"By Any Means Necessary"

On the 100th birthday of the human rights activist Malcolm X

Malcolm X was one of the most prominent figures of the US Black rights movement. He preached separatism and resistance against whites. It was only shortly before his death in 1965 that he adopted a more conciliatory tone. What traces did his ideas leave behind?

©Malcolm X Memorial Foundation

„And each of the pins represent a documented lynching of an African American.“

Eric, the guide at the Great Plains Black History Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, points to a display board on the wall: a map of the USA. Each red pinhead symbolizes a lynching of an African American, he explains - and only the officially documented ones.

„These are the documented lynchings, there are numerous of undocumented lynchings.“

In contrast to Texas, where a whole bunch of dots are clustered together, there are only three red dots in Nebraska, which is part of the Midwest. One of them stands for the bestial murder of Will Brown in September 1919, when the 40-year-old was accused of raping a 19-year-old white woman. A black and white photo shows his charred body on a burning pyre, surrounded by a horde of bawling white men.

„That was probably one of the few photos of a lynching in America.“

Six years after the lynching of Will Brown, Malcolm Little was born in Omaha on May 19, 1925 - he was to become known as the human rights activist Malcolm X.

A drive across the city, which nowadays has around half a million inhabitants, leads to the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation. A memorial plaque on the grounds reminds us that Malcolm X's birthplace once stood here.

Birth certificate and memorial plaque ©Malcolm X Memorial Foundation

At the Memorial Foundation, Shmeeka Simpson guides visitors through a large hall. She is a former tour guide and now a political lobbyist for the foundation. Paintings of Malcolm X and photos hang on the walls. Some of them show his parents. Earl and Louise Little were prominent members of one of the largest organizations of African-Americans in the USA. They believed in Pan-Africanism and black nationalism.

„Pan-Africanism is the ideology that black people who are the descendants of enslaved African people and the Pan-African diaspora are a nation”, explains Shmeeka Simpson. “And black nationalism means that as a nation we have the right to protect ourselves, provide for and educate ourselves. So Malcolm got his ideology from his mother and father who were members of the Marcus Garvey movement.”

In 1921, the Littles moved to Omaha with their three children and founded a local chapter of their organization. The Ku Klux Klan is not long in coming. At night, members of the Klan attack Louise Little, who is pregnant with Malcolm. The hooded men threaten the family - they should move away. Three years later, the Littles actually move to Michigan. However, this does not protect them from the Klan; their house is burned down. When Malcolm is six years old, his father, Earl Little, is found next to the railroad tracks, presumably murdered by the Klan. But the doctor certifies suicide. His mother - who now has seven children - lives in abject poverty and is later committed to a psychiatric institution.

Malcolm goes into foster care, goes off the rails and ends up in prison for almost six years at the age of 21. In his autobiography, he describes how he reads all the books he can get his hands on there. He joins the Nation of Islam, a black organization that represents a doctrine similar to that of his parents. At this time, Malcolm also changes his surname, which the family still has from the time of slavery, says Simpson.

“’Little’ was a slave name. So Malcolm – wanting to break these chains to the slave master – decided to take this last name to X.”

Malcolm X takes part in speech competitions organized by a charitable association for prisoners. This is how he learns the art of speech. After his release, the eloquent Malcolm X quickly rises through the ranks within the Nation of Islam. He is even seen as a possible successor to the founder and chairman, Elijah Muhammad. While Martin Luther King - at the same time - describes himself as a civil rights activist, Malcolm X, in contrast, attaches great importance to the fact that he is concerned with fundamental human rights.

„Malcolm was very, very clear that those were two different things.“

Malcolm X does not support King's Christian concept of turning the other cheek to whites. He is for self-defense. In the Memorial Foundation, you can listen to some of his speeches at an audio station.

“We are peaceful people, we are loving people. We love everybody who loves us. We are non-violent with people who are non-violent with us.

“Why are you fighting and dying to sit next to the white man on the toilet? Why not build your own community?’“

That was also a famous sentence by Malcolm X, Shmeeka Simpson tells the visitors. Then she asks everyone to close their eyes for a moment. Surprised faces, but everyone joins in. And listen as Simpson continues to speak:

“Imagine that you are you as you are today but you wake up in the middle of the civil rights movement 1963. And you look around and you see the dogs being set on the crowds, and the fire hoses drained on the children. Mass incarceration and destruction all around you. And you get a phone call. And it is Martin Luther King: ‘You’ve got to help us. Come stand with us, come march with us, link arms with us as we fight segregation!’ And as you think about that and hang up the phone, you get another phone call. And it’s Malcolm X: ‘We’d love for you to come up north, come visit one of our rallies, help us build a school, help build us these gardens, help us build a community where e can feel self!’ You hang up the phone - and now you have a decision: would you rather go down south and march with Martin Luther King? Or would you rather go up north and stay with Malcolm X?“

The visitors open their eyes again. Where would they go? There is no right or wrong answer, says Simpson, just two different paths with the same destination. “Many people think the two were enemies but that wasn’t true”, she continues. “Or: If it wasn’t for Malcolm, Martin Luther King’s movement would not have been so big.” Which she agrees. Malcolm X even spoke on that. He said: “If you are smart, you will listen and follow Dr. Martin Luther King – because if you don’t, you’ll have to do with me!“

Two important figures for the rights of black people in the USA. They have different approaches, but at the same time many things in common. Among other things, they were both murdered. The two met in person only once, in July 1964, when they attended the hearing on the Civil Rights Act in Washington. In a photo in the Memorial Foundation, the men shake hands amicably at this meeting. However, one searches in vain for a photo of Malcolm X with one of his closest friends: Cassius Clay, better known as world boxing champion Muhammad Ali. The two meet at a dinner in Detroit in 1962.

“Muhammad Ali only came to the Nation of Islam because of Malcolm X”, tells Shmeeka Simpson. And: “Malcolm X was trying to recruit Muhammad Ali. He thought that would allow Elijah Mohamed to be not so upset with him, and that maybe would help him in Elijah Mohamed’s good grace if the heavy weight champion of the world would join the Nation of Islam.” But this backfired.

Malcolm X gradually realizes that his political views and those of the chairman of the Nation of Islam are drifting apart. Elijah Muhammad wants the organization to remain politically neutral. Even when police officers shoot a member who was facing them with his hands up. In Malcolm X's eyes, he has thus abandoned the vision of a black nation. In March 1964, X announces his break with the Nation of Islam.

“Elijah Muhammad taught his followers that the only solution was a separate state for black people. When I began to doubt that he himself believed this was feasible, and I saw no kind of action designed to put it into existence - then I turned into a different direction.”

When the relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad comes to a head, Muhammad Ali gets caught in the middle. The young boxer eventually sides with the organization. After his death, Ali's eldest daughter reports that her father later bitterly regretted having abandoned his friend.

“Muhammad Ali was part of the climate that called for Malcolm X to be killed”, claims Shmeeka Simpson. “He backed up some of the things that the Nation of Islam would say: how Malcolm X was a traitor, how he deserved to die, how he was biting the hand that fed him”. And he refused to reconcile even though Malcolm reached out to him. “When they ran into each other in Africa”, tells Simpson, “Ali refused to speak to him. That just broke Malcolm’s heart because he considered Ali like his brother.”

Malcolm X is shot dead on February 21, 1965, a Sunday, during a speech in Harlem, New York. Someone starts an argument, someone else throws a smoke bomb, two diversionary maneuvers. Then a beefy man steps forward, pulls a sawed-off shotgun from his coat and shoots Malcolm X directly in the heart. Other assassins fire at him with pistols. This is how eyewitnesses describe what happened. The coroner later diagnoses 21 gunshot wounds. Malcolm X is 39 years old.

„I want people to understand the appreciation we locally have for Malcolm X.“

Terri Sanders in the editorial office of the Omaha Star, expresses how much the local black community in particular appreciates the famous son of their city today. The State of Nebraska officially designated May 19 as Malcolm X Day in 2024. Since then, there has also been a bronze bust of Malcolm X in the Hall of Fame of the Capitol in Lincoln, the state capital - the first to be erected for an African American.

Malcolm X's views, says Terri Sanders, were rejected by many in his day as too radical. The reason - she believes - was that Malcolm X did not belong to a Christian church, but to Islam. A religion that was foreign to many.

The Omaha Star, the only black weekly newspaper in Nebraska, was founded in 1938 by Mildred Brown. For some years now, the paper has once again been owned by a black woman: Terri Sanders. The journalist is an energetic 67-year-old with short white hair and a keen eye. She lived through the era of segregation herself. “There was a bus boycott in Omaha because they did not allow black bus drivers - which took place before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. I remember the riots, I remember seeing the smoke, seeing the police. I remember all of that.”

Mildred Brown reported on the boycott in the Omaha Star at the time. A lot has improved since then, says Terri Sanders. Discrimination and racism still exist, but they are more subtle. Sanders wants to set up a museum for black journalism in the editorial offices of the Omaha Star. It will be the first of its kind in the United States.

Malcolm X would probably be delighted that the black community in the city of his birth is so vibrant today and carries on his legacy.

And not only there.

Malcolm's concerns are still relevant, says DeForest Soaries, clergyman, author and speaker from New Jersey.

“The themes of self-identity, for example: know who you are. Making sure not to allow other people to define you. The theme of self-defense. Not expecting white people’s empathy to be the catalyst for bringing about change. These themes certainly resonates with the Hip Hop community. He uses such dramatic language that it lends itself to provocative poetry.”

His rapper colleague O'Shea Jackson, alias Ice Cube, is a particularly good example of this. Says Ijtihad Muhammad, a young hip hopper from Philadelphia:

“Ice Cube also spoke out about issues without a filter - and he did it with the same energy as Malcolm X. Through his music he talked about the black condition - and not only against what you would call oppression, but also about what, within the community, we might not see about ourselves.”

Ice Cube himself who first learnt about Malcolm X when he was 19 put it this way in an interview:

“When I saw him speak it kind of turned on a light in my head. I love the spirit, I love the attitude. I think his attitude really is the flavor of young black people in this country.”

Before the 2020 presidential election, the rapper, now 51 years old, did something unheard of for many: he drew up a “Contract With Black America”. He listed measures that he believed could close the education, health and prosperity gap between black and white Americans. He then presented the plan to the two major parties to decide who he would vote for. Cube broke an unwritten law that African Americans automatically vote Democrat. Malcolm X would have agreed with Ice Cube, says Baptist pastor DeForest Soeries.

“When you look back at the 1960s the most important articulation of Malcolm X was that black America should not be trusting – in either the Democrats nor the Republicans. And this was somewhere in contrast to the mainstream thinking of the civil rights leadership namely Martin Luther King who seemed to lean so heavily into the Democratic Party that the Democrats essentially were able to take Black people for granted in terms of votes.”

Malcolm X had formulated his warning against liberal and conservative whites as a parable of the fox and the wolf:

„When you study the structure of the Negro community, it is controlled by white liberals who actually differ from the white conservatives like the fox differs from the wolf.

Unlike the wolf, the conservatives, according to X, liberals would act friendly like a cunning fox. Ultimately, however, they too would only pursue their own interests.

Their appetite is the same, their motives are the same, only their methods differ.

Another musician, hip hopper Locksmith, also picked up on Malcolm X's parable of the fox and the wolf in his song America Part 2 in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election: Republicans would at least not even pretend to like black people. Worse than wolves are wolves in sheep's clothing. In other words, the liberals. Democrats.

DeForest Soaries says that Malcolm X's great achievement was to have given the black community such food for thought. That is why he was never part of mainstream Black America.

“It just wasn’t Malcolm’s style. He was much more a critique of America than an aspirant to be part of it. Malcolm’s impact has much to do with how black people think about ourselves. And how black people think about each other. His focus was on correcting the distorted images about ourselves that we had literally absorbed into our psyche. Dr. King’s focus was on transformation of society, Malcolm’s focus was on the transformation of black people’s mind.”

February 21, 2025, Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York. This is where Malcolm X was shot in 1965. The building is now the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center, or Shabazz Center for short. “Shabazz” was the surname Malcolm X gave himself after a pilgrimage to Mecca, Betty Shabazz Malcolm's wife since 1958. The couple's daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, professor of criminal justice in New York, runs the cultural center. The celebrations for the 60th anniversary of Malcolm X's death are underway.

„Through sister Betty and brother Malcolm we were taught to recognize that the struggle of the black people in America is and always has been fundamentally tied to the liberation movements sweeping across other parts of the world…”

With these words, the moderator announces the next speaker - Linda Sarsour, a Muslim Palestinian activist born in Brooklyn, New York. „Salam Aleikum we Rahma Allahu Barakatu! Be peace and blessings be upon you!”, Sarsour begins her speech. “This is how our dear brother El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz would have greeted you if he was in this room today”,

Malcolm X had actually called for support for the Palestinian people in Cairo during his travels through the Middle East in 1964.

„The situation in Palestine serves as a brutal reminder of the consequences of colonialism and the ruthless dispossession of indigenous people.“

X also visited the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. And he made it clear:

“Advocating for the rights of the Palestinian people is not synonymous with denying the rights and the security of the Jewish people.“

Nevertheless, the history professor and Hip Hop musician Butch Ware, also known by his Muslim name Bilal Ware, argues in a video interview that Malcolm X would have approved of the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. He refers to an interview where Malcolm X is being asked about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. “And he says: We never equate the ‘violence’ used to resist oppression with the violence that is used to impose it in first place.’ So Malcolm’s response would have been to affirm not only the right to resist but - I also say this - that colonized people have a moral obligation to resist”.

Butch Ware describes Malcolm X as his role model. His autobiography was the trigger for him to convert to Islam at the age of 15 and later study history. In Ware's understanding, the Hamas massacre was an “uprising” - and he equates the accusations against Hamas members with the accusations made against black people in times of segregation before they were lynched. „Rape allegations have proceeded almost every mass lynching in the history of the USA.“

This is historical misrepresentation, says Asaf Romirowsky. The historian is the managing director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. A non-profit network of academics which, according to its own statements, aims to promote “a fact-based discourse on the Middle East”. Romirowsky also includes the ideological link between the “Free Palestine” movement and Black Lives Matter.

“Black Lives Matter does not offer any window or ability to reconciliation between Blacks and Jews”, he says. The basket ball players Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Charles Barkley, on the other hand, who have ties with the Jewish community spoke out, how disconnected BLM is - versus the historical connections between Blacks in America and Jews. “Within the civil rights movement back in the 1960s, Jews were going down to work in the south to help with voters registration.”

Black Lives Matter draws on Malcolm X's theses of Black nationalism, the right to self-defense and systemic racism. During the demonstrations following the death of George Floyd, Ilyasah Shabazz counted a record number of quotes from her father on social media.

In contrast, says Asaf Romirowsky, Martin Luther King visited Jerusalem in 1959 and supported the Zionist movement. In his eyes, the civil rights leader was a bridge builder in this respect. “He made a significant effort to understand both sides of the conflict while meeting with leaders of both communities. The radicalization as it relates to individuals like Malcolm X they create a wedge between Jews and Blacks.”

Baptist pastor DeForest Soeries pleads for a differentiated view of Malcolm X's convictions. “Malcolm died as a sincere and devote Muslim, and there is no legitimate approach to Islam that would justify what happened on October 7”. He is convinced:

“Malcolm would not advocate this sort of violence perpetrated by anybody to anybody.”

Back to the memorial service for Malcolm X in the Audubon Ballroom, where he was gunned down sixty years ago - in front of his wife and four young daughters. Ilyasah Shabazz was two years old at the time. One week earlier, in the night of Valentine’s Day, their family home was targeted and a fire bomb was thrown into the nursery where Ilyasah and her sisters slept. They escaped unharmed. Yet a mere seven days later her family witnessed the unimaginable.

“My father was gunned down when he prepared to speak – right here in that location”, tells Shabazz. “My pregnant mother poised her body over my three sisters and me to protect us from gun fire and to shield us from the terror before our eyes.”

Three men are convicted of the murder of Malcolm X. Two proclaim their innocence. One confesses, but says he committed the crime with four other men, all members of the Nation of Islam. It was not until 2020 that a Netflix documentary revealed the names of the real murderers to the general public. The wrongful convictions are overturned, and the two men, who served more than twenty years in prison for being innocent, are awarded 36 million dollars in damages. However, one of them has been dead for more than ten years.

Malcolm X had long felt threatened by the Nation of Islam. However, when a poison attack is made on him during a visit to Cairo and France refuses him entry, he realizes that he has an enemy more powerful than the Nation.

At the time, Malcolm X was thinking about joining the civil rights movement. In Africa and the Middle East, he appeals to heads of state for support to accuse the USA of human rights violations against the black population before the United Nations. The then director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, warns of a “black messiah” who could unite the “black masses” behind him.

„Malcolm X was our manhood, our living black manhood, that was the meaning to his people..”, says the song Remembering Our Black Shining Prince. Hip Hop journalist and media activist Davey D. fuses excerpts from Malcolm X’s speech where he talks about revolution and questions whether or not Black people are ready to embrace it. The song ends with X’s famous words “…By any means necessary.”

In 2021, a former undercover agent confesses on his deathbed that the New York police and the FBI conspired to kill the black leader. Just a few days before the attack, he himself had tricked two of Malcolm X's bodyguards into committing another crime in order to arrest them - so that they could not protect Malcolm X in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

Malcolm X's daughters are now suing for 100 million dollars in damages. They are demanding a new investigation and call on the release of all redacted FBI files. They want to know why exactly their father had to die. Because this question remains unanswered to this day.

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This text was first published in German as a radio feature.