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Malcolm, Martin, and the Black Jeremiadic Cry
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10656 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1993 |
3,899 Words |
| Author
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Bernard W. Bell
Bernard W. Bell is professor of English at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst. His latest book is The Afro-American
Novel and Its Tradition (1987). |
Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, Satan, Malcolm X, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz: Does the real complexity of Malcolm's changing identities and multifaceted personality emerge in Spike Lee's film? More than three hours long, it cost more than $30 million. Which image is being crassly and paradoxically exploited by the commercialization of the letter X? Is it white America's black demagogue of racial separatism and violence? Or is it black America's shining prince of black pride and self-defense by any means necessary? Or was Malcolm both of these--and more--as the fearless, eloquent, and legendary urban black folk hero and Muslim separatist alternative to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Christian conciliatory, nonviolent integrationism? How do we interpret Malcolm's repeated yet unacknowledged refrain: "It is not a case of wanting integration or separation, it is a case of wanting freedom, justice, and equality." How do we explain the complex significance and relationship of Malcolm and Martin (whom some younger civil rights activists wryly call "De Lawd") to the black jeremiadic cry of our cities?
"God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time," a black jeremiadic voice cried out during the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s. Drawing on the Bible and a slave song for his passion and purpose, James Baldwin reminded his generation of their individual and collective responsibility for keeping faith with our covenant with God and American constitutional principles. Two years after the historic civil rights march on Washington and the publication of The Fire Next Time, on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem by several members of the Nation of Islam. On August 11, 1965, south-central Los Angeles first exploded in flames of rage, despair, and injustice. On April 4, 1968, Martin (as Martin Luther King, Jr., is familiarly called in the black community) was assassinated in Memphis by a white sniper.
Grounded in the contradictions and paradoxes of a nation founded on the principles of freedom and equality and the practices of slavery and inequality, the contemporary black jeremiadic cry of Malcolm, Martin, and our cities amplifies and illuminates the double consciousness and socialized ambivalence of Americans of African descent in their struggle to realize the promise of America and the potential of their humanity. Although the many black voices heard in this text and still heard rising from our urban centers often are desperate and diverse, beneath the apparent cacophony and heteroglossia of their messianic and jeremiadic rhetoric is the cry of the souls of black folk, including the many thousands gone, for social and moral justice.
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