Malcom X

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeartRadio.

**Josh** (0:11)
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. She's being quiet as a church mouse. And this is Stuff You Should Know.

**Chuck** (0:20)
That's because you told her to zip it.

**Josh** (0:22)
I'm just gonna leave that part out. We're gonna get hate mail for that one.

**Chuck** (0:27)
I'm surprised we're just now getting to this. I went through a Malcolm X phase in college. I wasn't one of those guys walking around Georgia with a Malcolm X hat on.

**Josh** (0:38)
You weren't wearing, like, okay, I have a great story, but please go ahead.

**Chuck** (0:44)
It was after I saw the movie, because I was a big, I mean, I still am a big Spike Lee guy, so I saw the movie in 92 and then read the autobiography with Alex Haley right after that. And was just super into his story at the time. It's been a while, though.

**Josh** (0:59)
Well, I have just entered my Malcolm X phase. Just researching him, I accidentally got radicalized, and I've got his autobiography on the way. It should get here today.

**Chuck** (1:11)
Oh, great.

**Josh** (1:12)
But it's crazy, Chuck, because especially it's just white people of our generation.
If you hadn't already gotten into him and seen the Spike Lee movie and read his autobiography and just started to read his speeches and stuff. If you just kind of knew him like I had up to this point, like you knew him as the guy who said like by any means necessary, that he was well, he was militant, that he was essentially the foil to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And that he and King kind of represented this fork in the road that America had to choose between. Because at this point in the 50s, starting in the 50s, there was no way for America to just stand there at the crossroads any longer. Like America as a whole had to make a choice. Which way we're gonna go? Race war or integration? Peaceful integration. And that's what Malcolm X represented to white America. Race war, like black militants taking over, killing white people mercilessly, ruthlessly, because white people had it coming. Or, you know, everybody's much more familiar with the Martin Luther King Jr. way, but there's so much more to it than that. And just researching this guy, I don't even want to say a fan, because I think that kind of undermines the respect I have for him now. Like, he's an amazing figure, it turns out.

**Chuck** (2:43)
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, when I was in high school, there was a big... This is, you know, I graduated in 89, the movie was 92, so this was leading up to the film, which obviously put things on a much bigger sort of platform. But it was a big deal in the 80s. Like, there was a big sort of, at least in the south, I don't know how it was everywhere else, but there was a big movement among, you know, the black students at my school to get in touch with their African heritage. Malcolm X hats were all over the place in my school. And he was just sort of in the forefront, I guess, kind of like my junior and senior year. So it was striking to me that we didn't learn about him in high school.

**Josh** (3:24)
Yeah, but if you step back and really think about it, it's not very surprising, you know?

**Chuck** (3:30)
Well, I mean, looking back at the substandard public school education I got, correct.

**Josh** (3:35)
Yeah, but also the whitewashed and sanitized version where it's like, okay, we'll tell you about Martin Luther King, Jr. But don't ask about Malcolm X. You don't want to know about him. He was a rough dude.

**Chuck** (3:46)
Yeah, or anyone else. It was just Martin Luther King.

**Josh** (3:49)
Exactly. Yeah, he did the whole thing by himself, it turns out. Yeah.
So, yeah, I remember that same era as well. Okay, so I say we get into this because we could probably sit here and do an intro and it would end up being the entire thing. Well, let's jump in and everybody else can make up their own minds about how you feel about Malcolm X. Just as an aside to start, I would definitely recommend going and watching the documentary on him that American Experience did, I think, in the 90s called Make It Plain. Then I read a bunch of articles and the best one I read was The Achievement of Malcolm X by John J. Simon. That was in the monthly review. That was a really good comprehensive one too.