Malcolm X

I remember the name Malcolm X scrawled in spray paint on downtown building walls in Durham, NC. The angle of the scrawl exuded anger. The name plastered where it wasn't meant to be. As a white girl, riding cocooned in our white Dodge Dart, I felt the anger directed at me.I didn't know that Malcolm X, the man, had already been dead for several years.

In the turbulence of the Civil Rights Movement, names carried power. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of pulling together and creating a future of all men created equal. Malcolm X --as I gathered from the graffiti--didn't play by the rules, wasn't interested in peaceful change and--in his perfect world, Malcolm X had no use for white people.

Although Martin Luther King Jr. is now honored with a national holiday and Malcolm X is reduced to a footnote, I intertwine the two men as twin sides of penny. One side may be more familiar, but both sides are necessary to make the penny whole.

Malcolm X told white people that no matter what they called black people--colored, negro, or anything else--his race wasn't going to wait with infinite patience to sit at lunch counters, drink from water fountains or ride the bus. Malcolm X carried rage, distained white people and increasingly advocated violence. He provoked fear. He got attention. Eventually, he was assassinated by a group of disillusioned followers. 

Without Malcolm X, would we have recognized how mad black people really were? Would we have understood that their demands for a better life weren't going to go away? Without the threat of a violent future, would Martin Luther King Jr have spoken as fervently? And would we have listened?