Remembering El Hajj Malik El Shabazz/Malcolm X 45 Years After His Death [Video]

» by Ice Pick Slim 17 February 23, 2010, 22:39pm

“It doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time, I am not against using violence in self-defense.  I don't call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence!”

This past Sunday marked the anniversary of the death of one of Black America's true freedom fighters.  A hero for justice and a major inspiration in the Hip-Hop community, Hip-Hop Wired celebrates the man who inspired many to fight for their rights and die if necessary for a little thing we now take for granted called "Freedom."

R.I.P.  El Hajj Malik El Shabazz/Malcolm X

[Learn some history after the break] [More]

The Audubon Ballroom (3940 Broadway) on 165^th Street is the location where cold-blooded assassins unleashed a fusillade of hot lead towards Brother El Hajj Malik El Shabazz on the tragic Sunday afternoon of February 21^st 1965.

Shortly after being introduced by Brother Benjamin, Shabazz was shot down - execution-style - in front of his pregnant wife, four little daughters and a contingent of 400 or so O.A.A.U. (Organization of Afro-American Unity) members, just as he stepped to the podium, greeting them with - “As-salaam-alaikum!”

Now renamed the ‘Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center', it houses many of the Black Nationalists' personal artifacts, such as books, letters in his own handwriting and videos of his speeches.  Every year, on the anniversary of his slaughter; admirers, surviving colleagues and sometimes family members of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz come out to the landmark building and pay homage to ‘our shining Black prince' and his wife for standing in the face of adversity for a cause.

Although 2 suspects were initially apprehended at the scene, the first one by some furious Shabazz supporters and  the other by the NYPD, right after the killing occurred, only Thomas Hagan a.k.a. Talmadge Hayer, was actually identified and charged for Shabazz' slaying at the time.  Hagan had been shot in the leg and stopped by one of Shabazz' bodyguards, which later was learned to be an undercover agent for the NYPD named Gene Roberts, who would also later go on to infiltrate the Black Panther Party as well.  Nothing was ever heard publicly about the other suspect.

Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson were collared a few days later, and all 3 men were eventually convicted and received 25 years-to-life sentences for the brazen daytime murder of the man formerly known as Malcolm X.

Throughout the entirety of the trial and ensuing 25 year sentences, Hagan always maintained that Butler and Johnson were both innocent, a fact which was also confirmed by Shabazz' Lieutenant – Cheikh Omar Ahmed – who was present at the Ballroom the Sunday Shabazz was assassinated.

“They [Butler & Johnson] were in the same Temple as us [previously], and had they been in the Audubon that day we would've noticed them,” he once clarified.  “There were actually 6 gunmen that day, not 3!”

Already an international figure, having spread knowledge about the plight of Amerikkkanized-Afrikans to the world during his travels throughout Afrika, Amerikkka and Europe - Minister Shabazz set the world as his stage when he delivered his dissertations.  Therefore, he was a major threat to those who benefit from Original people stayingsubservient & remaining in triple-staged darkness.

El Hajj Malik El Shabazz had returned to his Garveyite teachings, and was building relationships with Continental Afrikan leaders, successfully utilizing the Pan-Afrikanism paradigm initially set by Edward Wilmont Blyden.

In his “Ballot Or The Bullet” dissertation delivered in Detroit on April 12^th 1964, he concluded by addressing solutions…

“The only way we're going to solve it -- we gotta unite in unity and harmony, and Black Nationalism is the key. How we gonna overcome the tendency to be at each other's throats that always exists in our neighborhoods? And the reason this tendency exists, is the strategy of the white man has always been ‘divide and conquer.'   He keeps us divided in order to conquer us.

He tells you I'm for separation and you're for integration to keep us fighting with each other. No, I'm not for separation and you're not for integration. What you and I are for is freedom. Only you think that integration will get you freedom, I think separation will get me freedom. We both got the same objective. We just got different ways of getting at it!”

The Black Nationalist leader linked back up with Afrika and began addressing the problem at a much larger scale!  He once advocated,

“We don't appeal to the US Congress to interrogate structural racism inside the United States; we take that to the United Nations!” He added, “It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck.  Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture.  It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not.

But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless.  As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker.  It's only a matter of time - in my opinion - before it will collapse completely!”

The great historian - Dr. John Henrick Clarke – once assessed:

“When he internationalized the problem, by raising it from the level of civil rights to that of human rights and by linking up with Africa, Malcolm X threw himself into the cross fire of that invisible, international cartel of power and finance which deposes presidents and prime ministers, dissolves parliaments, if they refuse to do their bidding.

It was this force, I  believe, that killed Malcolm X, that killed Lumumba, that killed Hammarskjold.”

Often misunderstood as being violent, Malcolm X clarified the issue:

“It doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time, I am not against using violence in self-defense.  I don't call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence!” And added, “If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad.

If it's wrong to be violent defending Black women and Black children and Black babies and Black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her!”

At the very same location of his execution, approximately 8 months earlier, Shabazz  announced the formation of his new association, and on June 28^th 1964, during a lecture titled, ‘The Basic Aims and Objectives of the O.A.A.U.', he read:

“Its purpose is to unite Afro-Americans and their organizations around a non-religious and non-sectarian constructive purpose for human rights.”

By the first week of February 1965, Shabazz stated that a program which the O.A.A.U. was working on the previous month… “was designed to galvanize the Black masses of Harlem to become the instruments of their own liberation!”  Adding that, “The only solution to violence and bloodshed would be presented at February 15^th's O.A.A.U. meeting.”

The following week Shabazz' Queens home was firebombed on the 14^th.  That being the case, the circumstances surrounding that event were the main topic at the next day's get-together.  He'd go on to travel to Detroit before coming back to Harlem to share his group's program.  Allegedly he was also to publicly mention the names of some people whom he felt were plotting to kill him.

Obviously he never had the opportunity to deliver his ‘Basic Unity Program' dissertation, nor reveal those names, that day at the Audubon, but a copy of the planned speech reads…

“The program of the O.A.A.U. shall evolve from 5 strategic points which are deemed basic and fundamental to our grand alliance.  Through our committees we shall proceed in the following general areas.”

It then goes on to mention the importance of each individual category; Restoration, Reorientation, Education, Economic Security and Self-Defense; outlining each one in elaborate fashion.

Shabazz' speech concludes with:

“We must continue to internationalize our philosophies and contacts towards assuming full human rights which include all the civil rights appertaining thereto.  With complete understanding of our heritage as Afro-Americans, we must not do less!”

In his own revolutionary words –

“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today." "If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary!”

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