Cairo, where Obama and Malcolm X showed two very different faces of America

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The firebrand Muslim minister struck a blow  for African American civil rights and African liberation
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Thomas L Blair, 5 June 2009

Cairo on the tip of Nubian Africa has played host to two exceptional African Americans. One named Barack Hussein Obama, the son and grandson of Muslims, came as US President this June. The other was the radical African American Muslim minister El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (widely known as Malcolm X) in June 1964.

Both invoked the great Islamic past; both aimed to forge unity on crucial international issues. But what a dramatic contrast. Obama, the suited up, sophisticated new African American in the Office, aimed at calming the volatile Muslim world. However, Malcolm X in Cairo called for an unprecedented joint action by Africans and African Americans against a common scourge – racism and imperialism.

Malcolm came to this revolutionary conclusion after founding the secular, black nationalist Organisation of African American Unity (OAAU). Later, he tested his ideas with political activists in an extensive tour of Africa and the Middle East in June 1964.

The tour strengthened his newly developed beliefs. Officials courted him; he gave interviews to newspapers, and spoke on television and radio in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sudan, Senegal, Liberia, Algeria, and Morocco. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria invited Malcolm X to serve in their governments.

The scene was set for his unprecedented call for concerted action at the second summit meeting of the Organisation of African Unity, convened from 17 to 21 July 1964.

His arrival was widely noted. To his admirers at the meeting of the fledging African authority, Malcolm X was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. He was also El-Hajj, a penitent Sunni Muslim aware of the broad humanity of the Islamic faith.

Interviewed by reporters and radio journalists in Cairo, Malcolm X said: “When I arrived here, there was a great deal of publicity in all of the press over here concerning my coming. It was historic in a sense because no American Negroes had ever made any effort in the past to try and get their problems placed in the same category as the African problems, nor had they tried to internationalize it.”
His reference to “colonialism”, and plea for renascent dignity and justice found favour in the highest quarters. Egypt’s President Nasser made specific reference to the condition of African Americans, and hailed the then recently passed Civil Rights Act of 1964, in his opening remarks.

With this cache of prominent supporters, Malcolm X gained acceptance as an observer at the OAU summit of independent African states. His eight-page memorandum warned America of a coming conflagration; it echoed James Baldwin’s eloquent manifesto “The Fire Next Time” (1963). He urged African leaders and freedom fighters to internationalise the plight of African Americans and bring the issue before the UN.

Then, in one of the most remarkable coincidences of the turbulent 1960s, Malcolm X delivered his memorandum on 17 July, a day before what later became known as the “Harlem riots” that rocked New York that summer.

* Thomas L Blair publishes the Chronicleworld http://www. chronicleworld.org. Discover the Internet facts and common visions of the Black world in the author’s just published E-book The Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle for Internet power by Thomas L Blair (Orders may be placed at 
http://m-ybooks.co.uk/blair/default.html

AFRO-AMERICA FORWARD

Revealed: how King’s ’Black Reconstruction Plan’ is still valid in divided America 

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington 1963 led us all astray. America was not full of Black and white kids all yearning to live together in racial harmony. Rather, it was the true King that cried out “we can’t wait” and planned to relieve the pain of Black people.

Years before his assassination in 1968, King had the most extraordinary vision of a Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged. This little known side of the civil rights leader escaped widespread notice in America.

Long-forgotten revolutionary text
Uncovered in a few pages tucked away in the back of his book Why We Can’t Wait, published in the year of his “dream” speech, King outlined a bill to counter the effects of centuries of slavery and social oppression.

A bold programme of primarily Black reconstruction was needed on the scale of the Marshall Plan that rejuvenated post war Europe, he said. Funded by a bold governmental policy, King’s Bill of Rights would combat the “misery that haunts Black people” and place them ahead in the competition for individual and collective betterment

Black families, emerging from their blighted neighbourhoods, would be eligible for subsidised quality homes and education. Budding entrepreneurs could negotiate government-backed loans. Health care and insurance would be available at no-cost at special medical centres.

History supports King’s views
To his detractors, King said, Americans deceive themselves that positive action against shameful conditions is a “black thing”, unfairly affecting “white rights”. However, he knew full well that special measures for the worthy and deprived have always been an accepted principle in the United States.

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Excerpts from http:www.chronicleworld.org — see  Archives 04, and scroll to 09/13/03 Martin Luther King’s plan for Black Reconstruction in America uncovered - but who’s to pay, and why?