Image by Unseen Histories.

Malcolm X (born: Malcolm Little) would have been 100 years old on May 19 2025, a century on from his birth and 60 years after his martyrdom it’s interesting to reflect on what consistent principles he advocated and organised around, and how his life work helps us to understand the global situation today. Malcolm X towers amongst some of the greatest figures of anti-colonial resistance in the context of the USA and further afield, but like all historical revolutionary figures their legacy is defanged and turned into something safer and more acceptable to the colonial society which is adept at assimilation, a framework of assimilation that actually Malcolm X always countered and railed against.

In the late 19th century and into the 20th century often family networks became committed to anti-colonial activism and resistance, and this carries on through a few generations as is the case with the Littles. Many members of Malcolm X’s family always directly communicated to him and encouraged his commitment to revolutionary lives, his brother’s wrote to him while he was in prison encouraging him to join the Nation of Islam of which they were already committed members. Malcolm X expressed great admiration for his sister Ella Collins, who he considered one of the most inspirational people in his life.

Revolutionary Family, martyrdom and co-option of Malcolm X

Malcolm X (Malcolm Little) was born into a social context in which he, like many of his siblings and close family members were brought into the struggle against colonialism and racism. His mother was born in Grenada in the late 1890s and was the child of Nigerians who were enslaved by the European colonialists. Louise Little herself was introduced into Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanist United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) by an uncle after she moved to the USA circa 1917. Louise Little could ‘pass’ as white, and it was said that it was a rape of her ancestors by european colonalialists that was the cause of her light-skin, which then was the reason why Malcolm X himself was so light and red-haired, something which Malcolm X references in his self-named ‘Detriot Red’ at one point in his younger life.

Backgrounds of colonial oppression and how they literally shape us must have weighed-down on Malcolm X. Malcolm said that his father was most likely killed by racists, and it was this work of his father that he so greatly admired. Malcolm X’s father Earl Little was a committed activist of the UNIA, and often took along Malcolm X in his political work: “the image of him that made me proudest was his crusading and militant campaigning with the words of Marcus Garvey … it was only me that he sometimes took with him to the Garvey U.N.I.A. meetings which he held quietly in different people’s homes.”

It’s important to remember the generational contexts, the global and local contexts to this relative growing upsurge through the first 70 years of the 20th century. Veteran Black / Pan-Africanist revolutionary Bob Brown’s February 2022 interview on Black Power brilliantly outlines these dynamics employing an inter-generational understanding on the timeline. It is also a social pattern that families who have considerable members in anti-colonial struggle which then, as with the general global trend and changing balance of forces, start to break-up and fall into assimilation of all sorts. And that is also the case with Malcolm X, after his martyrdom there is a multifaceted concerted campaign to turn him into a relatively harmless figure. In actual fact, this starts during his own lifetime when Republican Party supporter Alex Haley framed Malcolm’s life in the ‘autobiography’.

Similarly. Spike Lee’s 1992 Malcolm X film which basically couldn’t get the budget unless major radical aspects of Malcolm’s life were erased such as his visits to Ghana, Egypt and Gaza, his close comradeship with Adburahman Babu and his advocacy for anti-British revolutionary movements such as the Land and Freedom Party in Kenya or ‘Mau Mau’. Indeed, the film fails to show that Malcolm X visited Egypt in 1959 as an NoI ambassador to the revolutionary Gamal Abdel Nasser (see Marika Sherwood’s 2011, Malcolm X’s Visits Abroad). Despite Malcolm stating that his sister was a leading influence and support in his life, Ella Collins is not mentioned at all in the film.

It might be useful to reflect on the family and generational nature of those in the anti-colonial movement, as it is a legacy that by itself speaks to us that we should continue to follow in that path of struggle and it is arguably the antidote to the appropriation of Malcolm X and others into race-class interests of the colonialists today.

On African-Asian Unity

“The red, the brown and the yellow are indeed all part of the black nation.” – Malcolm X, 1963.

Malcolm X developed his framework of anti-colonial unity of all non-white people in his construction of the ‘Black Revolution’ in large part out of the Nation of Islam’s concept of black unity and internationalism, which itself was a reflection of the radical dynamic of its time. It’s especially in the context of the Caribbean, East Africa, South Africa and England that the colonialist is committed to and has been largely successful in ensuring two major groups of colonised peoples don’t unite against the common oppressor – African and Asian peoples. Despite general successes in this divide-and-rule, there have been moments of unity in these regards and advocates for that include Dedan Kimaathi (who worked directly with the writer’s........

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