In May of 2025, Malcolm X would have turned 100 years old. As a Black man and devout Muslim, he thought deeply about the tenets of Islam, working tirelessly to share his faith while struggling against white supremacy. He grew up in poverty, experiencing police brutality, incarceration, and state-sponsored oppression of the working class; he was an expert rhetorician who made momentous theoretical contributions to the liberation movements of the 1960s.

Malcolm X spent many of his formative years in Lansing and East Lansing, the home of Michigan State University. One hundred years after his birth, scholars at MSU are convening to celebrate the legacy of Malcolm X.

In this talk, I will analyze Malcolm X ( El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) as part of the long tradition of Radical Black Peace Activism, which is a fundamental but often-forgotten feature of the modern Black Liberation Movement. This mode of peace activism was internationalist in scope and made the link between the cessation of global conflict, disarmament, non-proliferation, racial equality, the end of imperialism and colonialism, and the eradication of capitalist exploitation. Focusing on his speech at the Second Organization of Afro-American Unity Rally on July 5, 1964, among other speeches and writings, I will examine how Malcom X continued the tradition of freedom fighters like W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Claudia Jones in asserting the realization of Black peoples’ human rights as an essential aspect of the national and international struggle for self-determination, global cooperation, and economic democracy.

On March 12th, 1964 Malcolm X publicly made his break with the Nation of Islam (NOI). Malcolm began to chart a new political course within the eleven months of his life after his declaration of independence from the NOI. Malcolm’s new political agenda not only represented a break with the politics of the NOI but with elements of North American Black Nationalism. Malcolm X was a transitional ideological influence on Black freedom struggle in North America. Malcolm is considered the ideological father of a “new” nationalist movement, often called the Black Power movement, which was in ascendancy during the mid-1960’s.

I argue that the “new” nationalist model that Malcolm was attempting to develop could be distinguished from the “old” or fundamental Black Nationalism in certain characteristics. Influenced by anti-colonial national liberation movements in Afrika[1], Asia and the Americas, Malcolm began to develop ideological positions that challenged perceptions and practices institutionalized by Black nationalists in North America in previous eras. The “new” nationalist model articulated by Malcolm was different from particular features

of fundamental Black Nationalism, including leadership and decision-making style, perspective on the role of women in the liberation movement, ideological orientation of social change, and view of continental Afrikans. This presentation will apply the New Afrikan revolutionary nationalist and internationalist perspective of Malcolm X and his associates and comrades to the political realities of our current moment.

[1] As a form of cultural self-determination, this author spells “Afrika” with a “k.” In written Afrikan languages “Afrika” is spelled with a “k.” Consistent with this since the early 1970’s many Afrikan-centered intellectuals and activists have rejected the spelling of “Afrika.” With a “c.”

We collectively acknowledge that Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. In particular, the University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. We recognize, support, and advocate for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. By offering this Land Acknowledgement, we affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold Michigan State University more accountable to the needs of American Indian and Indigenous peoples.

About

Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly

Professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University