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Malcolm X: Make it Plain
The early articulation of the global, anti-colonial struggle
Occupy Forum observes the 50th plus Anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination with the screening of the film Malcolm X: Make It Plain.
Articulating concepts of race pride and black nationalism Malcolm X was an African-American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam in the 1950s and ’60s. Dynamic orator and militant minister, and the leader and potential leader of the black power concept, Malcolm X exhorted blacks to cast off the shackles of racism “by any means necessary,” including violence.
Avoiding the life-of-a-saint tone that characterized much of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, this documentary is a careful exploration of Malcolm X’s life and thought. Directed by Orlando Bagwell, (The Great Depression and Eyes on the Prize), the film takes care to place Malcolm X’s political leadership in a context that includes not only the by-now-familiar run through his time spent as the zoot-suited hustler Detroit Red, but also his childhood as the son of Earl Little, a Michigan minister and organizer for the black-nationalist Marcus Garvey Movement. The complexity and contradictions of Malcolm X’s philosophy are discussed and debated by diverse interview subjects, ranging from Malcolm’s brothers to the New York police officer who infiltrated Malcolm’s Nation of Islam chapter in the hope of discrediting him.
After Malcolm X made the Hajj, the traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during which he converted to traditional Islam, he placed the American Civil Rights Movement within the context of a global anti-colonial struggle, embracing socialism and pan-Africanism. “The true brotherhood I had seen had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision,” he said. “America is the first country … that can actually have a bloodless revolution.”
Make It Plain is a first- rate piece of journalism, presenting a figure obscured by the historical context, and one who we do well to study in today’s racist emergency.
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