Angela, Malcolm, and Ron

In 1971, at the age of nine, I made my first politically motivated contribution. I was on my way home from what we called the “stationary store” around the corner where I would spend my allowance on comic books and candy, the two things most precious to me, particularly when consumed together.

I was approached by a man (could have been a teenager) who told me about Angela Davis, an innocent woman in prison who was facing imminent and horrible execution in California’s gas chamber simply because of her race and her political views. Did I want to contribute to her defense fund?  I imagine I was flattered by being part of such a “grown-up” conversation. I believed everything I was told and was deeply moved by Angela Davis’s plight and her heroism as described to me.

I think I contributed at least a quarter, maybe more. At the time, candy bars were $0.10 and comics $0.15, so whether I gave a quarter or fifty cents, the donation was to me a meaningful contribution measured by the currency of candy and comics.

When I returned home, I proudly told my parents what I had done. I can’t recall what they said, but it was disparaging about Angela Davis, and I remember rushing to my room in tears, angered by what I perceived as my parents’ brutal insensitivity.

Over the last fifty years, I hadn’t thought much at all about Angela Davis until recently when I saw her name on a list of “problematic” authors that Governor DeSantis cited when banning the teaching of an Advanced Placement course on African- American Studies in the state of Florida.

According to the DeSantis administration, Angela Davis was problematic because she was a “self-avowed Communist and Marxist.” By that logic, I suppose the writings and influence of Karl Marx on modern history should also be banned. Especially given the dire threat to American society posed by the American Communist Party, currently estimated to have as many as 5,000 members.

This memory of Angela (she had single-name status in the heyday of her fame) led me to read one of her 1970 speeches. I was not impressed with the force of her words as a spokesperson for the radicalism of the times. This led me to look for a better articulation of Black radicalism from that era, and I found it in Malcolm X’s signature speech from April, 1964, “The Ballot or the Bullet.”

It’s a remarkable speech both for the force of its words and for the moment in which it was given. Just weeks earlier, Malcolm had broken away from the Nation of Islam so he could participate in the political process of the Civil Rights Movement, an activity the Nation prohibited.

As well, Malcolm’s speech came at a time when LBJ’s landmark Civil Rights Bill was being held up by the opposition of Dixiecrat Democrats from the South.

It’s hard to summarize Malcolm’s The Ballot or the Bullet speech. It’s long and has many themes. And not unlike MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” its title in isolation is misleading if interpreted as a direct call for armed revolution, although there are sentences here and there that come close to doing exactly that.

Here’s one excerpt near the speech’s very start that gives a flavor for Malcolm’s muscular and aggressive tone as he also takes a non-subtle swipe at MLK’s iconic speech.

“When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare. We haven't benefited from America's democracy. We've only suffered from America's hypocrisy. And the generation that's coming up now can see it. And are not afraid to say it. If you go to jail, so what? If you're black, you were born in jail.”

There’s much in the speech that must have energized or enraged a 1964 audience. But to a reader or listener in 2023, there are sections that fall flat or seem anachronistic. One example: the hope that former colonies and formerly dominated countries of non-white peoples (e.g., China!) would join together at the United Nations to condemn America and push for the equality of Black Americans. Or the call for all Black Americans to vote as a monolithic voting bloc.

Yet, there is much in the speech that is presciently relevant to today. Malcolm called for black entrepreneurs to have their own businesses in their own communities as the best way to turn slums into prosperous places.

“…the economic philosophy of black nationalism only means that we have to become involved in a program of reeducation, to educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer, the community out of which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer….And then what happens? The community in which you live becomes a slum. It becomes a ghetto. The conditions become rundown. And then you have the audacity to complain about poor housing in a rundown community, while you're running down yourselves when you take your dollar out.”

Voter suppression in the South was a key focus of the speech of course, but Malcolm also said this:

“Up here in the North you have the same thing [as voter suppression]….They got a thing they call gerrymandering. They maneuver you out of power. Even though you can vote they fix it so you're voting for nobody.”

The Civil Rights Act passed in July, 1964. That next year Malcolm was assassinated at the age of 39, probably by members of the Nation of Islam. Thirty-nine was also the age of MLK when he was assassinated. Both men were only at the beginning stages of developing their immense intellectual gifts.  

I’d like to thank Ron DeSantis for inspiring this post. Without his ban I never would have read more about Angela Davis or Malcolm X.

Here’s a PDF of “The Ballot or the Bullet.”

https://sites.middlebury.edu/soan365/files/2013/02/Malcolm-X-The-Ballot-or-the-Bullet.pdf

Note: I am aware of Malcolm X’s extreme anti-Semitism, which was a core vice of the Nation of Islam. I’d like to think that with more time and maturity, he’d have changed his views