February 16, 2005

Forty years after Malcolm X's murder on Feb. 21, 1965, he remains a powerful force. Evolving from a menace to society to a militant black nationalist, Malcolm X ended his life as an agent of healing.

Malcolm X was born in 1926 as Malcolm Little. He went from being known as "Detroit Red" and a life of crime in the teeming streets of Detroit, Boston and New York City to "Satan," a religion-cursing convict. From there, he became a fiery minister for the race-focused Nation of Islam. Finally, he turned into Malik El-Shabazz, a tactful Sunni Muslim with an international portfolio of reconciliation.

Although several assassins' bullets felled him on Feb. 21, 1965, in New York City's Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X's cultural currency has only increased in the last four decades.

The hip-hop community has found him particularly relevant. A famous 1965 photograph of Malcolm X holding an M-1 carbine and furtively looking out of his window inspired the cover shot on one of the genre's most pivotal early albums, "By All Means Necessary," by Boogie Down Productions.

Malcolm's forthright style and "no sellout" attitude played a formative role in hip-hop's evolution. His defiant rhetoric feeds the fire of black nationalist rap groups, and the gangster lifestyle that predated his prison conversion fuels the fantasies of hip-hop's "gangsta rap" subgenre.

The name Malcolm X gets respectful nods from today's black youth, and his image still packs iconic power. The cover of "The Tipping Point," the latest CD from the Roots, one of the most critically acclaimed hip-hop groups, has an illustration of Malcolm X from his "Detroit Red" days, just before he entered prison.

That time represented a tipping point when the man born as Malcolm Little began metamorphosing from a street hustler into an ascetic evangelist for the black freedom struggle.

He tipped again in 1964 when he angrily left the black supremacist Nation of Islam to make his own mark.

Following Malcolm's break in 1964, enmity grew between him and the Nation of Islam leader, Elijah Muhammad. Most members of the group hated Malcolm for "defaming" Muhammad's name. An FBI memo, uncovered during a congressional probe of the agency's COINTLPRO program, takes credit for fueling the factional dispute that led to Malcolm's death.

For several years there was also a low-intensity feud between Malcolm's followers and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who long had been rumored to have a role in the 1965 assassination. Farrakhan has always denied it, though he has admitted to poisoning the atmosphere that led to the killing.

Farrakhan and Malcolm's now-deceased widow, Betty Shabazz, reached a public reconciliation during a 1995 meeting at the Apollo Theater in New York City's Harlem.

Malcolm's assassination is still a sore spot for many. Three men, all Nation of Islam members, were convicted of his murder. But only one, Thomas Hayer, has confessed, and he insisted the other two were not involved. He later implicated four other Nation of Islam members who were never arrested.

When Malcolm X was gunned down at 39, he had been a public figure for only about a decade. His many post-Nation of Islam shifts have allowed a wide range of partisans to claim his legacy. It has also allowed a host of admirers to find something in common with this charismatic man.

Salim Muwakkil is senior editor of the Chicago-based In These Times magazine (www.inthesetimes.com), and a contributing writer to the Chicago Tribune. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.