Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement by D'Weston Haywood

Author:D'Weston Haywood
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, United States, 20th Century, Language Arts & Disciplines, Journalism, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, African American Studies
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:56:44.995000+00:00

5 Walk the Way of Free Men

Malcolm X, Displaying the Original Man, and Troubling the Black Press as the Voice of the Race

Brother Frank 8X Lopez sold Muhammad Speaks on the streets of New York. The paper was the official news organ of the Nation of Islam (NOI), a faith-based black separatist organization led by Elijah Muhammad. Lopez was a member, as well as one of its leading salesmen for the paper.1 Muhammad Speaks was one of the “organizational publications” that convinced Robert F. Williams that a greater black militancy was on the horizon for the black press and freedom struggle. In fact, he called it one of the “most vocal” black papers of its day.2 Williams had confidence in Muhammad Speaks for good reason: he was friends with its founder, Malcolm X. The two met in 1958 and came to share a commitment to black self-defense, the redemption of black manhood, and eventually print and practice.3 And Malcolm was as unlikely a newspaperman as Williams was, if not more. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, his father was an outspoken Baptist preacher and Garveyite, who was thought to have been killed by white vigilantes when Malcolm was six years old. Malcolm’s mother struggled to hold their family together after his death and was later committed to a mental institution. Malcolm, their seventh child, was sent to foster care for a time. He fell into a life of crime by his midteens and was incarcerated for larceny and breaking and entering at twenty-one years old. He converted to the NOI in prison, and, paroled in 1952, he quickly became one of Muhammad’s leading ministers. By the late 1950s, he was Muhammad’s national spokesman.4 In terms of black people’s freedom struggles, Williams had pushed for complete integration. Malcolm instead promoted Muhammad’s vision for racial advancement, a message previously widely unknown until it was brought to the attention of the mass public on July 10, 1959, with the airing of “The Hate That Hate Produced.” This televised documentary introduced Malcolm, Muhammad, men like Lopez, and the NOI to America.5 The documentary ignited a firestorm of controversy around the NOI, but prompted Malcolm to respond by founding Muhammad Speaks in May 1960. The paper served as the organization’s propaganda organ, while marking the beginning of a robust media campaign in which Malcolm and men like Lopez were crucial. Muhammad Speaks helped counter critics of the NOI, attract interest and followers, and promote Muhammad’s vision for racial advancement before an increasingly militant black public. That vision was predicated on “Separation or Death.”6 This pithy but heady declaration reflected Muhammad’s eschatological beliefs, Black Nationalism, and demand for a separate black state.7 And Muhammad, NOI leaders, and Muhammad Speaks directed this message especially at black men. “I’m after you the black man.… You are the man that is asleep,” Muhammad asserted in the paper. “The time is long past for the black man to start doing some serious thinking about what he must do to become wholly free.

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