the rhetoric of malcolm x

7/27/2019 The Rhetoric of Malcolm X

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The Rhetoric of Malcolm XAuthor(s): Archie C. EppsReviewed work(s):

Source: Harvard Review, No. 3 (Winter, 1993), pp. 64-75Published by: Harvard ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27559632 .

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ARCHIE C. EPPSThe Rhetoric ofMalcolm X

The black radical Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19,1925, the son of Louise and Earl Little of Omaha, Nebraska. Louise was a

mulatto of Grenada, British West Indies, and Earl, a six-foot, very dark manfrom Reynolds, Georgia. Louise, a second wife, bore six children: Wilfred,

Hilda, Philbert, Malcolm, Yvonne, and Reginald. There were three childrenby a first wife: Ella, Earl, and Mary. Little had migrated with his family fromPhiladelphia to theMidwest, first toMilwaukee, then Omaha, and finally toLansing, Michigan. Several months later the family was forced tomove outof Lansing proper by thewhite supremacist Black Legion Society. The Societyhad set Little's house afire as punishment for his radical views on civil rights.Little built a four-room house two miles out of town. Malcolm spent hischildhood in this rural setting, surrounded by talk of "equal rights" andMarcus Garvey.In 1941 Malcolm went to live with a half-sister in Roxbury, a predominantly black section of Greater Boston. A few months after his arrivalin Roxbury, Malcolm X secured a job as a shoeshine boy at the RoselandBallroom in the Back Bay, but a hustler career seemed a tempting option tohim. Malcolm was soon peddling narcotics, but Roxbury proved to be toosmall for him. In 1942, he took a job as a railroad dining car porter, workingout of Roxbury and Harlem. He finally settled in Harlem and becameinvolved in criminal activities (robbery, prostitution, and narcotics). Malcolmdescribes the rules of the Harlem hustler society:

... Iwas a true hustler, uneducated, unskilled at anything honorable, and Iconsidered myself nervy and cunning enough to live by my wits, exploitingany prey. A hustler knows that if he ever relaxes, ifhe ever slows down, theother hungry, restless foxes, ferrets, wolves, and vultures out there with himwon't hesitate to make him their prey.

The hustler societies were fleeting social arrangements, constantlythreatened by wars that rendered every man another's enemy. Malcolm soonlearned to survive in the hustler's society. He lived up to his nickname ? thetough, urbane, devil-like "Detroit Red." In Roxbury, Malcolm was called"Red," but in the more urban-conscious New York, "Red" became "Detroit

Red." To the superstitious, red-headed blacks were literally sons of the devil,quick-tempered and capable of cruel violence. After a year in Harlem,Malcolm was officially initiated into the hustler society.

Malcolm X continued a life of crime upon his return to Boston,forming his own house-robbing gang in 1945. He was arrested for robbery inFebruary 1946 and sent to the Charlestown prison for seven years.

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While in prison, Malcolm became a follower of Elijah Muhammad,the leader of a small, urban prophet-cult, with branches inDetroit, Chicago,and New York. Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad communicated through themails, and Malcolm's sister and brother visited him in prison, urging him to

join Muhammad's cult. The relationship between the two men was similarin some respects toMalcolm's brief dependence on "West Indian Archie" inHarlem. The main difference, of course, was the religious dependence of abeliever on a prophet. Harlem hustler society was thoroughly secular andencouraged individualism and competition among members for the spoils ofcrime. Elijah Muhammad insisted that Muslims believe in him "100 percent,"as it was put. The cult was in actuality an autocratic brotherhood. Fullauthority was vested in Elijah Muhammad. In periods of crisis, the equalityof the brotherhood gave way to Elijah Muhammad's policies. Indeed, thiscontradiction in the Black Muslim movement pitted Malcolm X's younghustler friends against Muhammad's older cult members. Most important,ithelped distinguish themore secular Black Muslims from themore religious.On March 18, 1964 the Leverett House dining room in HarvardCollege was the scene of an extraordinary event. The speaker was MalcolmX. He had just resigned from the Nation of Islam, the Black MuslimMovement, to protest the ninety days of silence imposed upon him by its

leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He had been silenced for hiscomments about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Malcolm X had said,"Chickens come home to roost," ? in other words ? "you reapwhat yousow." He argued that a society that sows violence reaps violence. But he was

actually silenced because he had become a powerful alternative voice toElijah Muhammed. In a play about the last conversation between Malcolmand Elijah, the two men clashed over the direction of the Black MuslimMovement. Elijah thought Malcolm was going too fast in his effort to builda black nationalist wing of the civil rights movement. He was exercising toomuch discretion ? in effect challenging Muhammed for the primary leadership role. Malcolm was uneasy in that conversation, expressing his belief inhis leader but struggling with the inner freedom he had begun to experiencesince joining the Nation of Islam. Like many disciples, he was grateful to hisleader, to the man who had saved him from a life of crime, but now he wasready to strike out on his own. He was minister of the Black Muslim MosqueinNew York, one of themost influential pulpits in theNation. He also servedas Ambassador at Large from the Nation of Islam toAmerica, and eventuallywas a leader of the newly emergent black-nationalist thrust that wouldreshape the interior politics of black America. He was a successful speakerand a television celebrity; he was popular with the public. On the eveningthat he came toHarvard, the crowd wanting to get in to the Leverett dininghall was so large that we opened the Junior Common Room and in additionbroadcast the speech on to Mill Street.Ihad invited Malcolm X to speak at Leverett eight days after he brokewith the Black Muslims. "What was his next step?" Iwanted to know. Iwasasked why Iwanted him to come toHarvard. "He had become an important

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voice in that time," Ihad answered, "and had important things to say." Heaccepted the invitation.

Why was Idrawn toMalcolm X? Primarily because he embodied mystruggle. Itwas also because I could never lose sight of the great cost thatracial strife exacts from human dignity. Ifwhite people could only bringthemselves to understand why Malcolm X was so angry at them and at thecraven blacks he thought their stooges, then maybe they would learn torespect the black people with whom they shared this country. Malcolm Xseemed haunted by his anger?driven, even captured by it. Even as his viewsevolved and became more cosmopolitan, he was trapped by his earlierconversion rhetoric. He liked to call himself the "angriest black inAmerica."Iwould not wish his state of mind on any human being. I tried to describe hisinner logic in the Introduction of my book, and also what happened to this

man who saw the world through the spiritual darkness we experience whenwe allow racial animosity to rule our lives.But there were other, more personal reasons why this subject wasimportant tome. First, through my book Iwanted tomake my contributionto the achievement of black equality from the position of privilege that Ienjoyed. Maybe I could use the scholar's craft to shed light on a personalitywhom somany in the establishment feared or disdained. Perhaps an honestevaluation of Malcolm X and his ideas would strip American society to thebone, revealing our national pathos. Second, a first book, as this one was, isusually autobiographical: One seeks to grapple with issues of personalidentity and the meaning of life in the passionate days of youth. Like everyother American black, the issue of identity was central to my experience

during the civil rights movement. Iwas committed to racial integration, butIknew that some American blacks were being drawn to the black nationalistbanner and its separatist message that had been carried so persistentlythrough the years. Could we, through the voice ofMalcolm X, understand theorigins of that movement?

Third, Ihad known Malcolm X. We met in Boston in the early 1960s,just before the publication of C. Eric Lincoln's Black Muslims inAmerica. Wemet at lunch and he chided me impishly for putting cream inmy coffee(mixing white and black). It seemed a ridiculous observation on his part, andthe conversation that ensued was full of such remarks. He took full advantage of our time together to warn me of the perils of becoming what he

derisively called a "professional black." He was a unique and angry spirit,and, setting aside some of his rhetorical excesses, had something importantto say tome. I attended his first speech at Harvard. He had packed SandersTheatre with his Black Muslim followers. He frightened and puzzled manyof the students with his ominous talk of no longer turning the other cheek.From then on I followed his career in the media, and we met several moretimes at Harvard for long, discursive talks.InMalcolm X's semantic sphere, throughout his public career, therecontinually standout?word-slogans and word clues, denoting fear. Malcolm,the hustler, talked of wolves, foxes, ferrets, snakes, vultures; he described a

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jungle inwhich animals (asmen) hunted one another. As a Black Muslim,animals and cosmic bodies invaded Malcolm X's world, embodying Allah'sretribution against the whites and signalling the impending destruction ofAmerican society. When Malcolm X thought himself followed by assassinsin 1965, he located himself in a jungle and said, "Those who would hunt amanneed to remember that a jungle also contains those who would hunt thehunters." Indeed, Malcolm X's conception of society was based on two lawsof the jungle: one, the conflict between natural enemies; and two, the survivalof the fittest.

An analysis ofMalcolm X's language is away to begin to understandhis thought. His conception of society and history were often hidden behindimagery. This is not unusual for black orators. In fact, Ralph Ellison sees theuse of indirect reference of this sort characteristic of the black group as awhole. It is at once a defence against saying what one is really afraid to saybecause it is rebellious, and at the same time, a kind of secret language for theexpression of one's true sentiments. Malcolm X's language reflects mostspecifically the black experience inAmerica. In that sense, to follow Ellison,"it had to do with a special perspective on the national ideals and the nationalconduct, and with a tragicomic attitude toward the universe. Ithas to do withspecial emotions evoked by the details of cities and countrysides, with formsof labor and with forms of pleasure; with sex and with love; with food andwith drink; with machines and with animals; with climates and withdwelling; with places of worship and places of entertainment; with garmentsand dreams and idioms of speech; with manners and customs; with religionand art; with lifestyles and hoping; and with that special sense of predicament and fate which gives direction and resonance to the freedom move

ment."Malcolm X was most successful in describing the special sense of

predicament and fate of the black freedom movement. He had identifiedwhat he thought a paradox in Reverend Martin Luther King's non-violentcivil rights movement; a paradox, indeed, which was actually at the heart ofBlack Muslim policy instead. Malcolm X stated it this way: "Any time ashepherd, a pastor, teaches you and me not to run from the white man, and,at the same time, teaches us not to fight the white man, he's a traitor to youand me." Malcolm X assumed that a victim of racism had either to cringe orattack. He could not support what he called King's strategy of passiveneutrality ? for in accepting neutrality the black accepted the status quo.Malcolm X realized later that Elijah Muhammad had served the status quomore than Reverend King. Muhammad had kept the Black Muslims prayingin their temples, keeping them out of civil rights and away from the votingbooth while Martin Luther King actually led the black crowds of Birminghamin their protest marches. Malcolm X urged the Black Muslims to transformthis paradox into an active, if not violent, strategy. Indeed, when he got hischance, Malcolm X urged the blacks to adopt a full-fledged violent strategy,almost anarchist inmeans. As we shall see, Malcolm X's language was fullof descriptions of the violent nature of American society. He believed that the

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white and black races were atwar. He described a cruel conflict: the only waythat blacks could cope with the society was to become beasts of prey. He saidof the whites:Get the ape off our backs[It]used to be like an eagle, but now it'smore like a vulture. It used to bestrongenough to go and suck anybody's blood whetherthey were strong or not. But now it has become

more cowardly, like the vulture, and it canonly suck the blood of the helpless.

The whites often hid their true identity from the blacks, but Malcolm Xexposed them.

You can let those hooded people know_Those were ... snakes.

Those were twenty-one snakes that killed thosethree brothers inMississippi.... There isno law in any society on earth thatwould hold it against anyonefor taking the heads of those snakes.Itwas also difficult for the blacks to distinguish the black friend fromthe black enemy in this war. The blacks were also animals.... I hear a lot of you parrot what the [white] man says.

Our leaders ... are parrots.It's like running from thewolf to the fox.The use of images of nature to describe social conflict was also verycharacteristic of the hustler society that Malcolm X had belonged to in thecriminal underworld in Boston of that day. We find that nature emerges, for

example, in a famous blues song of the same period. Billie Holiday's StrangeFruit shows the same "consciousness of nature," as we find inMalcolm X'simagery, a consciousness inwhich nature appears tomen as a "completelyalien, all-powerful and unassailable force, with which men's relations arepurely animal and by which they are overawed like beasts ?" Paradoxically,Strange Fruit conveyed a protest against man's powerlessness, and by implication, a black protest against anti-black sentiment inAmerica. Strange Fruitdescribed a lynching in the South. The nature symbolism ? drawn fromSouthern agrarian idiom ? was also characteristic of black experience withsouthern whites. Ms. Holiday sang

about whitelynchers.

The blues song wasreal history, chronicling the great events of black history. Itwas at once areport of an event and evocative of a tragic mood.

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Southern trees bear a strange fruit,blood on the leaves and blood at the root.Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

strangefruit

hangingfrom the

poplartrees.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,for the rain to gather,for the wind to suck,for the sun to rot,for the tree to drop.

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Cosmic forces ? the sun, wind, rain? conspired with the lynchersto attack even the dead body. Even the tree rejected him: "Here is a fruit..for the tree to drop." The total passivity of the victim is vividly portrayed inthe images. Although described as a song of protest, Strange Fruit did noturge that the audience do anything about the injustice. Its protest was insimply pointing out that lynching had occurred. But Malcolm X's victimwould not have accepted this treatment passively. Malcolm X's natureimagery conveyed a strategy of defence and a strategy of retribution againstthe white lynchers and the white race as we find in these passages:

One can't unite bananas with scattered leaves.If [thewhite man] waits too long ... he will be responsible for letting acondition develop in this country which will create a climate that willbring seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of themlooking like something these people never dreamed of.

In his speech of November 10,1963, given before the Detroit conference of northern civil rights leaders, Malcolm X implied that blacks shouldcease being subservient and become like beasts of prey. Only by adopting thisstrategy could they become truly free. He told the blacks, "You came toAmerican on a slave ship, in chains like a horse or cow or a chicken-Thewhite man in American is a wolf and the black nothing but a sheep."

A great deal of passion lay behind all this rhetoric. In the passageabove Malcolm X actually repeated his point several times, as he often did.John Illo, in his article,"The Rhetoric of Malcolm X," argues that "the frequentrepetitions inMalcolm X's rhetoric... are communications of the passion thatis not satisfied by single statement, but that beats through the pulse." HereisMalcolm X repeating himself again, with the image of blood shaped overand over again: "As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. Hesent you toGermany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight theJapanese, you bled. You bleed forwhite people, but when it comes to seeingyour own church being bombed and little black girls murdered, you haven'tany blood." The listener is taken into the overwhelming picture of thedestruction of human bodies. Quickly he is taken even further into the midstof Malcolm X's bestiary. The black listener becomes a trained "dog." Itwas

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not thatMalcolm X wanted the blacks to reject the cruelty of this bestiary. Hesimply wanted the black "to bark and bite" of his own free will. "You bleedwhen the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; andyou bark when the white man says bark."Observers generally agreed that Malcolm X's oratory was veryeffective on a black audience. Indeed, John Illo viewed Malcolm X's rhetoricas performing the function of actual revolution. Illo believes that "rhetoric,like revolution, is away of redefining reality." He saw Malcolm X using thecrossing of opposing ideas, "not deceptively, not to confound realities, but toexplore the calculated fantasies of the American press, to untangle thecrossing of image and reality." Malcolm X once put it this way:

... you end up hating your friends and lovingyour enemies_The press is so powerful in its image-making role, itcan make a criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim looklike he's the criminal... If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have

you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the peoplewho are doing the oppressing.In technique, Malcolm X "wished to demonstrate rather than sug

gest, he preferred.. the analogy to themore condensed and poetic metaphor...." Illo is worth quoting at length on this point:

Metaphors...restricted in number, often suggested truth,

like theanalogies,by fusing image and symbol, as inpoetry: Blake's little black thing amid thesnow is sensuously and spiritually black, the snow sensuously and spiritu

ally white.

Malcolm X used the same deliberate ind?termination of perception in thisimage by which he characterized white immigrants inAmerica:

Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing is already anAmerican.

"In trying to defend the thesis that the [black] Muslims were a forcein the black movement though numerically insignificant," Illo continues,"Malcolm [X] compared them with the Mau Mau, then condensed an implicitanalogy to ametaphor and, with characteristic ... simplification, expandedand explicated themetaphor into analogy." Malcolm X used a halting styleof delivery in such passages, heightening the dramatic impact of his repetitions. 'The Mau Mau was also a minority," he began, "a microscopic

minority, but itwas the Mau Mau who not only brought independence toKenya... but itbrought it?that wick. The powder keg is always larger thanthe wick ... If s the wick that you

touch that sets thepowder

off."Malcolm X's images of the blacks were always dual-images, usually

denoting strength and weakness. Malcolm X used the images that marked hisoutlook as hustler and, toward the end of his life, as the "African in exile" in

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America: the jungle, the prison, the lost, happy state of pre-slave life inAfrica.All these images were projected on Africa. One catches a glimpse of hissadness over the black state of impotence in his assessment of the effect whichthe old image of Africa had on American blacks. Here he was concerned withthe black's lack of pride and with the Africa he came to think of as hishomeland.

When Malcolm X spoke of Africa, he also spoke in very personalterms. He believed that blacks had been taught that:Africa ... [was] a jungle, a wild place where people were cannibals, nakedand savage in a countryside overrun with dangerous animals. Such animage of the Africans was so hateful to [blacks] that they refused to identifywith Africa. We did not realize that in hating Africa and the Africans wewere

hating ourselves. You cannot hate the roots ofa tree and not hate the

tree itself. Blacks certainly cannot at the same time hate Africa and lovethemselves. We blacks hated the African features: the African nose, theshape of our lips, the color of our skin, the texture of our hair. We could onlyend up hating ourselves. Our skin became a trap, a prison; we felt inferior,inadequate, helpless.

He thought a favorable image of Africa was a source of strength forthe black. Malcolm X reinterpreted the idea of Africa as a jungle. "Africa wasa jungle," indeed, but as Malcolm X claimed, itwas "rich, a jungle is only aplace that's heavily vegetated ? the soil is so rich and the climate is so goodthat everything grows, and it doesn't grow in season?it grows all the time.""The achievement of Malcolm X," Illo continues, "... seems marvelous. Someone had to rise and speak the fearful reality, to throw the light ofreason into the hallucinating world of the capitalist and biracial society thatthinks itself egalitarian, that thinks itself humanitarian and pacific. But itwasunexpected that the speaking should be done with such power and precisionby a russet-haired field black translated from conventional thief to zealot andat the end nearly toMarxist and humanist." Illo has surely claimed toomuch.The actual effect of Malcolm X's rhetoric can only be determined by measuring the response Malcolm X achieved. Observers have generally agreed thatthe response was overwhelming with black audiences. The hard question toask is, however, is "what was the basis of that almost magical communicationbetween Malcolm X and his black audiences?" The basis of that communication cannot be fully discerned as yet, forwe have not even begun research onthis aspect of Malcolm X's biography. Tentatively, I think that what Illosuggests elsewhere in his essay is in the right direction. Illo's definition ofrhetoric is the place to begin. "Rhetoric is... poeticized logic, logic revisedby the creative and critical imagination recalling original ideas." Illo returnedagain to the importance of the integrity of the "original idea" in his essay: "Inthe rhetoric ofMalcolm X, as in all genuine rhetoric, figures correspond to thecritical imagination restoring the original idea and to the conscience protesting the desecration of the idea ...." In this way, rhetoric redefines reality.Some argue that toward the end of his life Malcolm X's views were

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converging with those of Martin Luther King. Others say that he remains tothis day the only authentic voice of America's black underclass ? momentarily silent but waiting, full of anger, for the right moment to erupt. You mayrecall the Mike Wallace television special "The Hate That Hate Produced,"which told the story of Malcolm X and his emergence as one of the most

powerful and disturbing black voices of the twentieth century. It is still arelevant voice today.Malcolm X is the great puzzle of the civil rights era, perhaps becausehis achievement was the most important: the "inner emancipation" of theblack people. To achieve this breakthrough, he told his fellow blacks howslavery still defined the relationship between them and thewhites. Unlike hispredecessors, Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammed and the back-to-Africamovements, he never shied away from claiming for blacks the right to seekretribution for the way white Americans had treated them.Malcolm X sought to carve out a special place for a nationalistalternative, one that was at least dialectically linked with the then-activistcivil rights movement. Certainly King's achievements for civil rights hadbeen impressive. The year before, he had stood before an enormous crowdat the March onWashington and delivered one of themost stunning speechesinAmerican history. The crowd that gathered to hear him on that sweltering

August day was the last evidence of a powerful coalition of blacks and whiteliberals that would win the great voting rights and employment victoriesthrough the legislative process. The March onWashington was themovemenf striumph. It signaled a new political presence that would reshape the politicallandscape in the years ahead. From King's initiative new claimants within theblack middle class were ready to reach out to awhole range of mostly whiteconstituencies, including universities, financial institutions, political coalitions, and political parties. It remained for someone to speak for the blackdispossessed and towarn that they did not share in themiddle classes' newlywon access. Malcolm X spoke for those who were left out.No assessment of Malcolm X should neglect to recount his courage.In person, he was considerate, sometimes courtly in manner, and neverabusive in debate. He also continued to grow

and to allow his vision toexpand. Before his final appearance at Harvard, he had completed hisobligatory pilgrimage toMecca, where he saw amixture of races and colors.The experience transformed him. It reaffirmed his international outlook, andled him to view it in the context of the worldwide struggle for human rights.

He sought to place this cause before the United Nations.Throughout most of his life,Malcolm X thought himself confined tothe black world. The canopy above him was the architecture of the black

ghetto; the bare wooden boards of shabby apartments and the old brownstone houses that were the hallmarks of the urban black areas of the 1930s. Itdid not matter thatMalcolm X had lived amuch more cosmopolitan life sincebecoming Elijah Muhammad's National Minister in 1961. Malcolm X seemedto think he continued to live in the old setting of his early adult life inRoxburyand in Harlem. The urban black crowds of the city seemed to surround him

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or to fill his imagination even when he was not on a platform before them orwalking along the streets of the ghetto.Malcolm X never forgot the people and ideas of his past. Itwas aworld full of tough realities and built on a social structure weak of socialpathology. The black world inwhich Malcolm X lived and thought was theunderside of America.

Iwas challenged to begin this inquiry into Malcolm X's life by EricHobsbawm's book, PrimitiveRebels, a study of radical leaders inpeasant areasand urban centers. He has the following to say about the seemingly irrationaland undisciplined revolutions in our times:It is not always easy to recognize the rational political core within millenarian

movements, for their very lack of sophistication and lack of an effectiverevolutionary strategy and tactics makes them push the logic of the revolutionary position to the point of absurdity or paradox... Without wishing tomake [the movement] appear more sensible and less extraordinary than itoften is, it is advisable for the historian to appreciate the logic, and even therealism ? if the word can be used in this context ? which moves them, forrevolutionary movements are difficult to understand otherwise.

Malcolm X read themodern world correctly. The chief characteristicof modern life was that "action develops under great stress." Black life hasalways developed in a crucible.The third? and final? Harvard speech was an intensely personalspeech. Although it alternated between romanticism and realism, it conveyed an intense search by Malcolm X for a humane view toward whites.A dispute occurred inMalcolm X's mind about "the existence of amoral order in a cruel and irrational world." The dispute went on inShakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and inHamlet. Ironically, Malcolm X usedthe example of Hamlet in the third Harvard speech to symbolize the disputewithin him and to justify his call for violence. For Malcolm X, Hamlet had aright tomurder because he had been wronged. "There was another man backin history," Malcolm X began, obviously comparing himself, "whom I readabout once, an old friend ofmine whose name was Hamlet, who confronted,in a sense, the same thing our people are confronting inAmerica." Hamletwas debating whether he could be himself, Malcolm X argued. Malcolm Xclaimed that an obvious strategy also lay before the black and before him. Hesaid, "as long as you sit around suffering the slings and arrows and are afraidto use some slings and arrows yourself, you'll continue to suffer."Ossie Davis, in Malcolm X's eulogy, called Malcolm X the blackpeople's Black Prince. So the world of Malcolm X and the world of Hamletwere similar to Davis at least. But, as Kott suggests in Shakespeare OurContemporary (cited on the next page), Hamlet can be interpreted in a numberof ways. At first, we must not be bothered by the juxtaposition of the medievaland modern world by Ossie Davis ? or by Malcolm X for that matter. Whatmatters was that a black man was trapped in exile in the ghetto. Hamlet, in

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his turn said that Denmark was a prison. He was in exile in his own country,in his own castle. Malcolm X said America was a prison for him; he was inexile in his own country, and was suffering because of it. What a fate forMalcolm X; he was more and more on his own.When Malcolm X came to the second Harvard speech he was surrounded by six black guards. When he came to the third and final Harvardspeech he came alone.Malcolm X's Hamlet was amoralist, a philosopher, and an intellectual ."The moralist," Kott contends in his brilliant book, "was unable to drawa clear-cut line between good and evil.... The intellectual [was] unable to findsufficient reason for action: [and to] the philosopher, the world's existencewas amatter of doubt. vTo be' means for [Hamlet] to revenge his father andto assassinate the King; while vnot to be' means ? to give up the fight."

Malcolm X, the black hustler now reformed prophet and politician, wasdistinguished by his capacity for thought and for action. Malcolm X travelledthrough all of these roads: moralist, intellectual, and philosopher. Heresolved Hamlef s dilemma at least in thought, if not in deed.The phenomenon of Malcolm X is not unique in traditional ormodern society. He is quite similar to other societal rebels and bandits thatappeared usually in pre-industrial societies and especially in pre-politicalsituations. These figures usually appear inmillenarian movements that seekto transform groups or social systems by radical religious rules and the like.The social historian Eric Hobsbaum, writing about Europe, and Christopher

Hill, a specialist in 17th-century revolutionary England, have described thesepersonalities and movements in their books Primitive Rebels and The WorldTurned Upside Down.The early stories about Malcolm X resemble this social type. Therebel usually has a criminal background where it is unclear whether theimprisonment was deserved or was a miscarriage of justice. There is aconversion, gradual, or through a revelatory experience. A state of illiteracyis transformed into compelling rhetoric ? through prose or poetry andsometimes into elegant literature, as with John Bunyan. There is a heroicelement in the life story and aspects of gallantry.

A similar story circulatedabout Malcolm's rescue of a lady from the police in a Boston bar. Heapparently whisked her away before the police could arrest her, put her in ataxi cab, paid the fare, and sent her home. Word of this rescue spreadthroughout the black community and among the police. It ismy assertionindeed that hustler societies, from which he came, were based on heroic codesof this kind. It ismy argument that the later Malcolm X was still influencedby his earlier membership in the hustler community. What ismore, the storyof Malcolm X, to follow a comment by a colleague, Prudence Steiner, is aboutepic sagas and myths that record how men and women transform societiesthrough heroic action, sometimes for good and others for ill.It remains to be seen how Malcolm X's contribution will, in the end,

be evaluated. We know for the moment that his life story is of compellinginterest to Americans of all colors. We understand that he represented great

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potential and had he survived, might have been a voice for the reconciliationof the races, based on a realistic assessment of the nature of the blackexperience.

This lecture was given at the Harvard Divinity School on November 5,1992. Itwasdrawn in part from the introductory essay "The Paradoxes of Malcolm X," whichappeared inMalcom X: Speeches atHarvard edited by Archie Epps (Paragon House,October 1991).

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the rhetoric of malcolm x

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