Black nationalism in the United States was an old idea by the time Malcolm X arrived in Harlem in the early 1950s. Marcus Garvey and many before him had dreamed of taking black men back to Africa; the Communist party and the Black Muslims had imagined a black state within America. Malcolm helped the Muslim prepare the ground for this separate nation, expanding their following from 400 to about 40,000. He did this by turning the negro's self-hatred into a hatred of white people and a black sense of pride. The black race, he believed, had been brainwashed into believing it was inferior. No one could get rid of his color, and instead of telling his followers to suppress this painful sense of difference, he urged them to turn it upside down: to convert it from shame to pride. They were no longer "negroes" they were "black"--a word that allowed the blacks to turn outward--training their hatred away from themselves and toward white society.
During this time period--in the late 1960s, the black nationalist's views of Malcolm X had obliterated the vision of the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King had lost the favor of the young blacks, who were frustrated with the lack of progress he had made for them in terms of better jobs and better status within society. Yet, a quarter of a century later, society seems to regard King's legacy with more reverence than it does that of Malcolm X's.
Since 1985, King has been the only African-American, indeed the only twentieth century American, to be honored by a federal public holiday. It is doubtful that Congress would ever consider extending the same honor to Malcolm X. It is also doubtful that tourists would flock to Malcolm X's birthplace (as they do for Martin Luther King) in Omaha, Nebraska or to the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem where Malcolm was assassinated on February 21, 1965.
Malcolm X would probably have been reassured by this lack of general public rec...