Malcolm & Martin Intersecting Visions of Justice

that he's violent, that he's angry, that he was ineffective. And you would think that Malcolm organized a gang and walked around the streets of Harlem and took things by force.

The problem with that narrative, other than it being just completely false, is that it takes away Malcolm's points for actually not committing to nonviolence out of principle. Why didn't Malcolm commit to nonviolence if Malcolm was not violent himself? Malcolm said: "I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully, but I'm also a realist, and the only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people."

Malcolm's Perspective on Self-Defense

And so Malcolm's point was the point that Jesse Williams made, that if you don't have an established critique of the oppression, you don't get to critique the resistance. It's not fair to burden an oppressed people, a people that are being targeted with commitments to nonviolence and those types of things when they are the victims of violence.

Malcolm did not favor violence. Malcolm did not welcome violence. Malcolm found it hypocritical to ask black people to be nonviolent when they were the recipients of violence in America, state-sponsored violence here in the United States of America.

The Ballot or the Bullet

And so when you talk about the ballot or the bullet, as one scholar said, Malcolm used the threat of the bullet to secure the ballot, but Malcolm did not want vigilante violence in the streets. He did not seek that. And Malcolm's calling out America on its hypocrisy was true because the only time America ever passed gun legislation was when? When the Black Panthers got armed. When the wrong people had guns. That's when America decided to act against guns.

Dr. King's Understanding of Violence

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as we mentioned early on in talking about Gandhi and Nehru, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew the role that Malcolm and that side of the movement actually played. He said that: "the nation waited until the black man was explosive with fury before stirring itself even to partial concern. Confronted now with the interrelated problems of war, inflation, urban decay, white backlash, and a climate of violence, it is now forced to address itself to race relations and poverty, and it is tragically unprepared. What might once have been a series of separate problems now merge into a social crisis of almost stupefying complexity. I am not sad that black Americans are rebelling. This was not only inevitable, but eminently desirable. Without this magnificent ferment amongst Negroes, the old evasions and procrastinations would have continued indefinitely."

Dr. King on Riots

And he said in another speech: "but it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without at the same time condemning the contingent intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say that a riot is the language of the unheard and what is it America has failed to hear."

Strategies of Shaming America

And so if you listen to the content, the substance of those two messages, they're not necessarily in tension with one another. The idea was that the burden should not be placed on the African-American as they were the greatest victims of state violence here in this country. There's also this idea where you see the strategies coming together of shaming America into compliance.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of my favorite books of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was "Stride Towards Freedom." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about the strategy and this was of course in the wake or in the context of the Montgomery bus boycott. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that America would not be activated.

The Need for Visual Impact

There were plenty of people that were sitting at home that said that they weren't okay with what they were seeing but they were not necessarily moved to actual action. They didn't like it, but they would turn the TV off and it wasn't necessarily enough to activate them. And he said that people would not move until they saw black men and black women having their heads busted open with police clubs in the streets.

Hence, exactly what you saw in Selma, that America had to be moved to a point of "why we can't wait" to a place of urgency, not necessarily a place of disgust. You could not simply say that this is not right, but you had to actually be moved to action. And Martin understood that America had to see images and America had to be moved to a point where it would be uncomfortable with itself being at home.

Malcolm's International Strategy

Malcolm also understood that America did not want to be shamed on the global stage. And here's the thing, slavery did not end because America suddenly came to a realization that it was wrong, okay? America's foreign policy was being complicated by the images of segregation and the images of police brutality that were being broadcast around the world from here.

Back in the days when we were at odds with the Soviets, they used to put images of segregation and police brutality as a sign of how backwards America actually was to posit communism as a superior way.

When Malcolm goes around the world and shames America and actually takes the strategy of going to Africa in particular and asking African nations to prosecute the United States of America on the global stage, it complicates America's foreign policy because America cannot act like it is morally superior to the world and then use that to justify all sorts of unprincipled intervention.

Malcolm at the OAU

And so you have Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., of course, working at the domestic level with Selma, with what's taking place in the South. And you have Malcolm actually going to Africa. And Malcolm, of course, by that time after Hajj had a status in the entirety of the Muslim world, Africa and otherwise, and using that to put America on trial on the global stage and sitting in the spot that a head of state would sit at the OAU, at the Organization for African Unity.

Malcolm actually sat there amongst all of the heads of state and the premiers and the presidents and the prime ministers from African nations. And Malcolm said that you have to do something about the United States because the United States is guilty of war crimes and genocide against African Americans, against black people here at home.

The Internationalist Perspective

That complicated deeply America's foreign policy. And there's a book that I'd recommend everyone to read. It's called "Cold War Civil Rights, Race and the Image of American Democracy" by Mary Dudziak, where she talks about why America actually took, why the government took steps to seemingly address segregation and racial inequalities in this country only to the extent that it allowed America, that it allowed the United States of America to maintain a certain standing globally.

What does this mean in terms of internationalizing the issue of the black American? Well, for one, Malcolm was always an internationalist. He was an internationalist even in prison. And one of the tragedies of Malcolm is that he was surveilled by the FBI from 1950 until the day of his death, because in 1950, he wrote a letter to President Truman from his jail cell in opposition to the Korean War.

Malcolm's Vietnam War Stance

And because of that, he was called a communist. He actually self-labeled a communist at that point in 1950, to be fair. And in that climate in America was placed under surveillance. And of course, as his profile grew, the surveillance was only going to be expanded on Malcolm.

So he was always an internationalist. Malcolm was widely recognized as the first civil rights leader to really hone in on the Vietnam War and the nature of the Vietnam War to connect colonialism, to connect what was taking place in Vietnam to what was taking place here in the United States with the black American.

Malcolm's Solidarity with Other Struggles

This picture, this famous picture of Malcolm at his assassination, if you look right behind him, there's a Japanese woman by the name of Yuri Kochiyama who was a great civil rights activist. And she was a Japanese civil rights activist or a human rights activist that was seeking justice after the nuclear bombings, after the atomic bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And she was someone who found in Malcolm a person that would uplift her cause.

Malcolm did not see that uplifting other people's causes diminished his own. In fact, he saw the importance of connecting those causes. So Malcolm would champion causes that were not necessarily convenient, that would give no mobility to his specific cause to liberate his own people.

European Colonialism and American Dollarism

But instead he saw that what was taking place at the global stage of colonialism and what he called European colonialism and American dollarism, Malcolm saw that it was the same system that was wreaking havoc on the world that was wreaking havoc on the inner cities here in the United States of America.

And so that's why you'll find Malcolm in 1964, going to Gaza, going to Palestine, going to the Khan Yunus refugee camp and uplifting the issue of Palestine being the first black leader to uplift the issue of Palestine and he actually penned an essay about the occupation and about the world turning a blind eye to the injustices that were done to the Palestinian people.

Malcolm's Profound Expression

And he used a profound expression. Malcolm said that often what happens is that an indigenous people are taken advantage of, they are buried by all sorts of injustice and tyranny and then years later another generation comes and doesn't know how to distinguish what took place and simply sees two peoples fighting each other and then naturally comes to the conclusion that one people is regressive and the other people is not and doesn't understand the origins of conflict.

And he said that's essentially what was done to the entire continent of Africa, that the average American would look to Africa and would see all of the coups and all the rebellions and all the warfare and would come to that type of conclusion that these are a people that need to be, to use the president's language, tamed and can only be governed with brutality domestically and globally.

And here's the expression Malcolm used: "so you clip the bird's wing and then you blame it for not flying as high as you."

From Civil Rights to Human Rights

So you put people in horrible states and then you count on the forgetful memory or the way that that memory is then told or cast in the future. Malcolm said that we have to elevate the struggle from a civil

rights struggle to a human rights struggle.

And his last speech at the London School of Economics in Europe was titled, "The Oppressed Masses of the World Cry Out for Action Against the Common Oppressor." In Malcolm's last speech at Columbia University, he said that African-Americans, so sort of internationalizing the struggle now was not just as far as the Palestinians or the Vietnamese or the Japanese. No, Malcolm saw it as much broader than that.

Malcolm's Vision for Africa

And of course, Malcolm also had a focus on Africa. He was Pan-African and some scholars would even mention a graduation of sorts from black nationalism to Pan-Africanism, particularly in his later thought. Malcolm tasked both African nations as well as African-Americans to connect with one another.

He said that "African-Americans must help Africa and struggle to free itself from Western domination because no matter where the black man is, he will never be respected until Africa is a world power." I met Chadwick Boseman and I told him, I said, Malcolm was the first one that thought about Wakanda but he thought about it more so on the Killmonger, probably in the Killmonger conception, but that idea of Africa as a continent being strong, being restored to its full dignity and honor and that having worldwide implications where you usually see anti-black racism penetrating everywhere from North America to the Middle East as well, right? Europe and all over the world and Asia. So it was important for Africa to be restored.

Malcolm's International System Critique

Malcolm also said African nations need to take action against the United States for crimes committed against the American Negro in the United States. He wrote from his last trip to Africa and Malcolm spent the last 10 months of his life, the majority of it actually was international. Malcolm said: "I want to dismantle the entire international system of racial exploitation."

John Lewis and Donald Harris were sent at the time by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to Africa to meet Malcolm on a second trip to try to fully grasp the person that Malcolm had become that any country he went to in Africa, he was usually addressing the parliament at this point, a president or a prime minister. And there was a wave that followed him everywhere that he went, meaning he was successful in lifting up the condition of the black man here in America and removing that barrier and that isolation between black people in America and the continent of Africa.

Dr. King's Evolution on Vietnam

Dr. King, of course, takes on Vietnam later on. And this is what James Baldwin was spoken about and what Dr. James Cone speaks about in his book. From a political perspective, King could have rode a wave in his last few years and accepted a status of one who was never too dangerous, who stayed within the realm of prescribed protest and did not shake the establishment.

Malcolm was assassinated in 65. King could have stuck to a script. He would have been more popular. He would have retained not just popularity in white America, but he would have retained popularity with black America as well.

The Cost of Moral Conviction

By King taking on the Vietnam War, he lost a ton of support. The NAACP distanced itself from King. And a dear friend of mine, Reverend Dr. Michael Waters always reminds people in Dallas that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could not find a single black church that would give him a pulpit after 1965 when he actually came to Dallas.

Where did this come from? Moral conviction. He said: "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, my own government."

King's Broadening Worldview

And if you read King's sentiments of anti-war, it started with critiquing how much, if you look at 66 to 68, it started with critiquing how much money we were spending on war as opposed to here in the inner cities in America. Then it moved on to something else. You start to see King's tone shift towards the hypocrisy of sending black men off to their death in Vietnam to fight for liberties that they would not enjoy here at home. Some of the famous lines of Muhammad Ali when he resisted the draft.

The Perspective of the Viet Cong

Then something happens in the later half of 67 into 68. King starts talking about it from the perspective of the Viet Cong themselves, the babies on the other side of those bombs. That's not a popular stance to take because ultimately when you challenge America as a patriot, you still need to challenge it from the perspective of the benefit of America, not what is morally principled, not what is the right stance to take.

King's Revolutionary Values

And Dr. David Garrow, he said that it would be a mistake to read Dr. King's speech, "Breaking the Silence," as merely an anti-war statement. It reflected his widening worldview that chronic domestic poverty and military adventurism overseas infected the wealthiest nation on earth just as much as deep-rooted racism. King said that if America's poison autopsy was to be open one day, Vietnam would be prominent.

We would see what was done with Vietnam. And I wanna just give you this one quote by him. He said: "a genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies."

The Unfinished Business

Think about what Dr. King would say if he heard "America first," with all of its implications, that this commitment needs to be a greater commitment. Michelle Alexander wrote an article in the New York Times this year, earlier this year, called "It's a Time to Break the Silence on Palestine," also sort of building off of King's philosophy, pointing to the fact that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1968 started to address the problem of the Palestinians as well and started to broaden its perspective on that.

Alexander said King argued when speaking of Vietnam that "even when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we must not be mesmerized by uncertainty. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."

The Danger of Appropriation

Now, with that being said, in the process of uplifting, because we have to challenge ourselves with Dr. King and with Malcolm, in the process of uplifting other causes and them recognizing the international nature of this and making these connections, we cannot dilute their initial cause, their primary cause, and the severity of the crimes that have been committed and continue to be committed against black people in America. No other cause should seek to appropriate it. Instead, it should honor it.

The Michigan State University Incident

There was a popular statement, I wanna say four or five years ago, "Muslim is the new black." No, absolutely not. And lest we forget that Malcolm here in Michigan, I'm sorry, it wasn't in this university, it was at Michigan State University, January 23rd, 1963, there was an MSA Egyptian student that started to argue with Malcolm about his approach, about his doctrine. And Malcolm responded and said: "listen, we are brothers, but an Egyptian who comes to America should realize the problem confronted by black people in this country. And when you see us being chased by a dog, the best thing for you to do is wait until the dog stops chasing us and then ask us some questions, especially when you should have come a long time ago and help your little brothers whip the dog."

The Complexity of Malcolm's Final Year

So the reason why I bring that up is because there's this, so America freezes King and "I have a dream," not when he said that my dream has turned into a nightmare and started to articulate Malcolm, sound a lot like Malcolm 65 to 68. Muslims freeze Malcolm in the exact same place which Malcolm becomes suddenly colorblind.

And yes, it's true, Malcolm no longer indicted the collective, indicted white people on an individual basis or talked about the white devil. He did talk about this idea of seeing people in their fullness and judging

people by their character and working together in that spirit. But Malcolm's critique of white supremacy was only sharpened after Hajj.

Malcolm's Telegrams to MLK and the KKK

And a lot of those speeches that we assume were pre-Hajj, because if you watch the movie, it's like Malcolm went to Hajj, then he died. And that's kind of like how we, we're really forgetting those last 10 months of the formation of two organizations, the Muslim Mosque Incorporated and the OAU, the Organization of Afro-American Unity and what that meant.

And Malcolm's showing direction with his thought, articulating a political and religious philosophy that are not in tension with one another and that do mean something for us and that do need to challenge us. So what is Malcolm's role with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in that last year when you start to see these two people coming together and what does it mean for us?

The expression of solidarity in a meaningful way is important. Malcolm did not simply stop some of the things that he said about King. Malcolm sent a letter, a telegram to MLK, which you see up here on the screen, June 30th. He says: "we have been witnessing with great concern the vicious attacks of the white races against our poor defenseless people there in St. Augustine. The federal government, if the federal government will not send troops to your aid, just say the word and we will immediately dispatch some of our brothers there to organize self-defense units amongst our people and the Ku Klux Klan will then receive a taste of its own medicine."

That sounds great when it's private solidarity, right? Except Malcolm sent a telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell on the exact same day. That said: "this is to warn you that I'm no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad's separatist black Muslim movement and that if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans who are only attempting to enjoy their rights as free human beings, that you and your Ku Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence and who believe in asserting our right of self- defense, dot, dot, dot, by any means necessary."

Malcolm sends that to George Lincoln Rockwell in defense of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Can you imagine what this did to Hoover's FBI? Can you imagine how frightening it is to see that level of solidarity being expressed between these two people who were supposed to be at war with one another?

Malcolm's Visit to Selma

Malcolm deliberately, his messaging, supposed to be delegitimizing King so that he's not taken seriously by his people while Malcolm is portrayed as an extremist that has no role in the movement. And now you

see this expression of solidarity despite difference and meaningful solidarity despite difference. As we know, Malcolm went to Selma.

And if you watch the movie, it's not very, don't take your history from movies. That's all I'm gonna say, all right? So what actually happens when Malcolm went to Selma? Malcolm said: "let me be the scary alternative to Dr. King so that Dr. King's goals can be achieved. They fear me more than you. And if they see me coming around, then they're gonna be more willing to accept your demands because they don't want to see Malcolm's flavor bleeding into the South."

Coretta Scott King's Testimony

And so here's what happens. If you watch Malcolm's interviews in Selma, they're brilliant because he's always ambiguous and he's intentionally ambiguous. He says: "I suggest you give Dr. King what he's asking for or else some of us are gonna try to do it another way." But he never said what another way was. And he also made it a point.

And by the way, some have actually put out the idea that maybe the reason why Malcolm was not harmed when he went to Alabama going into Klan country was because there was this idea that Malcolm had a force that was traveling with him. And if anyone put their hands on him, then they would be in trouble. So Malcolm went down to Selma to express solidarity.

And this is a picture of Malcolm sitting next to Coretta Scott King. And she says, describing this moment: "he leaned over and said to me, Mrs. King, I want you to tell your husband that I had planned to visit him in jail here in Selma, but I won't be able to do it now. I have to go back to New York because I have to attend a conference in Europe, an African student conference. And I want you to say to him that I didn't come to Selma to make his job more difficult, but that I thought that if white people understood what the alternative was, that they would be more inclined to listen to your husband. And so that's why I came."

Coretta Scott King says: "and of course I thanked him and I was naturally somewhat surprised because I didn't expect him to say that. I don't know what I expected, but he had such a gentle manner and he seemed very sincere. And I kept thinking about what he had said and the way that he said it. And of course, within a couple of weeks or more, he was assassinated and it affected me very deeply because I had met him now. And I felt like it was such a tragic loss. For days, I had this pain, almost like this feeling in my chest, a feeling of depression, and just feeling as if I had lost someone very dear to me. And I couldn't quite understand, but then I began to realize, I guess what an impact he had made on me in that very short period of time in knowing him."

The Appropriation of Their Legacies

So this is a special moment that we have. And I wanna take it now to the legacy as we go into our discussion and what this means. If you open up a textbook, Martin is made into the perfect hero,

Malcolm, the perfect villain.

The goal of this is that every illegitimate form of engagement is legitimized through King and every legitimate form of resistance is delegitimized through Malcolm. And so if you can create the hero and create the villain, the one that should not even be considered in the first place, then you can more readily appropriate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Struggle Against Reduction to Symbols

And they struggled to not become reduced to symbols even in their own lifetimes. One of Malcolm's quotes after Selma, in fact, he said: "for the Muslims, I'm too worldly. For other groups, I'm too religious. For militants, I'm too moderate. And for moderates, I'm too militant. I feel like I'm on a tightrope."

So Malcolm understood what was happening with him also.

The Experiment of Misattribution

And here's what I want us to do. If you go to YouTube and you search, there was this experiment that was done, I think it was in Denmark, where they took a copy of the Bible and they put a cover of the Quran on it. And then they walked through the streets and they read certain verses about violence and women and things of that sort to just average people in the streets and said, "can you believe the Quran says this?" And people were just outraged. And then they took off the cover and said, "actually, this is the Bible. Are you a Christian?"

And so it was quite telling, all right? What can be done when you take things out of context? But sometimes I think to myself, it would be really, it would be fascinating if you took a quote, a book of quotes of Malcolm X, covered it with Dr. King or vice versa.

Revealing Their True Convergence

So I'll give you two quotes. Malcolm said: "ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore, we need more light about each other. Light creates understanding. Understanding creates love. Love creates patience and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a united front will be brought about."

Sounds very Kingish, right?

Dr. King says: "the majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately, this is a fantasy of self- deception and comfortable vanity."

Sounds very Malcolmish.

Malcolm's Political Vision

Malcolm is looked at as the symbol of disengagement with anything political in America. But one of the things that Malcolm was to reveal on the day of his assassination was the platform, the OAAU, which would include a voting platform as well.

So you could look at it in two ways. Malcolm said: "the organization of Afro-American unity will organize the Afro-American community block by block to make the community aware of its power and its potential. We will start immediately a voter registration drive to make every unregistered voter in the Afro-American community an independent voter. We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out."

So you could take that and you could say, well, Malcolm was talking about a different Democratic party or you could say Malcolm is not, Malcolm would have rejected any type of voter engagement or you could look to Malcolm, the core of what Malcolm was saying, which was this idea that when you organize, organize in a principled way and do not be uncritically loyal to any politician or any party that only shows up when they want your vote to get them over the hump.

The NRA's Annual MLK Tweet

So you could take something from that. Every year on Martin Luther King's, on the anniversary of his birthday, the NRA tweets a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Does anyone know what they put in that picture? Every single year. In 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a gun permit, which is true. What they don't put in there is that he was denied. So every year they tweet it out.

And so you could take from that, this complete rejection of, was it violence, was it non-violence or did he at some, did he consider this idea again of owning a gun in the face of so many assassination attempts and threats for himself?

The Importance of Religious Organizations

Both of these men had a religious organization and a political organization. And this is something that I also wanna caution and we'll bring it up in the discussion. Sometimes there's a hostility to religion and there's obviously a type of religion that I think we should all be hostile to.

But there's a hostility to religion that's found in spaces which is unnecessary. If we're going to be true to both of their legacies, you can't remove the Baptist minister, the Baptist preacher from Dr. King, you can't remove the Muslim from Malcolm. Muslim mosque was just as important to Malcolm as OAU.

In fact, he formed it immediately out of the Nation of Islam and the SCLC was just as important to Dr. King as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And so it's important to do so.

The Assassination Sites

These are pictures that I want you to look at. This is a picture I took of the spot of Malcolm's assassination in the Shabazz Center, formerly the Audubon. If you go there, you'll see the difference between it and the Lorraine Motel, the spot of the assassination of Dr. King.

Malcolm said: "when I am dead, I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form. I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right when I say that the white man in his press is going to identify me with hate. I know that societies often have killed people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help destroy the malignant cancer, the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America, then all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine."

The Persistence of Their Legacy

Malcolm fully understood that he was going to be vilified, that he was going to be intentionally omitted from books, but he keeps coming back, keeps coming back. His autobiography keeps coming back. Malcolm in all forms of resistance keeps coming back. Malcolm as a symbol keeps coming back.

And so there is a failure to completely omit him, but you could see the difference between his grave. If you go to LaGuardia and you take a 30-minute drive out to Ferncliff Cemetery, you'll barely be able to find Malcolm and Betty's grave. It's actually one tombstone there. Whereas you see the appropriation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is celebrated, but we have to ask ourselves, is he being celebrated as Dr. King? Or what of Dr. King is convenient to America in changing both its past and its presence?

The Unfinished Business of Civil Rights

And so we come back to the statement of Medgar Evers: "You can kill a man, but not an idea." And I wanted to end with this. The unfinished business of the civil rights movement.

A lot of it is economic. This is actually from one of two intersections, Martin Luther King Jr. intersections and Malcolm intersections in the country. It's in Dallas, where I live in South Dallas, one of the worst areas in the country.

Dallas ranks last in the country in racialized poverty. It is as segregated as anywhere else in the country. And it is an insult that you would have a mural that says "believe" and you have all sorts of horrors and terrors that continue to rain on people there in South Dallas and around the country.

Contemporary Struggles

And I want you to realize as 2019 and Botham John was shot in his apartment. A young black man was shot in his apartment complex sitting on his couch in an upscale condo, sitting on his couch, watching Thursday night football when officer Amber Geiger walked in and shot him twice in his own living room.

And his home was searched to find anything to incriminate him while she had days upon days to wipe out her history and then to be taken in for basically a photo op, a 20 minute experience of a mugshot.

And just yesterday, Dallas tried to vacate or they tried to move her trial somewhere else over a year later. And this is now 2019, Jordan Edwards is now. A lot of the things that are taking place are now.

The Challenge for Today

So we have to take to ourselves how would Malcolm and Martin's legacies have lived out today in regards to continued racialized poverty that takes place, mass incarceration, police brutality, and again, connecting to the inconvenient struggles, seeing that we are enriched when we see the connection of those struggles as opposed to viewing them in isolation.

I look forward to the discussion with my distinguished panelists. Thank you all very much. (السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ)

Panel Discussion

Dr. Loomis Hilaire's Introduction

Well, Imam Suleiman, thank you very much for that. I took away several notes, but I would like to just reiterate this one. Do not get your history from movies. Very important.

Every year, the annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium has a theme. The theme this year is the miseducation of us, us in capital letters and having the double entendre, double meaning of the United States and us as individuals. And so I think it's fitting that today, this first event gets us to think about the ways in which we have not been fully educated about two of the greatest heroes in this nation, in this country, and in this world.

Introduction of Panel Speakers

Dr. Suad Abdul-Khabir is a scholar activist, scholar artist activist, whose work examines the intersections of race, religion, and popular culture. She is the author of "Muslim Cool, Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States." She has a deep commitment to public scholarship and reaches diverse audience through her one-woman solo performance, "Sample, Beats of Muslim Life," and in her leadership of Cipelo Square, an online resource on black Muslims in the United States.

Dr. Ward is associate professor in the Department of Afro-American and African Studies and the Social Theory and Practice Program in the residential college. He was the founding coordinator of the Urban Studies minor and serves as the faculty director of the Semester in Detroit program. He teaches courses in African-American history, urban and community studies, and Detroit history.

He is the author of "In Love and Struggle, the Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs," and the editor of "Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook, a James Boggs reader." He is a board member of the

James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership in Detroit.

Dr. Ward's Reflections

Hello, everyone. Let's thank Loomis again for guiding us, please. And let's thank Omar for setting us in flight.

So each of us will say a few words of our thoughts about our reflection on the presentation and also the second part of what Loomis said, equally important, if not more important, is our vision, the direction for this conversation, and then which includes our dialogue and the question and answer.

So the first thing I'd like to say, I'd start where you started, which is toward the beginning of your presentation, you said you invite a challenge. And I think you were saying it in the vein of if something you say, someone, one of us perhaps, has a disagreement with or so forth.

And I don't, so I'm starting there, but I'm not dealing, not that part about it. I mean, the information you gave, the respect you gave, the analysis you gave was wonderful in many different ways, and we'll get into that. But what I'm emphasizing, what I'd like to emphasize is that willingness to be challenged.

And in fact, I think one of the most things that's powerful, one of the things most powerful about Malcolm and Martin in different, but mutually reinforcing ways is how they constantly were challenged and how they challenged themselves and how they challenged others. So, and you gave us some sense of that in some of the examples.

Dr. Abdul-Khabir's Reflections

Yes, so I was a little bit late coming. I teach a class and I forgot about that, so. But I did catch, I think, a good chunk of the presentation.

And I think the thing that I wanted to, my reflection, and one of the first things that came to me was thinking about Malcolm, because several times in the talk, you talked about he was the first to do X, Y, or Z. And I think what's important, I think it's always important to think about these people coming out of communities, right? And specifically, I was thinking about his parents, right, Earl and Louise Little. And I don't know if you mentioned them or not tonight, so I don't know if I did that.

But I was just thinking about, and their relationship to the United Negro Improvement Association and being organizers and leaders in that group. And so this idea of, you know, where does this idea of his commitment, right, to black people and to black liberation, and this notion of an international sense of that, right? Because Garveyism and the movement, UNIA, right, it comes from an international transnationalist, pan-Africanist perspective.

Question and Answer Session

Question on Surveillance and Modern Civil Liberties

Question: We know that Martin and Malcolm represent open criticism of the state, right? And they were heavily surveilled during their life. In what ways were Malcolm and Martin's lives impacted by surveillance? How would they respond to issues of modern-day surveillance from the Patriot Act to FBI informants to artificial intelligence being placed in communities?

Dr. Suleiman's Response:

I think I mentioned the term that I wanted to give a little bit more time to before I get to the surveillance thing, which was prescribed protest. Malcolm's fear was of operating within prescribed protest. And so you only, and that can happen with civil disobedience is when civil disobedience in a way becomes civil obedience because you're gonna start and end at the time that you're expected to, you're not gonna actually disrupt anything.

I think that when it comes to civil liberties in particular in the post 9-11 era, and this is where you talk about how justice actually intersects. DHS as an agency was formed in an Islamophobic climate under George W. Bush. ICE was formed under DHS.

Counter-terrorism, are you kidding me? If anything, they're terrorizing communities. I mean, in Dallas in particular where ICE raids literally terrorize the community more so than any other place in the country. We had six times more ICE raids than any other city last year in Dallas.

ICE was born out of an Islamophobic agency, right? An agency that was formed in Islamophobia and then you have this agency that was formed. Obama expanded ICE and expanded some of those crackdowns on civil liberties in his administration. Of course, now we know where we are right now.

We're seeing the ugliest ending of all of those interventions. What happens to us unfortunately is that Americans cannot, when you say abolish ICE, you're radical because people think it's some sort of historical institution. It's like, no, if you have a driver's license, you're older than ICE.

It's not a historical institution. It was formed out of a lie. So you don't just need to abolish ICE, you need to abolish the premise of ICE. You don't just need to abolish the Patriot Act, you need to abolish the false premise of the Patriot Act that makes some communities more dangerous than others and hence crackdowns on them more justifiable to the American mind.

Final Reflections

Dr. Ward's Closing Thoughts

Okay, so I think one thing that Omar's presentation helped us to see that Malcolm and Martin, if they were growing together, it wasn't like this. It wasn't like they were just going meeting in the middle. It was like this. So they each were growing and so up until their last day, that is the inspiration, I think, that we

Dr. Abdul-Khabir's Final Words

Okay, so I think I will just reiterate what was said about the spiritual, having this kind of spiritual resource. I think that there is, like was mentioned too, sometimes you will see this opposition between sort of doing, sort of working communities, doing activism and then your spirituality. Right now, like Muslim communities in the United States, there's this really kind of weird conversation about that where there's a sense that, oh, we have to Islamize our activism.

And I think that it's weird because it's like, if you're principled, if you have purpose, if you're connected to people, then what you're trying to do will naturally be inclined, right, toward God, the divine, higher power, et cetera. Like this will naturally happen.

And so I think it's important, I think, for people to sort of kind of listen to their own selves, right, as they're sort of doing this and also thinking about what is activism because that's also a loaded word and sometimes you're busy and you have this and you have kids and you have that and you work in, you know, like 12-hour shifts and you can't do all that kind of stuff, right?

But there's like this Muslim tradition, right, where the Prophet Muhammad, (صلى الله عليه وسلم) says, right, a smile is charity, right? And so we know that in a lot of traditions, giving charity is a very good thing, right? But what if I don't have, right? A smile is charity. So I think the same thing is true about activism, right? There are all these different kind of ways and really small ways that you can do something, right, to push us forward.

Dr. Suleiman's Final Message

Yeah, I think, I mean, just to piggyback off of that, it's purposeful living. I think the word activist is very loaded sometimes and, you know, and sometimes when someone introduces me as an activist, I kind of look around, I'm like, where did that come from? You know, like, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "I'm just a Baptist preacher." Like, I'm just an imam, leave me out of, don't call me an activist, you know? But it's purposeful living, being purposeful about your life, whether it's in private or in public, whether it's in the capacity of a family, within a family or within a leading role at an organization, it's purposeful living.

And here's what I'll say in conclusion about Malcolm and Martin and heroes in general. We make two mistakes with heroes. We either make them so perfect and infallible that they're inaccessible, or worse, we lower them until they become tools of our own deviations and, you know, means of us accessing things that they were actually, you know, categorically opposed to in their being.

So heroes are meant to be emulated and, you know, whether it's the best of people or whether it's someone that was getting there, they're meant to be emulated. Even prophets of God are meant to be emulated, right? So we are supposed to emulate them and find them in our lives and unlock purposeful living.

And if you live longing for the divine and you don't let trends dictate you, you don't let power dictate you because you're thinking about his power, you don't let trends dictate you because you're thinking about his principles, you don't let, you know, you're dictated by that longing for the divine, (إخلاص - ikhlas), sincerity.

Whether it's in private or in public, it's gonna purify your worship and it's gonna purify your work. I'll just call it your work. It'll purify your work.

So you need to purify your worship where the sight of God becomes so beloved to you that whether it's just God watching you or God and someone else watching you, you're thinking about the sight of God. That's what sincerity is in worship. Same thing with work, right? Your work, make it, you know, create that longing so that you are constantly at it so when the news cycle moves away from that kid in Juarez, because right now we're not talking about kids in cages because we're talking about something else right now, you're still there.

When the news cycle moves on from Jordan Edwards and Botham John, you're still there. When the news cycle moves on from the child in Gaza and Palestine or the child in Kashmir, you're still there. You're always there because you've connected for something other than the moment. You've connected for the one who dignified that person and enabled you to work for that person's dignity.

Closing Remarks

Thank you all so much for sticking with us. I know it was long, but we are so grateful to you for staying and participating in this important topic. Can we have an enormous round of applause for you guys, the guests?

This lecture was both live streamed and video recorded. The recording will be edited and closed captioning will be added. So we'll be sure to send out that link in the next couple of weeks. So stay tuned and please share it widely. It was an important topic. And again, we want this to be as accessible as possible to everyone.

We do have one final note. For anyone who would like to pray (المغرب - al-maghrib) the sunset prayer, we have a prayer room set aside on the fourth floor of Rackham. So if you just take the elevators or stairs up to the fourth floor, it's in the East Conference Room and it's literally that way. It's in the farthest corner of the building. And inside of that room, the (القبلة - al-qibla) is indicated so you'll know where to pray. Thank you so much.

We appreciate you guys sticking around and we hope that you have a pleasant evening. السلام عليكم

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