Brother Malcolm

By Judah
There is a new biography on Malcolm X that just hit stores by a celebrated author named Manning Marable. The title of the book is Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. This book is suppose to be Marable’s life work and that in itself is something that I can truly respect. When you dedicate yourself to a craft and spend endless hours of dreg work perfecting it, I can admire that. This book is suppose to shed more light on the life and death of one of our most important civil rights activist brother Malcolm.

Before we get into the controversy behind the book I’d like to share how Malcolm personally effected my life even though he died decades before I was brought into this world. My favorite rapper by the name of Nas would had a tendency of teaching in his rhymes even though he didn’t always intend to do so. He would rap about topics such as knowledge of self, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and supreme mathematics. Since he was my favorite MC I became fascinated by the subject matter that I never even heard of. As the inquisitive teen I was, I researched everything I could about the subject. In my research I came across the 5 Percent Nation and learned about their “Lessons”.

In learning the lessons I found that there were somethings I agreed with and some that I didn’t but it was the first time I came across points of views that were different from my own and those in my surroundings. From there I learned about the founder of the movement who went by the name Clarence 13x. He was the first person who taught these lessons to the masses outside the Nation of Islam.

Clarence 13x, before he started to bring about the movement  of the 5 Percenters, he was a member of the Nation of Islam. During this time he was a member of the mosque where Malcolm X was a minster. This was the first time I had heard about Malcolm X that wasn’t in a text book where he was was portrayed as a renegade or hateful man. It was another point of view of his life that I had not seen before. People love them some Martin and equally love to throw some shad on Malcolm.

During this particular time HBO started to play Malcolm X the movie starring Denzel Washington. It instantly became one of my favorite movies. This is probably Denzel’s greatest role. He really dug deep and played that role well. If he was ever to win an Oscar it should have been for that masterful portrayal rather than him playing a dirty cop in Training Day.

At this time I am a freshman in college and my brother called  my cell phone telling me about this book that he read. It was Malcolm's Autobiography as told by Alex Haley. The next week I come back from a dorm party and my roommate is sitting in his room reading the book. We never really talked about the subject before so I thought it was odd that he was reading something that I had been considering picking up also. A little later my girl friend at the time tells me she is thinking about reading book also. It is the same case in that we didn’t talk much about the subject expect some small talk here and there.

So now all of these people in my everyday life individually take it upon themselves to read this book. It was at this time my turn. So over the holiday break I open up the book and started to read. After I put down the book my life was never the same.

I value two books in my life. One being the King James bible from which I learn of the concept and love of God, the impact of sin, and repentance. The other book is The Autobiography of Malcolm X. In this book I learned about the importance of being well read, understanding history, respecting the concept of time, and how to be a man of character in this world. Passion....I learned a great deal about passion.

In a nutshell I value Malcolm. I have reread the book probably a dozen time and could most likely break down his life of the top of the head because I can appreciate and understand his worth to the world.

Now, there is a new book about the life of Malcolm and there is a bit of controversy lingering. There are many claims that this brook brings about but the one that I would like to focus on is his sexuality. The author states Malcolm had many homosexual relationships throughout his childhood and early adulthood while he was hustling in the streets. He also claims that he preformed sexual favors to men for money.

Personally after reading his first biography with Alex Hailey I understood the nature of his hustling in the sense that Malcolm had done and seen everything under the sun in the mean streets of Detroit. He was coked out of his mind and lived that lifestyle. In jail he was able to sober up and learn a new way of life that helped him become the man he was meant to be. After he joined the Nation of Islam he eventually met his wife by the name of Betty and had several children. Does this mean he stopped being Gay? I don’t know if he was or was not but I can say that one shouldn’t look at such things in focus. The light of Malcolm was his teaching and work within civil rights.

He had a deep love for his fellow man and died trying to undo 300 years of conditioning. Whether he liked men or women has nothing to do with his contribution to society nor should he be the poster boy of a sexual movement. My hope is that this new book will spark an interest in his life that will encourage people to examine his life and learn something. If not learn, form an educated opinion as to why you may not agree with him based on factual information.

Civil Rights vs. Gay Rights Movement? No comparison...

By Judah

I want to make this as clear as possible so there is no confusion:

I 100% believe in free will and our ability to do whatever we feel in our hearts to do.

If you want to lie, cheat, or steal that is fine by me.

If you want to live a holy life that is fine by me.

If two women or two men wish to spend their lives together that is A-OK in my book.

In life, God gives us choices, but those choice also have consequences.

What is not OK with me is comparing the struggles of American slavery, the raping of the black women, lynchings or Jim Crow to the gay rights movement.

I personally support anything that is positive and makes people happy, but when you compare it to something as real as African suffering and turmoil--I have a problem with that.

I had the privilege to learn about my family tree from my great grandfather when he was still alive. We talked about my line all the way from my niece to my great-great grandmother. We talked about her extensively, and her life during a specific conversation from which he revealed to me where she was from and where she was owned. This place was two miles up the road from where we were having lunch. This wasn’t some far off place in “Never Never Land”…This was right down the street. Another human being owned my grandmother less than 150 years ago. We talked more about her life, and the more I learned, the more it became very real to me, because I could put a name to the struggle.

Today there is a new form of civil rights going on. People who are gay wish to be married and have the benefits that come with the territory of being married. I’ve read in the media and the news about Gay Rights activists protesting the black community for not voting with or supporting the movement overwhelmingly or as a whole. Then a firestorm of media on the major networks asked why black people can’t see the correlation between the Civil Rights and Gay Rights movements.

It boggled my mind how the media, and now Gay Rights activists could compare the discrimination and suffering blacks faced to not being able to be married... So I had to turn the channel. I think back to my father and mother going to segregated schools, the fact that my great grandfather has green eyes, and that the “sacred” Constitution of the United States didn’t consider blacks whole human beings..

These thoughts don’t enter my mind on a daily basis, but when this topic pops up I get a little hot. People have a hard time understanding what really went down in the last 300 years and it bothers me. Check out ROOTS, THEN rethink those correlations.

An Oklahoma gem hidden from the history books

By Samson
The story of thousands killed in an act of terrorism on American soil changed the lives of an entire people. In one fell swoop, a statuesque financial institution was reduced to ashes and rubble, the bodies of men, women and children along with it. While the September 11th attacks shook this great nation to its core, the story I’m referencing happened 80 years before 9/11 and hasn’t been mentioned in any textbook I’ve ever read.

Now if 9/11 came to mind when I described the story above, no one could blame you, but we already know the story behind those attacks. The history lesson I’m imparting today claimed more lives than 9/11, crippled an internationally established financial system and was a mini holocaust of black people in the United States that you would never know about unless you researched it on your own.

Black Wallstreet, also referred to as The Negro Wallstreet or “Little Africa,” was one of the wealthiest black communities America had ever seen, set in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the turn of the 20th century. I’m not talking PG County wealthy, they’re “rich” over there, but Black Wallstreet was one of the most unique institutions I’ve had the pleasure of learning about.

Because blacks were far from equal citizens during the Jim Crow era, they often weren’t allowed to patronize the businesses of whites. As a result this community sprung up in Oklahoma so that blacks could function and thrive. Blacks owned the infrastructure in this community, which included over 600 businesses and 36 square blocks. I’m talking doctor and lawyer offices, medical schools, a bus system, two movie theatres, a hospital, post office and a multitude of restaurants, shops and other businesses—all black-owned. In fact, Oklahoma had only two airports at this time in the entire state, yet six blacks in this particular community owned airplanes. The community also published its own newspaper that reported local, state and national news.

A 2002 study showed that blacks, who made up 12% of the country’s population, spent $38 billion on clothes, electronics and furniture. In the Black Wallstreet community, the dollar circulated often, but only left that community up to once per year. It was a community of black people earning money, creating jobs, educating and providing for each other, with all of the money staying within their own community. Power doesn’t even begin to describe it.

They didn’t blame or rely on the “white man”--they had a serious need and provided for it. And let’s be real, we have some grounds to complain about not always getting our fair shake today, but in the early 1900’s, blacks were being lynched like nobody’s business and the word “nigger” was printed in newspapers as if it were fact. The eras don’t compare, but even facing those circumstances, they created a titan of a community and supported each other. A community of blacks did what people of African descent have done in America for years, turning the worst possible circumstances into a positive. In this case, they broke out of the system that hated them and created their own system, built on education and business and supported each other. It was beautiful.

On June 1, 1921, however, the attacks which should forever live in infamy occurred. Jealousy reared its ugly, and in this case, fatal head. The Ku Klux Klan lead an attack on the community, bombing it from the air and attacking from the ground, as many whites from neighboring towns looked on or participated. Remember the 9/11 reference earlier? Some 2,700 died in the World Trade Center attacks. In the Black Wallstreet attacks, 3,000 people (all black) were killed, and hundreds of businesses destroyed—all in less than 12 hours.

I’m not going to spell out the reason we’ve all probably never heard of this incident, because I think it goes without saying. This is a story that all Americans should know, because like the old adage says, if you don’t know your history, you’re doomed to repeat it. Every black American should know this story and teach it to their children, so that they understand that anything is possible through education and hard work. That if you come upon success, you should create opportunities for your family so that they don’t have to ask for anything from anyone. Africans, Asians and Indians come to our country and set up these types of communities, because they don’t want to rely on the system to provide for them. There’s nothing stopping other American born citizens from doing the same.

I mean, think about it. Imagine living in New York City and not worrying about a cab driver giving you a ride, because the taxi fleet is owned by a brother who noticed that discrimination was happening and started his own company. Scratch that. Imagine not having to worry about how your “blackness” is perceived when you’re in Bank of America trying to get a loan to buy a house, because you didn’t bother going to Bank of America at all. Instead, you go to the black owned bank your friend told you about and take out a loan with them. That’s power.

The story of Black Wallstreet is bittersweet to me. I’m proud to hear about such an affluent black community that was created based on sheer will and need, while at the same time saddened that we never got to see how the community, which conducted global business only a few decades removed from slavery could have thrived today if it wasn’t cut short.