Rochester saw rights-icon Malcolm X's humanist side http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20090228/OPINION/902280319/1041
February 28, 2009 On Feb. 16, 1965, five days before he was gunned down in a Manhattan ballroom, Malcolm X spoke to a mostly black crowd at the Corn Hill Methodist Church, and, later that day, at the Colgate Divinity School to a mostly white gathering of Rochesterians sympathetic to the civil rights movement. A week before, Malcolm's home in Harlem had been bombed. During his Rochester appearances, Malcolm predicted his assassination, ominously headlined in the Democrat and Chronicle: "Marked for Death, Says Malcolm X." Tragically, he was right. With the election of Barack Obama, we have heard much about his predecessors: the jurist Thurgood Marshall, the general Colin Powell, and, most visibly, the reverend Martin Luther King. Often overlooked is the legacy of Malcolm X, too frequently characterized as an angry black militant and not the peacemaker he became in the last years of his career. Malcolm the peacemaker was in evidence during his visit to Rochester. Unfortunately, few Rochesterians vividly remember Malcolm's speeches here. One who does is Constance Mitchell, a former City Council member. Over the course of many years, Mitchell and Malcolm were steady correspondents. Sadly, Mitchell was not shocked by Malcolm's death. She says all civil rights activists black and white knew their lives were always at risk. As Mitchell describes Malcolm, she talks of a devout Muslim whose 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca "utterly transformed him." He returned to the United States with a renewed vision of a colorblind society devoted to nonviolence. Mitchell believes Malcolm's visit to the Colgate Divinity School, in which he preached for an honest dialogue between the races, stemmed from his time in Mecca where he came to see the universality of the human condition. Mitchell thinks Malcolm would have celebrated the election of Barack Obama: "There has been tremendous progress in the past 40 years. If Malcolm were alive today, he would probably say this progress is a message from God." For someone who did not really know that much about Malcolm the man until I spoke with Constance Mitchell, I pray and think she is right. -- Kramer has taught writing and American literature at Monroe Community College, St. John Fisher College and Rochester Institute of Technology. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
