would grow to 6,000 by 1955. And then in the early 1960s, about 75,000, up from 400 when Malcolm X came on the scene. So a lot of that, not all of it, obviously, but a lot of that is really due to him being the face, you know, I guess sort of the second face and then ultimately the face of the Nation of Islam. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, for sure. His rhetoric, the things he was saying, and like you said, the charisma and just how well-spoken he was. And the points he makes, it's like, you can be white and he's talking about you being a white devil. Sorry, you, all white people are white devils. He uncompromising in that, right? It wasn't like, yeah, I mean, some of them are okay. No white people were okay in this philosophy. And he, in addition to that rhetoric, he also just knew how to work the media and what, you know, levers to pull. And he pushed Elijah Muhammad way out of his comfort zone to allow him to do new stuff with the Nation of Islam that helped bring in tons and tons of people. One of the first big ones was a documentary from Mike Wallace, of all people, back in 1959 called The Hate That Hate Produced. And it just basically said, look at these guys, but at the same time, listen to what these guys have to say. --- ### [Malcolm Reoriented The Nation Toward Activism](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e0031b6-aa39-400e-b8a6-1d644d11a3e3) 🎧 29:34 - 32:22 (02:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e610e3ab-86e3-452a-ae8c-b1e3eca70615" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm pushed the Nation of Islam from inward separatism toward disciplined activism and media-facing politics. - He imposed weight rules, launched new initiatives, and gradually bent the group away from Elijah Muhammad's isolationist instincts. #### 💬 Quote > The philosophy and the viewpoint of that group started to shift [...] to this much more radical, much more politically active version. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark on Malcolm X reshaping the Nation of Islam #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** So, yeah, you said that he wasn't really trying to make friends and he didn't care whether he ticked people off. So the old guard, the existing guard of the Nation of Islam, who had been around long before Malcolm X came along, they were not happy with this. They did not like to be told that they were doughy and had to diet or else they'd be suspended. But he was attracting people who were very much in line with himself. So very quickly, as he started to build up the roles of the of Nation of Islam, the philosophy and the viewpoint of that group started to shift away from the establishment that had been there up to that point to this much more radical, much more politically active version of the Nation of Islam. That was the Malcolm X brand of Nation of Islam. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah. I mean, Elijah Muhammad told him to stay out of politics because he was a complete separatist. He didn't want to be involved in anything that the white America was doing. But, you know, Malcolm X basically started doing his own thing. One of the big sort of early things he did that ended up being a huge deal was he founded their newspaper. It was called Mohammed Speaks. And it became a really, it had a pretty wide distribution. And, you know, I remember even growing up seeing on the streets of Atlanta, members of the Nation of Islam, I feel like they were giving him away. I don't think they were selling him. But he had pretty firm quotas established for members to give these things out and had a pretty wide circulation. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. He also would do things like debate white people. He did at Oxford. He did at Harvard on like race relations. He would take questions from white reporters. All of this stuff was not what Elijah Muhammad was jibing with. But Malcolm X was getting such results that Elijah Muhammad would just kind of be like, I don't want you doing that. But then when Malcolm went ahead and did it, there wouldn't be any real consequences for it, right? So as he's doing this, he's becoming more and more emboldened. And one of the things he sets his sights on, Chuck, is the American, essentially the racial struggle in the United States that was really beginning to become part of the American preoccupation at the same time. In the 50s, it was really civil rights movement was really starting to take shape. And this, again, this was totally opposite from what you were saying Elijah Muhammad wanted, which was isolation, separatism, not just from white America, from non-black Muslim black America too. Like he had no inclination to join the civil rights, Elijah Muhammad to join the civil rights fight because they weren't black Muslims. --- ### [Why Malcolm And King Functioned As A Pair](https://share.snipd.com/snip/53d1e5a7-f07c-4346-863b-879e59e9d77d) 🎧 33:24 - 36:07 (02:43) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/12937b49-61fa-4887-9354-7f9cafb54630" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The media exaggerated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. as opposites, but that contrast also pressured white America toward King's path. - Chuck says Malcolm's menace to white audiences made King's integrationist program look safer and more acceptable. #### 💬 Quote > They were both aware that it was helping the cause ultimately. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on the public contrast between Malcolm X and MLK #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** But the media was loving this. The media loves to pit people against one another. So they had two really clear, like I think you described in the spoils, early on in Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, because it couldn't be any more different, not only in kind of the way they looked and how they talked and the things they were saying, but their ultimate goals. So, you know, they painted Dr. King as a saint. They painted Malcolm X as a pariah. And the, I don't know if it's irony, but something you can't forget is that, you know, Malcolm X was making some waves, but his reach was nothing compared to what Dr. King was doing. Dr. King was much more of a threat, if you, you know, is how they would have called it back then, to white America and integration than Malcolm X was because he was a fringe revolutionary at the time. So he was, you know, he was kind of fortunate to be in the newspapers at all, even though, you know, the media was painting them as enemies. And they kind of, you know, enemies is a weird word. They didn't hang out. Dr. King didn't return calls. He was offered like debates for Malcolm X and stuff like that. And he kind of just didn't want anything to do with that brand because he had such a sort of a good thing going. He had some momentum. Yeah. **Josh Clark:** And he was worried also that, you know, it would it would scare the white coalition that he'd helped build to support the civil rights movement away from the civil rights movement. All of a sudden he's like, oh, yeah, and also this guy's philosophy, too. We're going to incorporate the race war. Yeah, he had every reason to stay away from Malcolm X and frankly kind of wisely did. But like you said, this was the media saying, like, you got Malcolm X, you got MLK. And that was like both of them kind of foster that idea because if you had Malcolm X and, you know, you didn't listen to MLK, then we were going to go the Malcolm X way as far as America, um, was concerned in the near future. So we should probably go the way that Martin Luther King is suggesting. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah. You know, reading this stuff, I always was hoping that I would find out that they were secretly in cahoots with one another. Yeah. Doing sort of a good cop, bad cop thing, because they were both well aware of that. And I think they, judging from some of the quotes I've seen, they were both aware that it was helping the cause ultimately. And even Malcolm X, even though that's not what he was after, he knew that there were gains coming on that side because he was so scary to white America. --- ### [His Real Threat Was Organizational Power](https://share.snipd.com/snip/09f54994-0ec8-4e09-8c3b-6bdd1031396c) 🎧 38:02 - 40:50 (02:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/c89b1c43-617d-4c21-b5d3-03bdb31f058e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Law enforcement feared Malcolm X's influence even more than his rhetoric because he could command disciplined public action. - After he silently dispersed an angry Harlem crowd with one gesture, police and federal surveillance intensified around him. #### 💬 Quote > That's too much power for any one man to have. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark on police reaction to Malcolm X calming a crowd #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** This started in 1950 when Malcolm X was still in prison. He wrote a letter to Harry Truman, who was president, and said, I'm a communist. I'm opposed to the Korean War. And President Truman said, maybe we should get a file going on this guy with the FBI. And they did that a couple of years later. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. He had also captured the attention of the NYPD around that time where there was a protest because the Harlem police had brutalized a member of the Nation of Islam. And there was like just a bunch of people came out on the street and were shouting about it because the guy had been beaten so badly, a skull bin cracked open. And they wouldn't disperse. So Malcolm X was inside essentially negotiating that the guy should get care and take into the hospital with the police officials and managed to get them to agree to that. But the crowd was still angry, wouldn't disperse. And the cops were trying. It wasn't very effective. So Malcolm X went outside and apparently didn't say a word, just waved his hand. And the crowd stopped yelling and just dispersed. And apparently, I think the police commissioner witnessed this and was like, that's too much power for any one man to have, especially somebody who believes that the black race is going to take over from the white race and that the white race is all devils. Like that, that scared them tremendously. And it also really caught their attention. It put him on their radar essentially forever. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. And as far as the FBI goes, he, you know, like I said, they started a file on him, which they also had on Martin Luther King and, you know, John Lennon and everybody else. We've talked about all this stuff. But there was something they found out later from the files was at one point, J. Edgar Hoover told the New York agency office they needed to do something about Malcolm X. But like you said early on, they had a hard time doing anything, because in 1958, an informant said that Malcolm X was of high moral character. He doesn't smoke. He doesn't drink. He's always on time for appointments. He's kind of a stand-up guy, if you're not listening to what he's saying, white America. Of course, that didn't matter, but they couldn't pin anything on him, essentially. And they even think, and I don't think it's a spoiler to say that he was assassinated, but I feel like everyone knows that. But they even think that the FBI, because they had so many informants inside the Nation of Islam, that they knew about the plot to assassinate him and just let it happen. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, I saw that, too. And not just the FBI, but also the NYPD. Just let it happen. So just real quick, Chuck, I say we take a break in a second and talk about his break with the Nation of Islam. --- ### [The Core Of His Message Was Self Reliance](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b6a3d033-f5e3-4537-92d0-f363694c898f) 🎧 40:50 - 41:45 (00:54) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ba88c5fc-2061-439a-92bc-232c77859936" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm's core message was black self-reliance, not random militancy. - Josh Clark says he wanted people morally rebuilt through the Nation of Islam, then taught black nationalism to create dignity, motivation, and independent community power. #### 💬 Quote > Black people have to learn to do for themselves. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark summarizing Malcolm X's program #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** But I just wanted to kind of give a thumbnail sketch of what he was saying. You can go listen. You should start with maybe the ballot or the bullet. It was a great speech that gets his point across from this era. But essentially what he was saying is black people have to learn to do for themselves. Integrating and then saying like, you know, hey, let's all just share from the same pot with white people isn't going to work because white people will always hang it over you. So we have to figure out how to do it ourselves. Using the nation of Islam, that's how you prop somebody up, get them on the right path, put them on the moral path and away from temptation. And then after that, you teach them black nationalism. So now they feel good about being a black person. And then from that point on, they have the dignity and the motivation to make something for themselves as a community. That was his goal. That's ultimately what he was preaching. That was the kernel of the whole thing. That's --- ### [Elijah Muhammad's Scandal Broke Malcolm's Loyalty](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0a1cd81e-b063-4a00-81ba-a1c3a0407382) 🎧 44:46 - 47:38 (02:52) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/52048138-1de6-449b-b3e4-64f7e4443808" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm's break with Elijah Muhammad came when personal betrayal shattered the religious authority he had submitted to for years. - Learning Elijah fathered children with young secretaries made him see a false prophet and finally outgrow the movement's constraints. #### 💬 Quote > He looked upon him as a false prophet. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's split from Elijah Muhammad #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** So, Chuck, Malcolm X is the face of the Nation of Islam to the press, to the public. People, like, they know the name Elijah Muhammad. You might even have seen him speak. But it's way likelier that you've seen Malcolm X speak. And that's who you associate as the head. So if you're the protege and you become that the power kind of shifts like that, the mentor doesn't usually like that kind of thing. Then on top of it, the mentor, Elijah Muhammad, was starting to get on in age. And so the people around Elijah Muhammad, including his blood family, were worried that Malcolm X would actually take over. So there was a lot of reason for there to be jealousy, backbiting, court intrigue, and get rid of Malcolm X one way or another. And that's essentially what happened. Yeah. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** I mean, his kids thought that they were going to be next in line, basically. And, you know, I mentioned the FBI had lots of people on the inside of the Nation of Islam. They used those people to kind of stoke that strife internally and, you know, try and disrupt it from within. And we're fairly successful at that because it was not smooth sailing at this point. So, you know, the real fracture comes, you know, all this is sort of leading up to what I think was the real fracture was when Malcolm X finds out about Elijah Muhammad having three children out of wedlock with three very young members of the Nation of Islam and essentially started looking upon him as a false prophet that was just sort of a guy in power that was using that power to philander. And he was like, I don't think he's fit to lead the Nation of Islam anymore. And in 1963 of April of that year, he confronted Elijah Muhammad about this. And that was not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted to hear. **Josh Clark:** No, for sure. And now, like now Malcolm X was a big problem because this is not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted out to the public. It would immediately discredit him. And so do you remember kind of at the beginning, I was saying how Malcolm X had to kind of compartmentalize and turn off critical thinking and stuff like that to allow himself to submit to Elijah Muhammad? After this, after he realized that this guy is actually not the real deal, he was able to kind of grow and spread like one of those sponge dinosaurs that you put water on and they grow. Or a different analogy would be like Apache Chief in the Justice League when he grows like really, really big. Essentially, that happened the moment he realized that Elijah Muhammad was a false prophet and he was able to finally grow and become the Malcolm X that he always had the potential to be. He had thrown off the shackles, placed on him. He'd gotten out from under the thumb of the leader of the Nation of Islam. But that also unfortunately meant he had no place in the Nation of Islam any longer. --- ### [Mecca Changed His View Of Race And Power](https://share.snipd.com/snip/13c5fc03-7ef1-472d-974d-ea91ad894989) 🎧 50:30 - 52:19 (01:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8a258147-b721-4e56-afec-3d21eb02a756" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm's pilgrimage to Mecca radically expanded his worldview and moved him beyond blanket anti-white separatism. - Seeing Muslims of many races worship together led him into Sunni Islam and toward internationalizing the Black freedom struggle. #### 💬 Quote > [He] encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of this earth, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like I've never seen before. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant quoting Malcolm X on his pilgrimage to Mecca #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, so that's all basically sort of early through spring 1964. Later in 1964, a very important trip happened when he made the Hajj to Mecca. And this was, you know, kind of the final big life-changing moment for him. He came back a Sunni Islam member, and he had changed his name from Malcolm X to El-Haj Malik El-Shabazz. And I believe even his wife and daughters took the name Shabazz, like, you know, throughout the rest of their lives as well. And while he was there, he had a transformation, another transformation, kind of like he did in prison. But the other way, he came full circle and said, quote, he had encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of this earth, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like I've never seen before. And he essentially flipped and said, you know what? There are good white people and we can and should work together. And he came back and started to do that work and really poured himself for the first time into the legit official civil rights movement. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. He told Martin Luther King, like, I'm all in. He founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was trying to essentially teach black Americans about their African heritage. But then at the same time, he had also zoomed in on this idea that he needed to take struggle for American civil rights to the world, like the UN or the African Congress, and basically say, hey, this is the same thing. This is part of the black struggle worldwide. Like this is part of this global problem. It's not separate. It's not its own thing. So we need figure like all these other countries need to get involved, too, and start pressuring the U.S. to do something about it, which is a pretty clever idea, actually. --- ### [The Only Malcolm X And MLK Meeting](https://share.snipd.com/snip/83ed3aa1-a55e-4338-a531-15b6608b9bf4) 🎧 52:24 - 53:23 (00:59) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fd6d72a8-e428-47fc-b3b6-d5218c762adb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. met only once, unexpectedly, in a Capitol hallway during the Civil Rights Act debate. - They shook hands, a photographer caught the moment, and Malcolm told King he was entering the civil-rights struggle directly. #### 💬 Quote > They literally bumped into each other in the hallway. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on the Malcolm X and MLK meeting #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. They would eventually meet. There was a very famous single meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. It was not something they planned because it's not like Martin Luther King Jr. got on board immediately and was like, oh, great, you're joining the movement. Like, I don't think they still he still really liked him that much. But they literally bumped into each other in the hallway when they were at the Senate, when the civil rights bill was being debated there at the Capitol building, and it was like, oh, it's you. And they shook hands. I think he told them in person, I'm throwing myself into the heart of the civil rights struggle face to face. There was a photographer there. So there's a very famous picture of them together. And then later that year in July 64, that's when Congress passed the Rights Act and it was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. And that was not the end for Malcolm X, though. He thought he was just getting started very sadly. --- ### [He Was Assassinated As He Entered A New Phase](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a7f90c83-e3ad-4ae7-97c8-594d4f877bea) 🎧 53:23 - 56:46 (03:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a0908c06-fbbc-482e-8563-a000cb764f48" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm X was killed just as his politics were widening and his influence seemed ready to enter a new phase. - His home was firebombed a week earlier, bodyguards were missing when he was shot, and Betty was pregnant with twins. #### 💬 Quote > He thought he was just getting started very sadly. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's assassination #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** Yeah. So this was you said that was May of 1964. Within just a few months, he would be dead. And it's just so sad that he underwent that And all of a sudden, his potential is really starting to blossom. He into like a full butterfly for the first time. And he's struck down. The first thing that happened that kind of just foreshadowed his death was his house was firebombed by, he was quite sure, members of the Nation of Islam. Apparently, one of the bombs was thrown through a window that would have landed in and on the three of his little girls in their room. But luckily, it shattered on the outside of the window and didn't make it through. But it burned his house essentially down. And this was a house that was owned by the Nation of Islam. So they went as far as to accuse him of burning it down because they had evicted him from the house. And so out of spite, he burned it down, which was obviously not true. Yeah, **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** which is full circle, because I don't think we mentioned that when their house was burned down when he was a little kid, they actually accused his dad Earl of burning his own house down. So the same thing happened all those years later. That was on February 14th, 1965. On February 18th, they formally evicted him. And then on February 21st, he was murdered. He was shot and killed in front of his, in front of Betty, in front of the girls. I think there were four girls at the time because Betty was pregnant with the twins that would be born after his death. And this was in Harlem at an organization of Afro-American unity meeting. And they arrested three members of the Nation of Islam. One confessed and said the other two weren't involved, but all three were convicted, even though later on, I think in 2021, the other two were exonerated after the Attorney General of New York saw that they had buried some exculpatory evidence back when it happened. **Josh Clark:** Right. So you were talking about how the FBI let it happen. The NYPD apparently helped pave the way by arresting a couple of his body guards on BS charges. So he was short security on that day. And at his funeral, like he had made quite a name for himself. I think 1,500 people showed up, which is a pretty good turnout for your funeral. And Ossie Davis, who was very much in with the Martin Luther King version of the civil rights movement, he led Malcolm X's funeral because he was just that moved by him, even though he didn't see eye to eye on a bunch of stuff. Like he realized what a loss this was for the black community and the world. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. You know, I mentioned that the twins that were born after he died. They, you know, obviously grew up without their dad and the other girls weren't that much older and they always just knew him as dad. He, you know, I think the ones that kind of didn't even know him at all. They weren't raised by Betty as like, hey, your dad was a revolutionary. He was this or that. they learned about him mainly in school because Betty always wanted him just to be a dad and my husband. And so they were, you know, they went on to do a lot of great things as well. We should probably do one on Betty Shabazz at some point. --- ### [His Lasting Power Came From Public Transformation](https://share.snipd.com/snip/222393e1-b9d9-4f5b-b291-5ae15c79424f) 🎧 56:53 - 58:41 (01:47) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/074b6ab5-4800-487d-bcdc-53a7c678c801" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Josh Clark argues Malcolm X's decade-long public life was astonishingly influential, especially because he openly revised his beliefs. - Julia's takeaway was that it took unusual courage to publicly say, after years of militancy, that he had been wrong. #### 💬 Quote > It takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say, everybody, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, I found out that's wrong. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant quoting Julia's reflection on Malcolm X #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** So, yeah, I kind of mentioned like how just sad this is that he was struck down, especially at the time he was struck down. But if you look back at like the timeframe of all this stuff, this guy changed the world or left such an indelible mark that people are still learning from him these years later, over essentially the course of 10 years. That was about the timeline that we're talking about, from when he took up the Nation of Islam's teachings to when he was assassinated by the Nation of Islam. It was just about a decade, and that's how much of an impact that he made over just that time. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, there was a pretty great quote that, who is this? Was this Julia that helped us with **Josh Clark:** this? Yeah, Julia helped us big time. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** and basically kind of summarizing what guts it took to make that transformation in full public view after being so public and militant. She said that it takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say, say, everybody, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, I found out that's wrong. And she just thought that was an amazing thing to be able to do. And it really was. You know, not a lot of people can own up to kind of being on what they thought later was the wrong path, you know? **Josh Clark:** Yeah, it is remarkable. So you can go read the autobiography of Malcolm X. Also, I've seen that Malcolm X Speaks is a really great book. I think it's his collected speeches. There's the Spike Lee movie. There's Make It Plain, the PBS documentary. And then there's just tons of, like, his speeches are just all over YouTube. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts # Snips updated after 2026-04-05T10:16:17 ### [How Malcolm X Got Reduced To A Foil](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8e93d553-1ed0-4fd6-b306-17b69a0941bf) 🎧 03:12 - 06:35 (03:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/cd2ea20a-d685-4f20-b85a-d0a0bdd8b1d0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Josh Clark says Malcolm X gets flattened into a false choice against Martin Luther King Jr. instead of understood as a far more complex figure. - White America cast him as the face of race war, while schools largely erased him from the civil-rights story. #### 💬 Quote > Malcolm X represented to white America [...] race war. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark on Malcolm X's public image #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** Well, I have just entered my Malcolm X phase. Awesome. I just researching him. I accidentally got radicalized and I've got his autobiography on the way. It should get here today. Oh, great. But it's it's crazy, Chuck, because like especially as just white people of our generation. If you hadn't already gotten into him and like seen the Spike Lee movie and read his autobiography and just started to read his speeches and stuff, if you just kind of knew him like I had up to this point, like you knew him as the guy who said, like, by any means necessary, that he was militant, that he was essentially great. the foil to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Um, and that he and King kind of represented these two, this fork in the road that America had to kind of choose between because there was at this point in like the 50s, starting in the 50s, there was no way for America to just stand there at the crossroads any longer. Like America as a whole had to make a choice. Which way are going to go? Race war or integration? Right. Peaceful integration. And that's what Malcolm X represented to white America. Race war. like black militants taking over, killing white people mercilessly, ruthlessly because white people had it coming. Or, you know, everybody's much more familiar with the Martin Luther King Jr. way. But there's so much more to it than that. And researching this guy, I don't even want to say a fan because I think that kind of undermines the respect I have for him now. He's an amazing figure, it turns out. Yeah, **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** for sure. And when I was in high school, there was a big, this is, I graduated in 89, the movie was 92. So this was leading up to the film, which obviously put things on a much bigger sort of a platform. But it was a big deal in the 80s. Like there was a big sort of, at least in the South, I don't know how it was everywhere else, but there was a big movement among, you know, the black students at my school to get in touch with their African heritage. Malcolm X hats were all over the place in my school. And he was just sort of in the forefront, I guess, kind of like my junior and senior year. So it was striking to me that we didn't learn about him in high school. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. But if you step back and really think about it, it's not very surprising, you know? Well, **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** I mean, looking back at the substandard public school education I got, correct. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. But also the whitewashed and sanitized version where it's like, OK, we'll tell you about Martin Luther King Jr., but don't ask about Malcolm X. You don't want to know about him. He a he was a rough dude. But yeah, or anyone **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** else. It was just Martin Luther King. **Josh Clark:** Exactly. Yeah. He did the whole thing by himself, it turns out. Yeah. So, yeah, I remember that same era as well. Okay. So I say we get into this because we could probably sit here and do an intro and it would end up being the entire thing. Right. Well, let's jump in and everybody else can kind of make up their own minds about how you feel about Malcolm X. And just kind of as an aside to start, I would definitely recommend going and watching the documentary on him that American Experience did, I think, in the 90s called Make It Plain. --- ### [Racist Violence Destroyed His Early Home Life](https://share.snipd.com/snip/746a6c60-aa5d-42d8-a0cf-2bd891f54a84) 🎧 07:05 - 11:00 (03:54) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ea36d4fa-23f4-4155-a523-4f790b2f2cf7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm Little's childhood was shattered by racist terror, his father's death, and his mother's long institutionalization. - White men burned the family home, Earl Little's death was ruled suicide despite evidence, and the siblings were split through foster care. #### 💬 Quote > A group of white men burned their house to the ground without any firefighters even showing up. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's childhood #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** He was born back in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. And from the outset, he was essentially raised in a very Black conscious family. So he was aware of the state of racial affairs in the United States as a very young person and the oppression that Black people lived under at the time and still do in many ways. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. His dad, Earl, was a Baptist lay speaker. His mother, Louise Little, they were both members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was a Marcus Garvey joint, someone else we never learned about in high school. And they moved to Milwaukee for a little while. Then eventually in 1928, when little Malcolm was three, landed in Michigan. And they landed in a white neighborhood. And that was a big problem because they were not wanted there. And Earl Little was not the kind of guy to just pack up and leave because his neighbors didn't want him there. So he stayed. And the community had a clause in their HOA covenant that said that basically no one was allowed to sell a house to non-white people. And so they sued to evict them. while that was kind of going through, even before the eviction was finalized, a group of white men burned their house to the ground without any firefighters even showing up. **Josh Clark:** Right. So whether they wanted to move or not, they had to now. And they moved a little further out of where they lived, still in the Lansing area. And I don't know when the house burned, but just within a year or two, maybe less, Malcolm was six years old and his father died. He died in a mysterious, bizarre streetcar accident where he was run over by a streetcar. And that's just the official line on the whole thing. In fact, I think it was, it ended up being ruled a suicide. But according to Malcolm, his family, his mother, like his father was murdered probably by a Klan affiliated group called the Black Legion who operated in Michigan back then. And that was pretty much what the family was convinced of, that his father had been murdered. Then on top of that, no one would admit that his father was murdered, which I'm sure makes that kind of experience that much harder. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, I mean, there was actual evidence that was ignored. He had clearly been beaten and placed on the tracks. So it was kind of just brushed under the table. Uh, it was very upsetting for a young Malcolm cause that was like the rumor. It was all around the school and everything. So he was hearing all these stories. Uh, and it was, you know, definitely a big early sort of, um, kind of fork in the road for him, uh, and that his family was left without their dad. They, like you said, ruled it a suicide. But I think she got like a thousand dollars in one life insurance payment. Louise did, which would be about twenty five grand a day, but was denied because of the suicide claim, a much larger insurance claim. So she didn't have a lot of a lot of dough to feed, you know, what was eight kids. **Josh Clark:** Eight kids, man. now she's suddenly on her own. And she had a nervous breakdown is what you would call it. I think that she was diagnosed as paranoid and was transferred to the state hospital in Kalamazoo, where she stayed. This is in the mid 30s. She stayed there until 1964. I think like 26 years or something like that. And all of a sudden, Malcolm and his seven siblings are without parents. They're orphans, essentially. And they become wards of the state and they're broken up. So just in a very short time, a couple of years, Malcolm goes from having a stable home life to his father being murdered, his mother having a nervous breakdown and being institutionalized, and his siblings being spread out throughout the foster system around Lansing. --- ### [A Teacher Crushed His Dream Of Law School](https://share.snipd.com/snip/179f57e3-5569-4aa6-a2ab-8ef2972c4eb6) 🎧 11:29 - 12:45 (01:15) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/2b36c5ed-6f05-411f-8298-b48fb3d0e173" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm excelled in school and wanted to become a lawyer until a white teacher told him to be realistic and become a carpenter. - Josh Clark calls it a pivotal punch that drained his enthusiasm for education and preceded his permanent exit from school. #### 💬 Quote > I think America would accept you more as a carpenter. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark recounting what Malcolm X's teacher told him #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** he was sent to a juvenile detention center in Mason, Michigan. It was about 10 miles south of Lansing. And he went to a white school and he did a great job. He was he's a really, you know, was a really smart guy, a really smart kid and made really good grades. He was very charismatic from the beginning. He was elected class president and had dreams of going to law school before his white teacher said a pretty terrible thing to him. Yeah, **Josh Clark:** it was an English teacher. And is a one of the one of the this is the second pivotal moment in his life where he had the rug pulled out from under him. He had the wind taken out of his sails. He got punched in the breadbasket, however you want to put it. Because the English teacher, he told the English teacher that he was dreaming of becoming a lawyer. And the English teacher is like, I think America would accept you more as a carpenter. Like that's the kind of profession you need to go in. You need to be realistic about. And then essentially being a black person in America. It's not what the teacher said, but the point was the same. And it just completely sucked the life and enthusiasm for learning that he had up to that point right out of him. --- ### [Prison Turned Malcolm Into A Disciplined Thinker](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6a6d1ef3-9267-4739-90bb-6535efbfbbc3) 🎧 16:10 - 22:56 (06:45) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d6e47ee4-8b4c-4e8f-aaa1-50b8f505ac0d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Prison transformed Malcolm from a hustler into a self-educated, disciplined convert whose intellect supercharged the Nation of Islam. - At MCI Norfolk he read voraciously, corresponded with Elijah Muhammad, dropped "Little" as a slave name, and embraced strict ascetic rules. #### 💬 Quote > He became a voracious reader again in prison. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's prison transformation #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. So prison is where a lot happened to him in prison, sort of one of his first big transformations. He spent about almost seven years there for that burglary. And he was about 20 years old at the time. And it was in prison where he really kind of found himself for the, I guess, for the first time as an adult. And that he remembered like, hey, I'm a smart guy and I used to love academia and learning. So he started, he became a voracious reader again in prison. He apparently tried to memorize the dictionary in prison and was reading anything he could get his hands on, including eventually, which would really transform his life, the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, who was the leader of the Nation of Islam at the time. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. And before he kind of came on to those teachings from his siblings, I think, who encouraged him to start looking into that. And he had a real aversion to any kind of religion. He was actually known as Satan by the other prisoners in the correctional facility he was in. But the reason he was able to read so much, Chuck, is because he happened to be in MCI Norfolk in Massachusetts. And it's well known to have a lot, like a huge library, connections with like MIT and Harvard and all that stuff. So it was actually the perfect prison for him to land in. So he was able to kind of educate himself from that point on. And then when he finally did start taking up the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, it just clicked. And it was even further, I guess, reinforced when he started writing letters to Elijah Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad started writing back to him. That really encouraged him big time. Yeah. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** You know why? Because you didn't have to write letters to get those books like Andy Dufresne. Yeah. In the Shawshank Redemption. No, they just threw them at you. Yeah, he was, of course, because it was Massachusetts. So, yeah, He started, you know, basically became a pen pal with Elijah Muhammad and really became a hardcore Muslim pretty quickly after reading, you know, his works and became an ascetic. So that means no drugs, no booze, no pork, no movies or music, no gambling, no dancing, like the real straight and narrow and, you know, will lay threw find out that that became a bit of a riff later on because he didn't think Elijah Muhammad at one point was sort of walking the walk, whereas he really was from the beginning. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, for sure. Like and he did throughout to like the FBI tried and tried and tried to get something on him and they couldn't get anything. Like he's just that upstanding immoral from that point on. I also I had never even thought to wonder, but I had no idea why his last name was X. I was pretty surprised to learn this, but it makes a lot of sense. You **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** didn't know that? No. OK, I thought that would have been sort of just the basic common knowledge. No. But maybe not. **Josh Clark:** I mean, maybe it is, but I'm pretty uncommon, Chuck. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** You're an uncommon podcaster. So, yeah, he dropped the name Little because, and a lot of people in the Nation of Islam did and do this because he thought that was his slave name. So he rid himself of that name and replaced it with an X. Yeah. **Josh Clark:** He also, one of the reasons he despised religion, he despised Christianity in general because he considered that the slave religion that was given to the African slaves to essentially keep them in line. And so it was actually, it was a big deal that he became this devotee of this religion. And this particular religion, just really quick, if you're not familiar with the Nation of Islam, it is not the same thing as Islam that emerged out of the Middle East several hundred years ago. It bears like a slight resemblance to it, but it is essentially a completely altered version that has a lot of theology that seems very odd to outsiders. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah. I mean, they were Muslim, but, you know, I know you've, and this is stuff I didn't know, that you found some stuff about Elijah Muhammad's original beliefs that I was sort of shocked by. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. So you've heard white devils before. I mean, all you have to do is listen to Ice Cube. He always talks about white devils. But that is actually a teaching from the Nation of Islam, from Elijah Muhammad. and it predates him. The nation of Islam had been around for a few decades before Elijah Muhammad was its prophet. But the reason that they call white people white devils is because according to black Muslim theology, there was a genius named Yaqab, black genius, created white people by bleaching black people. And he mutated them into white, blue-eyed devils. And the reason why is he wanted to basically put the black race to the test. So he put them in a subjugated position because he allowed these white people to be devils, to basically act like white people have treated black people since time immemorial, and that this reign would last about six millennia, and that the six millennia were almost up, and that this was the time when the black race would rise and take over from the white devils who would really regret the stuff that they had up to that point after **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** that. Yeah, which would have placed it about 1970. And so white Americans hearing this at the time, they thought that's when like the race war was coming, was 1970 or thereabouts. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, and we talked about that before. And like, I never really understood it, but this is a big, big reason that that white America was like, there's going to be a race war. It's like coming. It's inevitable. That was a big part of it. So, yeah, this is and this wasn't like metaphorical. This is from what I understand. It's a it's a literal interpretation of where white people came from 6000 years ago. So this was what Malcolm X was being into. And he was a smart guy. So he had to submit himself. Like he had to take parts of his brain and just turn them off. The suspicious part of him as far as like what he was being taught had to be turned off. The critical thinking part. As far as anything goes with the religion that he took on, he was able to compartmentalize, turn it off, and throw himself fully into it. --- ### [Why White America Feared Nation Of Islam](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0917c268-2c85-415a-93b2-e5e06d29463f) 🎧 20:34 - 23:06 (02:31) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/97583bb8-1556-49c0-a5bb-4f48df684b20" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Nation of Islam theology taught that white people were literally engineered as devils, which helps explain white America's fear of Malcolm X. - Josh Clark says this belief fed real expectations of a coming race war around 1970, not a merely metaphorical conflict. #### 💬 Quote > This wasn't like metaphorical. This is [...] a literal interpretation of where white people came from. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark on Nation of Islam theology #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** Yeah. So you've heard white devils before. I mean, all you have to do is listen to Ice Cube. He always talks about white devils. But that is actually a teaching from the Nation of Islam, from Elijah Muhammad. and it predates him. The nation of Islam had been around for a few decades before Elijah Muhammad was its prophet. But the reason that they call white people white devils is because according to black Muslim theology, there was a genius named Yaqab, black genius, created white people by bleaching black people. And he mutated them into white, blue-eyed devils. And the reason why is he wanted to basically put the black race to the test. So he put them in a subjugated position because he allowed these white people to be devils, to basically act like white people have treated black people since time immemorial, and that this reign would last about six millennia, and that the six millennia were almost up, and that this was the time when the black race would rise and take over from the white devils who would really regret the stuff that they had up to that point after **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** that. Yeah, which would have placed it about 1970. And so white Americans hearing this at the time, they thought that's when like the race war was coming, was 1970 or thereabouts. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, and we talked about that before. And like, I never really understood it, but this is a big, big reason that that white America was like, there's going to be a race war. It's like coming. It's inevitable. That was a big part of it. So, yeah, this is and this wasn't like metaphorical. This is from what I understand. It's a it's a literal interpretation of where white people came from 6000 years ago. So this was what Malcolm X was indoctrinated into. And he was a smart guy. So he had to submit himself. Like he had to take parts of his brain and just turn them off. The suspicious part of him as far as like what he was being taught had to be turned off. The critical thinking part. As far as anything goes with the religion that he took on, he was able to compartmentalize, turn it off, and throw himself fully into it. And he was, for the first decade, essentially, that he was a black Muslim, the best thing that ever happened to the nation of Islam by far. --- ### [He Built Nation Of Islam Into A Mass Movement](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e4b3704d-6632-4825-a68b-76a78257beb4) 🎧 26:12 - 28:25 (02:12) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e6d75792-f3d6-49f2-98a9-bb690a1fddf7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm X became the growth engine and public face of the Nation of Islam almost immediately after prison. - Membership rose from about 400 to 75,000 by the early 1960s, helped by his recruiting and Mike Wallace's 1959 documentary. #### 💬 Quote > A lot of that is really due to him being the face [...] of the Nation of Islam. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's organizational impact #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** So Malcolm X is granted parole in 1952. He gets out of prison, a completely different person than who entered prison almost seven years earlier. And he was on a mission to recruit and get as many people as he could to join the Nation of Islam and had a direct sort of go-get tiger from Elijah Muhammad. And so as soon as he was paroled, he joined Temple No. 1 in Detroit. He traveled to Chicago to meet Elijah Muhammad in person. And he said, like I said, he said, you know, go out there and do your thing. Like he knew he had sort of a shining star because he was, again, he was tall, he was handsome, he was charismatic, he was super smart. And within a year, there were only about 400 members of the Nation of Islam at the time. Within a year, he brought that to about 1,000. But that would grow to 6,000 by 1955. And then in the early 1960s, about 75,000, up from 400 when Malcolm X came on the scene. So a lot of that, not all of it, obviously, but a lot of that is really due to him being the face, you know, I guess sort of the second face and then ultimately the face of the Nation of Islam. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, for sure. His rhetoric, the things he was saying, and like you said, the charisma and just how well-spoken he was. And the points he makes, it's like, you can be white and he's talking about you being a white devil. Sorry, you, all white people are white devils. He uncompromising in that, right? It wasn't like, yeah, I mean, some of them are okay. No white people were okay in this philosophy. And he, in addition to that rhetoric, he also just knew how to work the media and what, you know, levers to pull. And he pushed Elijah Muhammad way out of his comfort zone to allow him to do new stuff with the Nation of Islam that helped bring in tons and tons of people. One of the first big ones was a documentary from Mike Wallace, of all people, back in 1959 called The Hate That Hate Produced. And it just basically said, look at these guys, but at the same time, listen to what these guys have to say. --- ### [Malcolm Reoriented The Nation Toward Activism](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e0031b6-aa39-400e-b8a6-1d644d11a3e3) 🎧 29:34 - 32:22 (02:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e610e3ab-86e3-452a-ae8c-b1e3eca70615" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm pushed the Nation of Islam from inward separatism toward disciplined activism and media-facing politics. - He imposed weight rules, launched new initiatives, and gradually bent the group away from Elijah Muhammad's isolationist instincts. #### 💬 Quote > The philosophy and the viewpoint of that group started to shift [...] to this much more radical, much more politically active version. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark on Malcolm X reshaping the Nation of Islam #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** So, yeah, you said that he wasn't really trying to make friends and he didn't care whether he ticked people off. So the old guard, the existing guard of the Nation of Islam, who had been around long before Malcolm X came along, they were not happy with this. They did not like to be told that they were doughy and had to diet or else they'd be suspended. But he was attracting people who were very much in line with himself. So very quickly, as he started to build up the roles of the of Nation of Islam, the philosophy and the viewpoint of that group started to shift away from the establishment that had been there up to that point to this much more radical, much more politically active version of the Nation of Islam. That was the Malcolm X brand of Nation of Islam. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah. I mean, Elijah Muhammad told him to stay out of politics because he was a complete separatist. He didn't want to be involved in anything that the white America was doing. But, you know, Malcolm X basically started doing his own thing. One of the big sort of early things he did that ended up being a huge deal was he founded their newspaper. It was called Mohammed Speaks. And it became a really, it had a pretty wide distribution. And, you know, I remember even growing up seeing on the streets of Atlanta, members of the Nation of Islam, I feel like they were giving him away. I don't think they were selling him. But he had pretty firm quotas established for members to give these things out and had a pretty wide circulation. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. He also would do things like debate white people. He did at Oxford. He did at Harvard on like race relations. He would take questions from white reporters. All of this stuff was not what Elijah Muhammad was jibing with. But Malcolm X was getting such results that Elijah Muhammad would just kind of be like, I don't want you doing that. But then when Malcolm went ahead and did it, there wouldn't be any real consequences for it, right? So as he's doing this, he's becoming more and more emboldened. And one of the things he sets his sights on, Chuck, is the American, essentially the racial struggle in the United States that was really beginning to become part of the American preoccupation at the same time. In the 50s, it was really civil rights movement was really starting to take shape. And this, again, this was totally opposite from what you were saying Elijah Muhammad wanted, which was isolation, separatism, not just from white America, from non-black Muslim black America too. Like he had no inclination to join the civil rights, Elijah Muhammad to join the civil rights fight because they weren't black Muslims. --- ### [Why Malcolm And King Functioned As A Pair](https://share.snipd.com/snip/53d1e5a7-f07c-4346-863b-879e59e9d77d) 🎧 33:24 - 36:07 (02:43) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/12937b49-61fa-4887-9354-7f9cafb54630" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The media exaggerated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. as opposites, but that contrast also pressured white America toward King's path. - Chuck says Malcolm's menace to white audiences made King's integrationist program look safer and more acceptable. #### 💬 Quote > They were both aware that it was helping the cause ultimately. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on the public contrast between Malcolm X and MLK #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** But the media was loving this. The media loves to pit people against one another. So they had two really clear, like I think you described in the spoils, early on in Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, because it couldn't be any more different, not only in kind of the way they looked and how they talked and the things they were saying, but their ultimate goals. So, you know, they painted Dr. King as a saint. They painted Malcolm X as a pariah. And the, I don't know if it's irony, but something you can't forget is that, you know, Malcolm X was making some waves, but his reach was nothing compared to what Dr. King was doing. Dr. King was much more of a threat, if you, you know, is how they would have called it back then, to white America and integration than Malcolm X was because he was a fringe revolutionary at the time. So he was, you know, he was kind of fortunate to be in the newspapers at all, even though, you know, the media was painting them as enemies. And they kind of, you know, enemies is a weird word. They didn't hang out. Dr. King didn't return calls. He was offered like debates for Malcolm X and stuff like that. And he kind of just didn't want anything to do with that brand because he had such a sort of a good thing going. He had some momentum. Yeah. **Josh Clark:** And he was worried also that, you know, it would it would scare the white coalition that he'd helped build to support the civil rights movement away from the civil rights movement. All of a sudden he's like, oh, yeah, and also this guy's philosophy, too. We're going to incorporate the race war. Yeah, he had every reason to stay away from Malcolm X and frankly kind of wisely did. But like you said, this was the media saying, like, you got Malcolm X, you got MLK. And that was like both of them kind of foster that idea because if you had Malcolm X and, you know, you didn't listen to MLK, then we were going to go the Malcolm X way as far as America, um, was concerned in the near future. So we should probably go the way that Martin Luther King is suggesting. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah. You know, reading this stuff, I always was hoping that I would find out that they were secretly in cahoots with one another. Yeah. Doing sort of a good cop, bad cop thing, because they were both well aware of that. And I think they, judging from some of the quotes I've seen, they were both aware that it was helping the cause ultimately. And even Malcolm X, even though that's not what he was after, he knew that there were gains coming on that side because he was so scary to white America. --- ### [His Real Threat Was Organizational Power](https://share.snipd.com/snip/09f54994-0ec8-4e09-8c3b-6bdd1031396c) 🎧 38:02 - 40:50 (02:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/c89b1c43-617d-4c21-b5d3-03bdb31f058e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Law enforcement feared Malcolm X's influence even more than his rhetoric because he could command disciplined public action. - After he silently dispersed an angry Harlem crowd with one gesture, police and federal surveillance intensified around him. #### 💬 Quote > That's too much power for any one man to have. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark on police reaction to Malcolm X calming a crowd #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** This started in 1950 when Malcolm X was still in prison. He wrote a letter to Harry Truman, who was president, and said, I'm a communist. I'm opposed to the Korean War. And President Truman said, maybe we should get a file going on this guy with the FBI. And they did that a couple of years later. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. He had also captured the attention of the NYPD around that time where there was a protest because the Harlem police had brutalized a member of the Nation of Islam. And there was like just a bunch of people came out on the street and were shouting about it because the guy had been beaten so badly, a skull bin cracked open. And they wouldn't disperse. So Malcolm X was inside essentially negotiating that the guy should get care and take into the hospital with the police officials and managed to get them to agree to that. But the crowd was still angry, wouldn't disperse. And the cops were trying. It wasn't very effective. So Malcolm X went outside and apparently didn't say a word, just waved his hand. And the crowd stopped yelling and just dispersed. And apparently, I think the police commissioner witnessed this and was like, that's too much power for any one man to have, especially somebody who believes that the black race is going to take over from the white race and that the white race is all devils. Like that, that scared them tremendously. And it also really caught their attention. It put him on their radar essentially forever. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. And as far as the FBI goes, he, you know, like I said, they started a file on him, which they also had on Martin Luther King and, you know, John Lennon and everybody else. We've talked about all this stuff. But there was something they found out later from the files was at one point, J. Edgar Hoover told the New York agency office they needed to do something about Malcolm X. But like you said early on, they had a hard time doing anything, because in 1958, an informant said that Malcolm X was of high moral character. He doesn't smoke. He doesn't drink. He's always on time for appointments. He's kind of a stand-up guy, if you're not listening to what he's saying, white America. Of course, that didn't matter, but they couldn't pin anything on him, essentially. And they even think, and I don't think it's a spoiler to say that he was assassinated, but I feel like everyone knows that. But they even think that the FBI, because they had so many informants inside the Nation of Islam, that they knew about the plot to assassinate him and just let it happen. **Josh Clark:** Yeah, I saw that, too. And not just the FBI, but also the NYPD. Just let it happen. So just real quick, Chuck, I say we take a break in a second and talk about his break with the Nation of Islam. --- ### [The Core Of His Message Was Self Reliance](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b6a3d033-f5e3-4537-92d0-f363694c898f) 🎧 40:50 - 41:45 (00:54) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ba88c5fc-2061-439a-92bc-232c77859936" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm's core message was black self-reliance, not random militancy. - Josh Clark says he wanted people morally rebuilt through the Nation of Islam, then taught black nationalism to create dignity, motivation, and independent community power. #### 💬 Quote > Black people have to learn to do for themselves. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark summarizing Malcolm X's program #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** But I just wanted to kind of give a thumbnail sketch of what he was saying. You can go listen. You should start with maybe the ballot or the bullet. It was a great speech that gets his point across from this era. But essentially what he was saying is black people have to learn to do for themselves. Integrating and then saying like, you know, hey, let's all just share from the same pot with white people isn't going to work because white people will always hang it over you. So we have to figure out how to do it ourselves. Using the nation of Islam, that's how you prop somebody up, get them on the right path, put them on the moral path and away from temptation. And then after that, you teach them black nationalism. So now they feel good about being a black person. And then from that point on, they have the dignity and the motivation to make something for themselves as a community. That was his goal. That's ultimately what he was preaching. That was the kernel of the whole thing. That's --- ### [Elijah Muhammad's Scandal Broke Malcolm's Loyalty](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0a1cd81e-b063-4a00-81ba-a1c3a0407382) 🎧 44:46 - 47:38 (02:52) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/52048138-1de6-449b-b3e4-64f7e4443808" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm's break with Elijah Muhammad came when personal betrayal shattered the religious authority he had submitted to for years. - Learning Elijah fathered children with young secretaries made him see a false prophet and finally outgrow the movement's constraints. #### 💬 Quote > He looked upon him as a false prophet. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's split from Elijah Muhammad #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** So, Chuck, Malcolm X is the face of the Nation of Islam to the press, to the public. People, like, they know the name Elijah Muhammad. You might even have seen him speak. But it's way likelier that you've seen Malcolm X speak. And that's who you associate as the head. So if you're the protege and you become that the power kind of shifts like that, the mentor doesn't usually like that kind of thing. Then on top of it, the mentor, Elijah Muhammad, was starting to get on in age. And so the people around Elijah Muhammad, including his blood family, were worried that Malcolm X would actually take over. So there was a lot of reason for there to be jealousy, backbiting, court intrigue, and get rid of Malcolm X one way or another. And that's essentially what happened. Yeah. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** I mean, his kids thought that they were going to be next in line, basically. And, you know, I mentioned the FBI had lots of people on the inside of the Nation of Islam. They used those people to kind of stoke that strife internally and, you know, try and disrupt it from within. And we're fairly successful at that because it was not smooth sailing at this point. So, you know, the real fracture comes, you know, all this is sort of leading up to what I think was the real fracture was when Malcolm X finds out about Elijah Muhammad having three children out of wedlock with three very young members of the Nation of Islam and essentially started looking upon him as a false prophet that was just sort of a guy in power that was using that power to philander. And he was like, I don't think he's fit to lead the Nation of Islam anymore. And in 1963 of April of that year, he confronted Elijah Muhammad about this. And that was not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted to hear. **Josh Clark:** No, for sure. And now, like now Malcolm X was a big problem because this is not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted out to the public. It would immediately discredit him. And so do you remember kind of at the beginning, I was saying how Malcolm X had to kind of compartmentalize and turn off critical thinking and stuff like that to allow himself to submit to Elijah Muhammad? After this, after he realized that this guy is actually not the real deal, he was able to kind of grow and spread like one of those sponge dinosaurs that you put water on and they grow. Or a different analogy would be like Apache Chief in the Justice League when he grows like really, really big. Essentially, that happened the moment he realized that Elijah Muhammad was a false prophet and he was able to finally grow and become the Malcolm X that he always had the potential to be. He had thrown off the shackles, placed on him. He'd gotten out from under the thumb of the leader of the Nation of Islam. But that also unfortunately meant he had no place in the Nation of Islam any longer. --- ### [Mecca Changed His View Of Race And Power](https://share.snipd.com/snip/13c5fc03-7ef1-472d-974d-ea91ad894989) 🎧 50:30 - 52:19 (01:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8a258147-b721-4e56-afec-3d21eb02a756" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm's pilgrimage to Mecca radically expanded his worldview and moved him beyond blanket anti-white separatism. - Seeing Muslims of many races worship together led him into Sunni Islam and toward internationalizing the Black freedom struggle. #### 💬 Quote > [He] encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of this earth, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like I've never seen before. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant quoting Malcolm X on his pilgrimage to Mecca #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, so that's all basically sort of early through spring 1964. Later in 1964, a very important trip happened when he made the Hajj to Mecca. And this was, you know, kind of the final big life-changing moment for him. He came back a Sunni Islam member, and he had changed his name from Malcolm X to El-Haj Malik El-Shabazz. And I believe even his wife and daughters took the name Shabazz, like, you know, throughout the rest of their lives as well. And while he was there, he had a transformation, another transformation, kind of like he did in prison. But the other way, he came full circle and said, quote, he had encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of this earth, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like I've never seen before. And he essentially flipped and said, you know what? There are good white people and we can and should work together. And he came back and started to do that work and really poured himself for the first time into the legit official civil rights movement. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. He told Martin Luther King, like, I'm all in. He founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was trying to essentially teach black Americans about their African heritage. But then at the same time, he had also zoomed in on this idea that he needed to take struggle for American civil rights to the world, like the UN or the African Congress, and basically say, hey, this is the same thing. This is part of the black struggle worldwide. Like this is part of this global problem. It's not separate. It's not its own thing. So we need figure like all these other countries need to get involved, too, and start pressuring the U.S. to do something about it, which is a pretty clever idea, actually. --- ### [The Only Malcolm X And MLK Meeting](https://share.snipd.com/snip/83ed3aa1-a55e-4338-a531-15b6608b9bf4) 🎧 52:24 - 53:23 (00:59) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fd6d72a8-e428-47fc-b3b6-d5218c762adb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. met only once, unexpectedly, in a Capitol hallway during the Civil Rights Act debate. - They shook hands, a photographer caught the moment, and Malcolm told King he was entering the civil-rights struggle directly. #### 💬 Quote > They literally bumped into each other in the hallway. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on the Malcolm X and MLK meeting #### 📚 Transcript **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. They would eventually meet. There was a very famous single meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. It was not something they planned because it's not like Martin Luther King Jr. got on board immediately and was like, oh, great, you're joining the movement. Like, I don't think they still he still really liked him that much. But they literally bumped into each other in the hallway when they were at the Senate, when the civil rights bill was being debated there at the Capitol building, and it was like, oh, it's you. And they shook hands. I think he told them in person, I'm throwing myself into the heart of the civil rights struggle face to face. There was a photographer there. So there's a very famous picture of them together. And then later that year in July 64, that's when Congress passed the Rights Act and it was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. And that was not the end for Malcolm X, though. He thought he was just getting started very sadly. --- ### [He Was Assassinated As He Entered A New Phase](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a7f90c83-e3ad-4ae7-97c8-594d4f877bea) 🎧 53:23 - 56:46 (03:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a0908c06-fbbc-482e-8563-a000cb764f48" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Malcolm X was killed just as his politics were widening and his influence seemed ready to enter a new phase. - His home was firebombed a week earlier, bodyguards were missing when he was shot, and Betty was pregnant with twins. #### 💬 Quote > He thought he was just getting started very sadly. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant on Malcolm X's assassination #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** Yeah. So this was you said that was May of 1964. Within just a few months, he would be dead. And it's just so sad that he underwent that And all of a sudden, his potential is really starting to blossom. He into like a full butterfly for the first time. And he's struck down. The first thing that happened that kind of just foreshadowed his death was his house was firebombed by, he was quite sure, members of the Nation of Islam. Apparently, one of the bombs was thrown through a window that would have landed in and on the three of his little girls in their room. But luckily, it shattered on the outside of the window and didn't make it through. But it burned his house essentially down. And this was a house that was owned by the Nation of Islam. So they went as far as to accuse him of burning it down because they had evicted him from the house. And so out of spite, he burned it down, which was obviously not true. Yeah, **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** which is full circle, because I don't think we mentioned that when their house was burned down when he was a little kid, they actually accused his dad Earl of burning his own house down. So the same thing happened all those years later. That was on February 14th, 1965. On February 18th, they formally evicted him. And then on February 21st, he was murdered. He was shot and killed in front of his, in front of Betty, in front of the girls. I think there were four girls at the time because Betty was pregnant with the twins that would be born after his death. And this was in Harlem at an organization of Afro-American unity meeting. And they arrested three members of the Nation of Islam. One confessed and said the other two weren't involved, but all three were convicted, even though later on, I think in 2021, the other two were exonerated after the Attorney General of New York saw that they had buried some exculpatory evidence back when it happened. **Josh Clark:** Right. So you were talking about how the FBI let it happen. The NYPD apparently helped pave the way by arresting a couple of his body guards on BS charges. So he was short security on that day. And at his funeral, like he had made quite a name for himself. I think 1,500 people showed up, which is a pretty good turnout for your funeral. And Ossie Davis, who was very much in with the Martin Luther King version of the civil rights movement, he led Malcolm X's funeral because he was just that moved by him, even though he didn't see eye to eye on a bunch of stuff. Like he realized what a loss this was for the black community and the world. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, for sure. You know, I mentioned that the twins that were born after he died. They, you know, obviously grew up without their dad and the other girls weren't that much older and they always just knew him as dad. He, you know, I think the ones that kind of didn't even know him at all. They weren't raised by Betty as like, hey, your dad was a revolutionary. He was this or that. they learned about him mainly in school because Betty always wanted him just to be a dad and my husband. And so they were, you know, they went on to do a lot of great things as well. We should probably do one on Betty Shabazz at some point. --- ### [His Lasting Power Came From Public Transformation](https://share.snipd.com/snip/222393e1-b9d9-4f5b-b291-5ae15c79424f) 🎧 56:53 - 58:41 (01:47) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/074b6ab5-4800-487d-bcdc-53a7c678c801" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Josh Clark argues Malcolm X's decade-long public life was astonishingly influential, especially because he openly revised his beliefs. - Julia's takeaway was that it took unusual courage to publicly say, after years of militancy, that he had been wrong. #### 💬 Quote > It takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say, everybody, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, I found out that's wrong. > — Charles "Chuck" Bryant Charles Bryant quoting Julia's reflection on Malcolm X #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** So, yeah, I kind of mentioned like how just sad this is that he was struck down, especially at the time he was struck down. But if you look back at like the timeframe of all this stuff, this guy changed the world or left such an indelible mark that people are still learning from him these years later, over essentially the course of 10 years. That was about the timeline that we're talking about, from when he took up the Nation of Islam's teachings to when he was assassinated by the Nation of Islam. It was just about a decade, and that's how much of an impact that he made over just that time. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** Yeah, there was a pretty great quote that, who is this? Was this Julia that helped us with **Josh Clark:** this? Yeah, Julia helped us big time. **Charles "Chuck" Bryant:** and basically kind of summarizing what guts it took to make that transformation in full public view after being so public and militant. She said that it takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say, say, everybody, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, I found out that's wrong. And she just thought that was an amazing thing to be able to do. And it really was. You know, not a lot of people can own up to kind of being on what they thought later was the wrong path, you know? **Josh Clark:** Yeah, it is remarkable. So you can go read the autobiography of Malcolm X. Also, I've seen that Malcolm X Speaks is a really great book. I think it's his collected speeches. There's the Spike Lee movie. There's Make It Plain, the PBS documentary. And then there's just tons of, like, his speeches are just all over YouTube. ---