Africa in Black Liberation Activism

Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and Walter Rodney

Tunde Adeleke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315409290
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book revisits and analyzes three of the most accomplished twentieth century Black Diaspora activists: Malcolm X (1925–1965), Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) and Walter Rodney (1942–1980). All three began their careers in the Diaspora and later turned toward Africa. This became the foundation for developing and solidifying a global force that would advance the struggles of Africans and people of African descent in the Diaspora.

Adeleke engages and explores this "African-centered" discourse of resistance which informed the collective struggles of these three men. The book illuminates shared and unifying attributes as well as differences, presenting these men as unified by a continuum of struggle against, and resistance to, shared historical and cultural challenges that transcended geographical spaces and historical times.

Africa in Black Liberation Activism will be of interest to scholars and students of African-American history, African Studies and the African Diaspora.

1
Malcolm X

Africa and the struggle for Black empowerment

Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research.

(Malcolm X)

In an address to a “Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference,” organized by the “Group on Advanced Leadership” (GOAL) held in Detroit in November of 1963, Malcolm X declared:

Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you’ve got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. Once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight.¹ (Emphasis added)

The opening statement of the above quote represents perhaps the central tenet of Malcolm X’s liberation, and revolutionary thought, and it would reappear in his other speeches and numerous publications. It underscores his enduring faith in the potency of historical knowledge as a weapon of black liberation. Whenever he invoked the statement, Malcolm was often reflecting on, and perhaps even lamenting, the daunting challenge of eradicating the debilitating consequences of a condition Carter G. Woodson drew attention to decades earlier: the mis-education of the Negro, the degree to which blacks had been misinformed and misled about their history and heritage, and the consequent negative and disempowering consciousness they developed.² This tragic “historical” consciousness induced self-loathing, while stifling self-deterministic consciousness. It also confined blacks in a condition akin to intellectual atrophy, or some would say, intellectual deformity, their consciousness infused with ethos of negativism and falsehood about the self, their history and heritage. Blacks remained frozen in this historical twilight zone of negativism and negation, burdened with, and tormented by, feelings of worthlessness and inferiority complex, conditions that legitimized and reinforced white domination.³ Underscoring the need for historical knowledge, Malcolm stated

once you see that the condition that we’re in is directly related to our lack of knowledge concerning the history of the black man, only then can you realize the importance of knowing something about the history of the black man.⁴

Rescuing blacks from this condition, therefore, Malcolm suggested, required “re-Africanizing” the consciousness and bringing Africa, positively constructed and validated, to the center-stage of black consciousness. Fundamentally, Malcolm considered this re-education a precondition for the advancement and empowerment of blacks in America.⁵

In Malcolm’s view, nothing was more devastating to a people’s cause than the loss of historical memory. This condition, he believed, relegated the group to the level of animals. Consequently, remedying the condition through the acquisition of historical knowledge was, for Malcolm, an existential obligation. However, it should be stressed that in the statement “Of all our studies history is best qualified to reward our research,” Malcolm was not referring to just any history. He meant African history. He opined that studying and understanding African history from a non-Eurocentric perspective would help blacks recapture their true essence, reverse and obliterate the self-loathing consciousness, and most importantly, develop that countervailing consciousness of self-love indispensable to their liberation.⁶ Researching African history, therefore, held the greatest revolutionary potential for Black Americans: the certainty of unearthing critical knowledge that would rescue them from the destructive and paralyzing effects of Eurocentric historiography.⁷ The construction of Africa as the “Dark Continent,” and of Africans as backward and primitive, framed the “intellectual” socialization of blacks in America. Over time, many blacks, like Malcolm, become alienated from their identity and heritage. They internalized and acknowledged as valid and authentic, the negative and pejorative depictions, and characterizations of Africa and Africans. Describing Eurocentric mis-education and its impacts on black consciousness, Malcolm elaborated further:

They always project Africa in a negative light: jungle savages, cannibals, nothing civilized. Why then naturally it was so negative that it was negative to you and me, and you and I began to hate it. We didn’t want anybody telling us anything about Africa, much less calling us Africans. In hating Africa and in hating the Africans, we ended up hating ourselves, without even realizing it. Because you can’t hate the roots of a tree, and not hate the tree. You can’t hate your origin and not end up hating yourself. You can’t hate Africa and not hate yourself.⁸

Malcolm was convinced that nothing would more effectively obliterate the Eurocentric canker worm than re-educating blacks about the true nature of Africa. In his writings and speeches, Malcolm discussed at length the antiquity of civilization in Africa, the locations of some of the earliest African civilizations and their accomplishments—such civilizations as Egypt in the Nile Valley, and ancient kingdoms and empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai in West Africa.⁹ He highlighted their glories and accomplishments, especially their intellectual contributions to such fields as mathematics, engineering, chemistry, physics, geography, medicine, education, and astronomy.¹⁰ He referred to the pyramids and sphinx in Egypt as exemplars not just of the artistic and aesthetic brilliance of the ancient Egyptians, but also evidence of their intellectual worth. They reflected and embodied mathematical and engineering acumen of the highest order.¹¹ These African civilizations (Egypt, Ghana, Mali and Songhai), therefore, among many others, evolved and developed highly advanced societies and cultures, with well-organized and functioning governments, economic and political institutions, cultural and religious traditions and values, as well as rich and vibrant intellectual traditions, long before, Malcolm contended, “the discovery of America.” They were, he insisted, of higher and advanced stage than what existed contemporaneously in Europe.¹² “If you take time to do research for yourself,” he argued,

I think you’ll find that on the African continent there was always, prior to the discovery of America, there was always a higher level of history, rather a higher level of culture and civilization, than that which existed in Europe at the same time.¹³

With reference specifically to the Western Sudanese states, Malcolm noted: “They had one of the highest developed governmental systems, tax systems, cultures, period.”¹⁴ Knowledge of African history provided not just evidence of civilization in Africa, but it also established the cultural and intellectual advancement of the once described “Dark Continent.” Furthermore, such knowledge clearly would authenticate, beyond any doubts, not just the antiquity of civilizations in Africa, but perhaps more significantly, the pre-eminence of African civilizations. Such knowledge, Malcolm believed, would profoundly erode the foundation of racial prejudice in America.¹⁵ He attributed racism to “ignorance” emanating from what he characterized as “a skillfully designed program of mis-education that goes right along with the American system of exploitation and oppression.”¹⁶ Malcolm was of the opinion that it was not just blacks who needed exposure to African history and culture, who had been mis-educated, it was “the entire American population.”¹⁷ “If the entire American population were properly educated … (and) given a true picture of the history and contributions of the black man,” Malcolm believed that “whites would be less racist in their feelings.” The result would be

more respect for the black man as a human being. Knowing what the black man’s contributions to science and civilization have been in the past, the white man’s feelings of superiority would be at least partially negated. Also, the feeling of inferiority that the black man has would be replaced by a balanced knowledge of himself. He’d feel more like a human being. He’d function more like a human being, in a society of human beings.¹⁸

The African history Malcolm prioritized, therefore, had two dimensions. The first was the history that freed the mind, and empowered the self, the one that challenged and debunked entrenched Eurocentric misrepresentations that had been used to entrap and subordinate blacks. This resulted from researching Africa’s past. The second pertained to contemporary post-colonial historical happenings among subordinated groups, particularly in Africa. These clearly underscored the historical agency of Africans—their determined quest for self-determination through revolutions, exemplified by developments in places such as Ghana, Egypt, Guinea, Algeria, and Kenya. Disseminating knowledge and understanding of such revolutionary “historical” developments would motivate blacks elsewhere. It would inspire self-deterministic aspirations through revolutions that would uproot oppressive systems globally. Malcolm drew attention to how the desire for nationhood, premised on control of land (independence), had inspired revolutionary anti-colonial organizations and leaders all over Africa. “Re-Africanizing” black consciousness became the central tenet and challenge of Malcolm X’s liberation thought, especially in the crucial last ten months of his life, April 1964 to February 1965. While it is true that Africa moved to the center-stage of his thought in these last few months, it could also be argued that Africa had always been in his genes and consciousness.

Malcolm X was born and raised by parents who, regardless of personal and marital challenges, were very proud of their racial and ethnic identities. His father, Earl Little, was originally from Reynolds, Georgia, a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan racism and violence. His mother, Louise Langdon Norton, hailed from Grenada, West Indies. They met and were married in 1919 in Montreal, Canada, then a city with a growing West Indian population. She was also Earl’s second wife. He had previously been married to a woman with whom he sired three children before abandoning her and moving to Canada. According to one authority, Earl and Louis both “shared interest in social justice, the well-being of the race, and with it, politics.”¹⁹ While in Montreal, they became active in the local chapter of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican-born nationalist and Pan-Africanist who migrated to the United States in 1916 with a fiery brand of nationalism that challenged blacks to develop racial pride and turn toward Africa. From his base in Harlem, New York, Garvey expanded his movement nationwide with a strong nationalist appeal “to blacks to see themselves as ‘a mighty race’; linking their efforts not only with peoples of African descent from the Caribbean but with Africa itself.”²⁰ Earl and Louise subsequently relocated to the United States, first settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then Omaha, Nebraska where Malcolm was born on May 19, 1925. Between them, they would...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Africa and the Black American struggle: historical context
• 1 Malcolm X: Africa and the struggle for Black empowerment
• 2 Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture): Existentialist African
• 3 Walter A. Rodney: Guerilla intellectual
• Conclusion: “Sine Qua Non”: Mother Africa
• Index