Vol. 74/No. 22      June 7, 2010

Because of the brisk sales of Pathfinder books on Malcolm X in the museum’s gift shop, the organizers invited John Benson of the Socialist Workers Party in Atlanta to speak on the panel about the publisher’s new book Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes.

Other speakers included associate professor Bryon Turman and Dr. James Steele from North Carolina A & T State University, and Dr. Shelly Brown-Jeffy from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Benson described the civil rights movement he was a part of as a young person in the 1960s. He said that from the sit-ins in Greensboro; to the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott; to the struggles from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Monroe, North Carolina; to the battle of Birmingham; to the formation of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama; and the example of the Deacons for Defense in Louisiana and Mississippi; millions of ordinary people went into political action, transformed themselves, and accomplished extraordinary things. They brought down the Jim Crow system of segregation. The southern movement was linked to the Freedom Now movement in the North and to the revolutionary struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

“This was the world that Malcolm X developed in and responded to,” Benson said. “Malcolm talked constantly about the revolutionary struggle in the Congo. He was attracted to the revolutions in Algeria, Vietnam, China, and Cuba. Malcolm split from the Nation of Islam to participate in these struggles.

“In the last year of his life, Malcolm became a revolutionary leader of the working class on a world scale. He saw a clash coming in the world between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing, and he said it would not be a clash based on the color of one’s skin, as Elijah Muhammad had taught,” Benson explained.

To illustrate Malcolm’s political direction in the last months of his life, Bryon Turman cited a Dec. 2, 1964, interview with talk show host Les Crane. In response to the question, “What is your main effort toward now?” Malcolm explained that “the Organization of Afro-American Unity has reached the conclusion … that approaching our problem just on the level of civil rights and keeping it within the jurisdiction of the United States will not bring a solution. It’s not a Negro problem or an American problem any longer. It’s a world problem, it’s a human problem.”

Dr. Brown-Jeffy explained the importance of Malcolm’s emphasis on the struggle for human rights of all peoples. Human rights are not dependent on the laws of any given country, she said. The concept of citizenship is a way to exclude some people from the rights and protections of the law. Dr. Steele described Malcolm X as a social and political critic of the United States and the world.

A lively discussion ensued. Audience members asked the panelists about their views of how Malcolm would respond to the struggles of today. Steele said, “You can’t put words in a dead man’s mouth, but the current administration is waging two wars, and I feel certain that Malcolm would oppose them.”

After the program one participant expressed the view that she sees a one-sided Hispanic revolution coming in this country that will exclude Blacks. Others argued that many Blacks have participated in recent immigrant rights demonstrations defending foreign-born workers, which helps unify and strengthen the working class.
 
 
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Read, Sell, & Discuss: ‘Malcolm X, Black Liberation, & the Road to Workers Power’
Review notes ‘general appeal’ of ‘Workers Power’ book
The fight for a modern ‘land and labor league’  
 
 
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