Nikki Giovanni: “He learned to speak with us, not at us”

It’s too bad Malcolm didn’t play golf. He would have easily been the best without any of the ugly arrogance. Or maybe he should have been a comedian; we would all get the warmth of laughter without the shame of abuse. We know he was a singer, a blues man of the first order, because he was a truth teller. He sang a sad song of segregation and a love song of respect for our people. I’m sure he could dance. Greg Hines has nothing on Big Red. But he couldn’t dodge the bullets that took him down. He was a gentleman of the first order. Everyone felt safe in his company, even those he disliked and those who disliked him. When they make a real movie about his life we’ll see his courtship of Betty, his embracing of fatherhood, and more, his understanding of himself that he, Malcolm, was the most important person. He learned to speak for himself with us not at us. He taught us that we can change and change again seeking our better selves. We miss this great and gentle man.

Nikki Giovanni has written more than 30 books of poetry and prose and is currently University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech

Zaheer Ali: “Malcolm X wielded history like a sword”

“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research,” Malcolm X proclaimed in his Message to the Grassroots speech in 1963. As a high school student listening to a recording of that speech decades later, I heeded Malcolm’s advice and embarked on what has become a life-long pursuit. Malcolm X wielded history like a sword in his verbal assaults on American racism and European colonialism. He understood that a nation is first founded, not on land, but on the stories that it tells — and silences — to justify its existence.

His recovery of the stories of silenced Africans in America was like reading between the lines of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. In making a claim for black independence, he invoked (and then revoked) the Founding Fathers’ social contract, exposing the “disguised hypocrisy” that was at the origins of American democracy. This hypocrisy continues to plague us today in the ways that the state and compliant corporate media narratives legitimize violence against black lives and other marginalized people. There are still more voices to recover, more truths to tell, and more history to study. If we attend to Malcolm X’s legacy, the reward for our research will be a more just society.

Zaheer Ali is the former project manager of the Malcolm X project at Columbia University and recently wrote about X’s assassination

Herb Boyd: “He was on a mission, and it is wonderful to learn today that so many young people are interested in that mission”

In the very fertile days of my intellectual and political development I was fortunate to experience the words and action of Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz). It was during the last two or three years of his life that his ideological, religious, and philosophical outlooks began to truly resonate for me. What I found most interesting about him, beyond his charisma and intelligence, was his boundless curiosity, his determination to bring progressive ideas to the four corners of the universe. For me, he was a man of unimpeachable integrity, and we witness remarkable spurts of growth in the final two years of his ever evolving life.

Some of the ideas and possibilities he offered before his assassination are very pertinent today, particularly some of the discussions he was raising with leaders and activists in the Middle East and Africa. Malcolm was on a mission, and it is wonderful to learn today that so many young people are interested in that mission, curious to know more about the man and why he was taken from us so prematurely. They want to know to what extent he was beginning to reach out to Dr King and the civil rights movement; what were his next moves as he formed his organizations, and what global plans did he have? Attempts to answer these questions are only an aspect of what makes his perspectives so vital in today’s struggle for civil and human rights. As we prepare to commemorate/celebrate his life 50 years after he was so violently snatched from us, we must rededicate ourselves to accomplish at least a portion of his dream and rescue it from the current nightmare.

Herb Boyd is co-editor of The Diary of Malcolm X

Hank Shocklee: “The most important thing Malcolm X taught me was ‘do for self’”

Growing up in New York, Dr Martin Luther King’s message was vibrant, but Malcolm X hit a chord with us because he spoke like we did. He spoke in such a way that was reminiscent of the language we used. His work didn’t really hit me until I grew up and started to realise the impact of what he was saying. Here you had Dr Martin Luther King who was turning the other cheek and being non-violent and Malcolm X was saying ‘look, you have the right to protect yourself’. Not just against overt forms of racism – the racism we dealt with in the north was more covert – he was preaching ‘do for self’ and that was the thing that resonated for me the most. He taught organisation and the importance of being able to look after yourself without relying on or expecting any mainstream assistance. He preached self confidence, self discipline and the idea of building a community and if you look at the legacy in the black communities, where would we be if we implemented even 20% of what he was talking about? In the 90s when we sampled him on Bring The Noise, was because we felt like we were still going through the same struggle and he was the most direct leader who attacked those issues. His relationship to hip-hop is because the language that he speaks is very similar to a hip-hop artist, the words are sharp, he didn’t talk around issues, he attacked them head on and that is the modus operandi of hip-hop. If anyone asked who inspired hip-hop the most, I would have to say Malcolm X because it’s the attitude in which he conveyed the message. He was clearly in the battleground. X-Clan, Common, Talib Kweli, Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah they were all affected by Malcolm X and the social awareness he spawned.

Hank Shocklee is a founder of Public Enemy

Steven W Thrasher: “Malcolm is still a guide”

In 2007, I spent about a year traveling around the US collecting African American stories for the StoryCorps Griot oral history project. One of the most memorable experiences I had was interviewing some brothers in Memphis about their college days, when they’d spend lunchtime in debates between “the Martins and the Malcolms.” They’d be assigned texts by both men, and would spend their lunches debating which vision was more dangerous, more practical, more effective.

X and King were never in great conflict in my mind; they were both radical, dangerous, powerful and intriguing. But I have certainly drifted much more towards Malcolm’s place in the American imagination over the years – which is still volatile –than in the way King’s vision has been reduced and incorporated into our zeitgeist. As a writer, in trying to make sense of the internal white supremacy of my own self debt, and the external white supremacy I’ve covered in Ferguson and Staten Island, I keep coming back to Malcolm in this scene in Spike Lee’s film.

Here, Denzel Washington perfects how Malcolm attempted to decolonize his own mind in prison, when Baines (Albert Hall) makes him read the dictionary. Even though Malcolm quickly sees how skewed the words “white” and “black” are, he is made to read the entire book, “Because the truth is lying there, if you read behind the words.” Malcolm is still a guide calling me to question how something as dear and seamless from my being as the very words I think, read and write are infected with white supremacy.

Steven W Thrasher is the Guardian US writer-at-large