I know what Malcolm's was sayin'... I was a tad on the young side, thought my mom was a civil rights activist, in '64 but I started reading Malcolm in '67...
What I read I appreciated for what he was sayin' with my6 '67 mindset...
Okay, let me tell you a little story...
Two night ago I was invited to a "voluteer's appreciation supper" by the local "Main Street" program and started talkin' with this woman and next thing ya' know we were at some of the same demonsration in '69 and '70 in Richmond, Va... Well, I still posess most of the original "Richmond Chroncile's", which was Richmonds radical free press rag and I so drug out an old issue of a block party that turned into a riot and which me and a alot of others turned into a community orgainzing event and created sometyhing called the Grove Avenue Republic...
So, I found the issue that was printed after the riot to make a copy for this lady when I noticed there was a long lorgotten letter I wrote to the newspaper... Man, geeze of pete, it was absolutely radical... And I remembered all the points I brought up and all those points were well taken and points that were relevant to 1969... It was signed:
Black power to black people Yellow power to yellow people Red power to red people Bullsh*t power to all bullsh*ters & all Power to the people
If you'd like a copy of the entire letter I can get it to you... It is "dated" but nothin' I am ashamed of havin' written...
What I am saying here is that we were all terribly radicalized... Ok, not that it was terrible becuase all of us had the similar visions for Ameri(k)a... But we were very radicalized...
Malcolm warned us that the white establishment might try sending in black man, just as the overseers on the plantations (my paraphrasing of what Mailcolm was saying) to colonialize the Negro in the name of black power... Yeah, I realize that these aren't excatly his words but I think we can agree that was the essence of his warnings...
It is no secret that Malcolm thought Dr. King got too much attention and, though Malcolm didn't say it directly, I think it was evident that Malcolm was talkin' about someone much like King, if not Dr. King himself...
Now fast forward 44 years and here we have Barak Obama, who either wasn't born when Malcolm made that speech or was about to be born???
Yeah, I thought that Malcolm was a phrophet for his day but the thing about phrophets these days is that the shelf life ain't quite what it used to be in like, ohhhhh, 2000 years ago or ven a couple hundred...
Yes, it would be easy to take Malcolm's words and try to attach them to Obama, as some Uncle Tom "overseer porch Negro" but I don't hink that works any more... Too many things have changed.... When Obama was born the country hadn't seen it's last lynching... The Greensboro Mascaure hadn't happened yet... Yeah, he was kid but he wasn't touched by these things...
Okay, I accept Malcolm's warnings and they were true only for a short time... Important??? Hell, yes!!! But it seems that more change occured in the various months in '67. '68, '60' and '70 than have occured in any decade since... What that meant is that with these changes---since these times were a time of struggle-- we outgrew philosophies about as fast as we could internalize them...
So, yes, Malcolm's warnings of Uncle Tom comin' to Washington were in the words ot Jethro Tull:
"It was a new day yesterday It's an old day now"...