London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 07, 2025

The gospel of separation according to Malcolm X

The gospel of separation according to Malcolm X

So determined was Malcolm X on black resistance and separatism that he even met secretly with the KKK, according to Les and Tamara Payne
In late April 1962 Los Angeles police shot and killed an unarmed black man, Ronald X Stokes, during a disturbance outside

a Nation of Islam temple. Malcolm X, then the second most powerful figure in the NOI, rushed to the city. At a rally he told protesters: ‘You’re brutalised because you’re black, and when they lay a club on the side of your head, they do not ask your religion. You’re black, that’s enough.’ Sound familiar?

The Dead Are Arising, a new biography of Malcolm X, is timely. But perhaps this sobering book’s clearest message is that it will always be timely, because the story it narrates is timeless. In 1964 it would be Harlem, in 1965 Watts, in 1967 Detroit. Today, it’s Minneapolis and Louisville.

He may not have used the phrase, but Malcolm X was one of the innovators of concepts such as systemic racism. In contrast to his great rival Martin Luther King, Malcolm preached a gospel of separation, not integration, because he didn’t feel that white America would ever give blacks a fair chance.

This wasn’t simply a southern problem but a national one, and it’s telling that Malcolm was born and raised in northern states such as Nebraska, Wisconsin and Michigan. ‘Mississippi,’ he once declared, ‘is anywhere south of the Canadian border.’

Bracing, perhaps — but such an outlook stemmed from all that African Americans endured. The system seemed rigged because it was rigged, not just in subtle, systemic ways but in the frequent, blunt application of physical violence and economic force: ‘The hate that hate produced,’ to go by the title of a 1959 television documentary on black radicalism that featured Malcolm and the NOI, and that about gets it right. This doesn’t excuse the hate, but it does explain it.

The young Malcolm Little, born in 1925 when the Ku Klux Klan was at its full might, was a difficult child. He was clearly different, more intelligent but also more wayward than any of his six siblings, and all through adolescence he had trouble with the law. After moving to Boston at the age of 20, the small-time crook graduated into a full-time thief. He was arrested, and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Prison breeds revolutionaries, and so it was for Malcolm Little. With nothing else to do, he read voraciously and eclectically, everything from sociology to Shakespeare. He was also introduced to the writings of the NOI, an eccentric amalgam of Protestantism and Islam that divided the races as stringently as any white supremacist. NOI doctrine held that all whites were ‘devils’, that racial harmony was a delusion, and that blacks had every right to defend themselves.

These hard-edged views made sense to Malcolm, and after being released on parole he quickly established himself as the rising star of this more radical wing of the black rights struggle. The hoodlum Malcolm Little dropped his ‘slave surname’ and became the upright and forthright Malcolm X.

Les and Tamara Payne are especially good in detailing these early years of delinquency and rebirth. Like Robert Caro’s life of Lyndon Johnson, The Dead Are Arising delves deeply into the wider context of Malcolm’s world, sometimes leaving Malcolm himself on the sidelines.

The book shows better than any previous biography the extent to which the NOI’s outlook was rooted in Marcus Garvey’s ‘Back to Africa’ movement of the 1920s. Malcolm’s parents had worked for Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and Malcolm was a natural heir to this tradition of black power.

Garvey believed in racial separation so fervently that in 1922 he held a secret meeting with the KKK to discuss how to make it happen. The meeting went nowhere, but it set a precedent for Malcolm’s own clandestine meeting with the Klan 40 years later.

Malcolm was uneasy about sitting down with white supremacists, but he’d been ordered to do so by ‘the Messenger’ Elijah Muhammad, the NOI’s spiritual leader and chief executive. The encounter, covered in a riveting 63-page chapter that’s based on a wealth of new evidence, is the Paynes’ showstopper.

It was probably inevitable that Malcolm would have a falling out with Elijah Muhammad and the NOI establishment, which ultimately ended in Malcolm’s assassination in February 1965. But his more enduring rivalry, one that continues to shape African American identity, was with King. One was a voice of peace and integration, the other a voice of resistance and separatism; both wanted justice, but Malcolm vowed to get it ‘by any means necessary’.

Both were assassinated, though ironically King was gunned down by a white man and Malcolm by fellow black radicals. Perhaps fittingly, though tragically, not long before they died they had each come to appreciate the other’s point of view. This potential synthesis of ‘Martin and Malcolm’ has provided the civil rights movement’s elusive lodestar ever since.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×