Long-Lost Malcolm X Interview

Portions of NBC News interview with Malcolm X at Lewis H. Michaux's famous National Memorial African Bookstore, 2107 Seventh Ave., near 125th Street, Harlem, N. Y., March 12, 1964. The interview distills Malcolm X's views during an important, but little understood transitional period of his development. According to the NBC shot list, or description (available on www.footage.net), the "Material [was] found in WMAQ [Chicago NBC-TV affiliate] Carton 160 Can 2 in Oct 1993. Pr[in]t made from NY camera orig[inal] which subsequently was lost. Sound appears slightly speeded up." If the film sat unused since 1964, this perhaps accounts for the slight distortion of the picture and sound. MUSLIM MOSQUE, INC. Earlier that morning, Malcolm X addressed a packed news conference in the Tapestry Suite of the Park Sheraton (now Park Central) Hotel, 870 Seventh Ave. at 56th Street, at midtown Manhattan, to announce the formation of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI). Four days earlier, he announced his break from Elijah Muhammad's "black"-centered, separatist Nation of Islam (NOI), for which he had been the New York minister and national representative. Despite the MMI's religious name, it was open to black people of any or no religion and dedicated to political, economic and social black nationalism, or black self-determination. This initially included mass emigration "back to Africa," but was later emended to the pan-Africanist position of select emigration of skilled black people from the West to help Africa become free, united and strong enough to protect peoples of African descent wherever they might be. After Malcolm X made his hajj, or religious pilgrimage, to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia, in late April 1964, he rejected the NOI's racism and formally embraced "True" (in his case, Sunni) Islam. Thereafter, while retaining its militant nationalist thrust, the MMI sought to create an indigenous Sunni "ummah," or Islamic community, in the U. S., which was mostly black because African Americans expressed the greatest interest in Islam. GATEWAY As Peter Goldman, Malcolm X's best biographer, noted, the "locus of Harlem nationalism" was located at Harlem Square (or, Africa Square, as the nationalists called it), the intersection of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. This was "where the street-speakers harangued their crowds on the corners and where an ancient impish Garveyite named 'Professer' Lewis Michaux presided over" the National Memorial African Bookstore, which proclaimed itself "The House of Common Sense and Home of Proper Propaganda" (Peter Goldman, "The Death and Life of Malcolm X," 2d ed. [Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1973, 1979], p. 51. Michaux explained that his honorific title was based on the fact that he "professed" his nationalist beliefs.) Michaux considered his store "the gateway to Harlem's problems." For Malcolm X and other young nationalists, it was "a point of entry to the Garvey past as well" (Ibid., p. 52). Beginning in 1917, Harlem was the headquarters of the Hon. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities' League of the World (UNIA-ACL), the largest mass black movement in modern times. By 1926, this movement, which sought the "redemption" of Africa from British and European colonial control and the liberation of black people everywhere, was organized into some 1,100 chapters, divisions and branches on five continents with a membership estimated as high as six million. HALL OF S/HEROES The NBC interview was conducted in front of Michaux's "Black Hall of Fame," which mostly featured "race heroes." It was located at the back of the store, which was characterized by its "pyramiding jumble of books, records, placards ... posters and fading photographs..." (Goldman, pp. 50, 51). The large portrait behind Malcolm X is "Black Patti" (Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones), the all-but-forgotten African American concert singer and performer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The framed photo that could be partially seen at right pictures a standing Egyptian/Kemetian statue. PICTURE-PERFECT Goldman, then an associate editor at "Newsweek," which was on the forefront of civil-rights journalism, covered Malcolm X's news conference. He recalled that Malcolm X wore "a quiet pin-checked suit and a telegenic blue shirt." At the press briefing, Goldman spied Michaux, "beaming out from under a rakish fez" (Ibid., p. 133). Along with other reporters, Goldman trailed Malcolm X uptown to Michaux's bookstore (p. 139). Afterward, he wrote a picture-perfect account of Malcolm X's news conference and his interview: "Malcolm's Brand X," "Newsweek," March 23, 1964, p. 32. (NBC Video courtesy ThoughtEqulity.com.)