Malcolm X and the Media

1
Malcolm X and the Media

• How the media undermined the message of Malcolm X

2
View of the Press

• The FBI maneuver the press on a national scale
  and the CIA maneuvers the press on an
  international scale. They do all their dirt with
  the press. They take the newspapers and make the
  newspapers blow you and me up as if all of us are
  criminals. The press is so powerful in its
  image-making role, it can make a criminal look
  like hes the victim and make the victim look
  like hes the criminal. This is the press, an
  irresponsible press. If you arent careful, the
  newspapers will have you hating the people who
  are being oppressed and loving the people who are
  doing the oppressing. Thats the image-making
  press.That thing is dangerous if you dont guard
  yourself against it.

3
Headlines

• Angry Spokesman Malcolm X Tells off Whites
• The front man and trouble shooter for the
  Black Mulsims is 38 year old Malcolm X- Life
  Magazine 1963
  
• Satan in the Ghetto -Newsweek 1965
• Death of a Desperado -Newsweek 1965
• Brother Malcolm His Theme is Now Violence
• -US News and World Report 1964

4
Press View of Past

• He was Malcolm Little, alias Big Red, a
  Marijuana-smoking,
  
• cocaine sniffing, zoot-suited, hip-talking,
  hoodlum when he went to prison in 1946.

5
Nation of Islam

• We didnt land on Plymouth Rock my brothers and
  sisters-Plymouth Rock landed on us.
  
• White mans Christian religion was used to
  brainwash us black peopleto keep our eyes fixed
  on the sky and the heaven in the hereafter while
  he enjoys his heaven right hereon this earthin
  this life.

6
Terms Associated with NOI

• Anti-Christian
• Anti-White
• Alienation
• Agitators
• Black Supremacy
• Bitter
• Confrontation

• Cult
• Enemy
• Extremist
• Hate
• Militant
• Threat
• Trouble

7
Malcolm X vs. MLK

• He got the Peace Prize, and we got the problem.
  
  
• Malcolm X
• I think its very unfortunate that Malcolm X
  continues to predict violencein the past the
  constant prediction of violence has been a
  conscious or unconscious invitation to it.
• MLK

8
Malcolm Xs Message of Violence

• He never quite came out for shooting at, say,
  bullying white cops or segregationist mobs. But
  he is given to metaphor, and he did say When
  our people are being bitten by dogs, they are
  within their rights to kill those dogs.
  Newsweek 1964 Malcolms Brand X

9
The Medias Role in the Split

• Malcolm gained popularity and became a threat to
  Elijah Muhammads leadership of the Black
  Muslims. - Time Magazine 1965 Death and
  Transfiguration
• The sources indicated that the general feeling
  was that Malcolm had become so powerful that he
  had emerged as a personality rather than a
  spokesman for the movement.

10
Rivals

• The solidarity has been broken by a once-trusted
  lieutenant. The elements of open, racial violence
  and of action in the political arena are being
  projected by a rival movement, Black
  Nationalism
• New York Times 1963 Malcolm X Expected to be
  Replaced
  

11
Mecca Leads To Change

• "Largely, the American white man's press refused
  to convey that I was now attempting to teach
  Negroes a new direction...my earlier public
  image, my old so-called Black Muslim image,
  kept blocking me. I was trying to gradually
  reshape that image.
• -George Brietman The Last Year of Malcolm X

12
Malcolms Explanation

• At the United Nations a friend from Africa came
  in with a white woman who is involved with a
  philanthropic foundation . . . I heard her
  whisper to someone off to the side . . . He
  doesnt look so wild, you know. Now this is a
  full-grown, so-called mature woman. It shows
  the extent to which the press can create images.
  People looking for one thing actually miss the
  boat because theyre looking for the wrong thing.
  They are looking for someone with horns, someone
  who is a rabble-rouser, an irrational,
  anti-social extremist. They expect to hear me say
  that Negroes should kill all white people--as
  if you could kill all the white people.

13
The Slaying of Malcolm X

• When he was murdered in his 40th year in a
  Harlem ballroom, it was possible to say of him,
  as some did, that he was a dark menace.
  
• -Newsweek 1965, Satan in the Ghetto
• Here was a negro, who preached segregation and
  race hatred, killed by another Negro presumably
  from another organization that preaches
  segregation and race hatred, and neither of them
  representative of more than tiny minority of the
  Negro population of America.
• New York Times 1965, Malcolm Called A Martyr
  Abroad.
  
• His gospel was hatred.
• Time Magazine 1965, Death and Transfiguration

14
The Slaying of Malcolm X

• May 19, 1925-February 21, 1965
• He was a case history, as well as an
  extraordinary and twisted man, turning many true
  gifts to evil purposeThe world he saw through
  those horn-rimmed glasses of his was distorted
  and dark. But he made it darker still with his
  exultation of fanaticism. Yesterday someone came
  out of that darkness that he spawned, and killed
  him. -Malcolm X

15
The Mudslinging Continues Post-Mortem

• Chinese Communist propagandists were already
  seeking to invoke him for a hate campaign, such
  as followed the murder of Congo Premier Patrice
  Lumumba.
• Hunt for Killers In Malcolm Case on Right
  Track, 1965

16
Malcolm Xs Final Verdict

• When I am dead- I say it because from the things
  I know, I do not expect to live long enough to
  read this book in its finished form- I want you
  to just watch and see If Im not right in what I
  say that the white man, in his press, is going
  to identify me with hate.
• Autobiography of Malcolm X, pg 46.

17
Bibliography

• Amundson, Sonja and Kimberly Powell. Malcolm X
  and the Mass Media. NDSTA Journal Volume
  15,2002
  
• http//www.malcolm-x.org/media/pic_11.htm
• Haley, Alex. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New
  York City Ballantine Books, 1999.