Malcom X

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Just being quiet as a church mouse, and this is stuff you should know. It's because you told me to zip it. I'm just going to leave that part out, bringing you a hate mail for that one. I'm surprised we're just now getting to this. I went through a Malcolm X phase in college.

I wasn't one of those guys walking around Georgia with a Malcolm X hat on. You weren't wearing like, um, okay, I have a great story, but please go ahead. I was it was after I saw the movie because I was a big, you still am big, Spike Lee guy. So I saw the movie in '92 and then read the autobiography that with Alex Hayley, right after that. Yeah.

And was just a super into a story at the time. It's been a while though. Well, I have just entered my Malcolm X phase. Awesome. I just researching him. I accidentally got radicalized and I've got his autobiography on the way. It should get here today.

Oh, great. But it's, it's crazy, Chuck, because like, especially is just white people of our generation, um, if you hadn't already gotten into him and like seen the Spike Lee movie and read his autobiography and just started to read his speech isn't stuff. If you just kind of knew him, like I had up to this point, like you knew him as the guy who said, like, by any means necessary, um, that he was, he was militant, um, that he was essentially

the foil to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Um, and that he and King kind of represented these two, this fork in the road that America had to kind of choose between because there was at this point in like the 50s, starting in the 50s, there was no way for America to just stand there at the crossroads, any longer with it. Like, we're, like, America has a whole had to make a choice, which way are we going to go? Race war or integration, uh, peaceful

“integration. And, um, that's what Malcolm X represented to white America, race war, like black”

militants taking over killing white people, um, mercilessly ruthlessly because white people had it coming, or, you know, everybody's much more familiar with the Martin Luther King Jr. way, but there's so much more to it than that. And just researching this, um, this guy, I, like, I don't even want to say a fan, because I think they kind of undermines like the

respect I have for him, not like he's a, he's an amazing figure. It turns out.

Yeah, for sure. Uh, and, you know, when I was in high school, there was a big, this is, you know, I graduated in '89, the movie was '92, so this is leading up to the film, which obviously put things on a much bigger sort of, uh, platform. But, uh, it was a big deal in the '80s, like, there was a, a big, um, sort of, at least in the south. I don't know how it was everywhere else, but there was a big movement among, you know, the black students at my school to get in touch

with their African heritage, Malcolm X, hats were all over the place in my school, and he was just

to me that we didn't learn about him in high school. Um, yeah, but if you step back and really think

about it, it's not very surprising, you know? Well, I mean, looking back at the substandard public school education, I got correct. Yeah, but also the white Washington sanitized version, where it's like, okay, we'll tell you about Martin Luther King Jr., but don't ask about Malcolm. That's it. You don't want to know about him. He was a, he was a rough dude, but yeah, or anyone else. It was just Martin Luther King. Exactly. Yeah. He did the whole thing by himself.

“It turns out. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I remember that same era as well. Um, okay. So I say we get into this”

because we could probably sit here and do an intro and it would end up being the entire thing.

Well, let's jump in and everybody else can kind of make up their own minds about how you feel about

Malcolm X. Um, and just kind of as an aside to start, I would definitely recommend going and watching the documentary on them that American experience did. I think in the 90s. Yeah, make it plain. And then, um, I read a bunch of articles and the best one I read was, um, the achievement of Malcolm X by John J. Simon. That was in the monthly review. That was a really good comprehensive one, too. Yeah. And see that's likely. Maybe it's an exception. I've not seen it.

Oh, man, you got to check it out. That's great. I will. I will. Um, okay. So we're talking about Malcolm X. If you hadn't figured that out by now. And, um, you may or may not know that Malcolm X was born Malcolm little. Oh, this is a given name. He was born back in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. And from the outset, um, he was essentially raised in a very black, conscious family. So he was aware of the state of racial affairs in the United States. It's a very young person. And oppression that black people

lived under at the time and still doing many ways. Yeah, for sure. His dad, uh, Earl was a Baptist lay speaker, uh, his mother Louise Little. They were both members of the Universal Negro Improvement

Association, uh, which was a Marcus Garvey joint. Someone else we never learned about in high school.

And they moved to Milwaukee for a little while, then eventually in 1928 when, uh, Little Malcolm was three landed in Michigan. And they landed in a white neighborhood. And that was a big problem because they were not wanted there. And Earl Little was, uh, not the kind of guy to just pack up and leave because his neighbors didn't want them there. So he, he stayed. And, uh, the community had a, had a clause in their HOA covenant that said that basically no one was allowed to sell a

house to non-white people. And so they, they sued to evict them. And while that was kind of going through even before the eviction was finalized, uh, group of white men burned their house to the ground without any firefighters even showing up. Right. So whether they wanted to move or not, they had to now. And they moved a little further out of, um, where they lived, still in the Lansing area. And, um, I don't know when the house burned, but just within a year or two, maybe less,

Malcolm was six years old and his father died. Uh, he died in a mysterious bizarre street car accident where he was run over by a street car. And that's just the official line on the whole thing. In fact,

“I think it was, it ended up being ruled as suicide. Um, but according to Malcolm, his family,”

his mother, like his father was murdered probably by a clan affiliated group called the Black Legion who operated in Michigan back then. Um, and that was pretty much what the family was convinced of that his father had been murdered. Then on top of that, no one would admit that his father was murdered, which I'm sure makes that kind of experience that much harder. Yeah. I mean, there was actual evidence that was ignored. Uh, he had clearly been beaten and, uh, placed on the, on the, on the

tracks. So it was kind of just brushed into the table. Uh, it was very upsetting for a young Malcolm because that was like the rumor. It was all around the school and everything. So he was hearing all these stories. Uh, and it was, you know, definitely a big early sort of, um, kind of fork in the road for him, uh, and that his family was left without their dad. Um, they, like you said,

“rule it a suicide, but, uh, that I think she got like $1,000 in one life insurance payment, uh, Louise”

did, which would be about 25 grand a day. Uh, but was denied because of the suicide claim, uh, a much larger insurance claim. So, uh, she didn't have a lot of, lot of dough to feed, you know, what was eight kids. Eight kids, man, and now she's suddenly on her own. Um, and she had a nervous breakdown is what you would call it. I think that she was diagnosed as paranoid and was transferred to the state hospital in Kalamazoo where she stayed, this is, uh, in the mid 30s. She stayed there

his seven siblings are without parents. They're orphans, essentially, and they become warded

“towards the state and they're broken up. So, just in a very short time, a couple of years, Malcolm”

goes from having a stable home life to his father being murdered, his mother having a nervous breakdown and being institutionalized and his, his siblings being spread out throughout the foster system around lancing. Um, that's just what happened to him. And if you know a little bit about Malcolm, actually, you might know that he started out as a criminal, what's astounding Chuck is, this is not when his, his life of crime began. He actually went the exact opposite route.

Well, a little both. He started, uh, stealing stuff when he was nine because he had to do something

to provide for their family, but he never got caught there. Uh, and, you know, will go for his former

formal rap sheet here in a minute. But, um, he, he was sent to a juvenile detention center in Mason, Michigan. He was about 10 miles south of lancing. And he went to a white school and he did a great job. He was, uh, he's a really, you know, was a really smart guy, a really smart kid and made really good grades. He was very charismatic from the beginning. Uh, he was elected class president. Yeah. And had dreams of going to law school before his white teacher said a pretty terrible thing to him.

Yeah, it was an English teacher. And this is a, one of the, one of the, this is the second pivotal moment in his life where he had the rug pulled out from under him. He had the wind taken out of his sales. He got punched in the bread basket. However, you want to put it, because the, because he, the English teacher, he told the English teacher that he was dreaming of becoming a lawyer and the English teacher was like, I think America would, um, accept you more as a carpenter. Like that's the kind of

“profession you need to go in. You need to be realistic about and then essentially being a black person in”

America. So to, to teacher said, but the point was the same and it just completely sucked the life and enthusiasm for learning that he had up to that point right out of him. Yeah, he quit school.

He never went to school again after that. And he had a very promising academic career in front of

him, which is super sad. Uh, so at 15, he goes to live with his half sister in Boston. And, uh, eventually would get a job working at the railroad. So he started traveling around some, and by 17, found himself living in Harlem. And this is where he got the name, uh, that stuck with them, you know, during it sort of early or later teenage years, I guess, uh, red. He had this red hair. So he was either, uh, Detroit red or big red, because he was a tall guy who's six foot four.

And just a little fun side note while he was in Harlem. He was working at a chicken shack

“with a guy named John Sanford. And, uh, he was Chicago red. And Malcolm was Detroit red.”

And he was trying John Sanford and trying to be a standup comic. And that ended up being, uh, red box. That's right. Oh, Stanford and something. Yeah. I love that little fact. So, um, yeah, he was, he became a, I guess he'd come a petty criminal, but he was, he took all of that kind of charisma and charm and initiative and turned it, they directed it toward a life of crime.

Uh, he's often described as a pimple, though. He was never a pimple. He seemed more like the kind of guy

who just knew where to get whatever you wanted. Uh, and that included, um, sex workers that included drugs. Uh, he loved pot. He loved gambling. Uh, and he actually, um, committed a lot of his crimes, like burglary theft that kind of stuff, um, just to support his habits, which, um, pot eventually turned into cocaine, which even back then was more expensive. And, um, again, he loved to gamble. So he needed to keep both of those things up. And that was a large reason why he was, um,

that's such a prolific criminal during this time. Another reason is that he just, uh, the, the options that he had hadn't really panned out very well for him. Like he had a few jobs up to this point, but he realized like, I'm not going to get anywhere serving sandwiches on a train. I'm not going to get anywhere shining shoes, like I might as well make a way for myself and the only way to make a way for myself in this situation is crime. Yeah, for sure. Uh, he was arrested a

couple of times. He was arrested at 19, um, allegedly stealing his half sisters for coat whom he lived with pretty low hanging fruit. Uh, got arrested again when he allegedly mugged, uh, a friend of his gunpoint. And neither one of those amounted to much, but finally he was arrested for a third time after, uh, he had been doing a series of burglaries of wealthy homes with the kind of a small crew. Uh, it was him. It was another black man and three white women. Yeah. And I mentioned

got slaps on the wrist and basically got let go. And the two men were sentenced to eight to 10 in the

“school. Yeah. Um, and the, they would have gotten much worse than that documentary, make it plain. The”

other guy, his friend Malcolm Jarvis, um, he said that they, they tried to get the women to say that the, um, Malcolm, Malcolm Jarvis had raped them and had, all they had to do was say that and they would have been convicted of that and sentenced to a couple more decades for that. And, um, luckily, they were tight enough with these women that they, they said, no, we're not going to do that despite the pressure that they were under to. Yeah, for sure. So prison is where, um, a lot

happened to him in prison, sort of one of his first big transformations. Uh, he spent about, almost seven years there for that, that burglary. And he was about 20 years old at the time. And it was in prison

where he really, uh, kind of found himself, uh, for the, I guess, for the first time as an adult, uh,

and that he remembered like, hey, I'm a smart guy and I used to love, um, academia and learning. So he started, he became a voracious reader again in prison. He apparently tried to memorize the dictionary in prison and was reading anything he could get his hands on, uh, including eventually, which would really transform his life, the teachings of, uh, Elijah Muhammad, who was the leader of the nation of Islam at the time. Yeah. And before he kind of came on to that, those teachings from

“his siblings, I think, who, who encouraged him to start looking into that, um, and he had a real”

version to any kind of religion. Uh, he was actually known as Satan, and by the other prisoners in, in, um, the correctional facility he was in. But the, the reason he was able to read so much truck is because he happened to be an MCI Norfolk in Massachusetts, and it's well known to have a lot, like a huge library connections with, like MIT and Harvard and all that stuff. So it was actually the perfect prison for him to land in. So he was able to kind of educate himself from that point on.

And then when he finally did start taking up the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, it just clicked. And it, it was even further, I guess, reinforced when he started writing letters to Elijah Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad started writing back to him that really encouraged him big time. Yeah. Yeah. You know why? Because you didn't have to write letters to get those books like

“Andy Diffrain. Yeah. And the Charleston Crimson. No. They just threw him at you.”

Yeah. He was, of course, because it was Massachusetts. So, uh, yeah, he started, you know, basically, he became a pinpower with Elijah Muhammad and really became a hard-core Muslim, uh, pretty quickly after reading, uh, you know, his works. And, uh, became an ascetic. So, that means no drugs, no booze, no pork, um, no movies or music, no gambling, no dancing, like the real straight narrow. And, uh, you know, we'll later find out that that became a bit of a

riff later on because he didn't think Elijah Muhammad at one point was, um, sort of walking the walk where as he really was from the beginning. Yeah. For sure. Like, and he did through out to, like, the FBI tried and tried and tried to get something on him. Um, and they couldn't get anything.

Like, he used just that upstanding immoral from that point on. Um, I also, I had never even thought

up to wonder, but I had no idea why his last name was X. Uh, I was pretty surprised to learn this, but it makes a lot of sense. You didn't know that? No. Okay. I thought that would have been sort of just the, the, the basic common knowledge. No, but maybe not. I mean, maybe it is, but I'm, I'm pretty uncommon, Chuck. Right. You're an uncommon podcaster. So yeah, he dropped the name little because, uh, and, and a lot of people in the nation of Islam did and do this, uh, because that was

he thought that was his slave name. So he rid himself of that name and replaced it with an X. Yeah. He also, um, one of the reasons he despised religion, he despised Christianity in general, because he considered that the slave religion that was given to the African slaves to, um, essentially keep them in line. Um, and so it was actually, it was a big deal that he became this Davote of this religion. And this particular religion just, just, just really quick, if you're not

familiar with the nation of Islam, it is not the same thing as Islam that was that emerged out of the Middle East several hundred years ago. It bears like a slight resemblance to it, but it is, uh, essentially a completely altered version that has a lot of theology that seems very odd to outsiders. Yeah. I mean, they, they were Muslim, but, uh, you know, I know you, and this is stuff I didn't know that you found some stuff about, um, Elijah Muhammad's original beliefs that, uh,

you know, you've been using like ice cube, you always talks about white devils. But, um, that is

“actually a teaching from, um, the, the nation of Islam from Elijah Muhammad. And it predates him,”

the nation of Islam, um, had been around for a few decades before Elijah Muhammad was, it's profit. But the reason that they call, what white people white devils is because, according to black Muslim theology, there was a, a genius named Yaka, black genius who created white people by bleaching black people. And he mutated them into white, blue eyed devils. And the reason why is he wanted to basically put the, um, the black race to the test. So he put them in a subjugated position

because he allowed these white people to be devils. To basically act like white people have treated black people since time immorial. And, um, that, that, that, that this rain would last about six millennia. And that the six millennia were almost up. And that this was the time when the black race would rise and take over from the white devils who would, who would really regret the stuff that they had done up to that point after. Yeah, which would have placed it about 1970.

And so, white Americans hearing this at the time, um, they thought that's when like the race war

was coming was was 1970 or thereabouts. Yeah, and we talked about that before. And, like I never

really understood it, but this is a big, big reason that that white America was like, there's going to be a race war. It's like coming, it's inevitable. That was a big part of it. So yeah, this was, and this wasn't like metaphorical. This is, from what I understand, it's a, it's a literal interpretation of where white people came from six thousand years ago. So, um, this was the, this was what Malcolm X is being indoctrinated into and he was a smart guy. So, he, he had to submit

himself. Like he had to take parts of his brain and just turn them off. The suspicious part of him as far as like what he was being taught, had to be turned off. The critical thinking part as far as anything goes with, um, the religion that he took on, he was able to compartmentalize turn it off and throw himself fully into it. And he was, for the first decade, essentially,

“that he was a black Muslim, the best thing that ever happened to the nation of Islam by far.”

Yeah, for sure. Um, that seems like a pretty good place for a break. I agree. All right, we'll be right back, everybody, with more on Malcolm X. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.

You doctor this particular test twice in selling stress. I doctor the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for, some like the greatest disinfectant. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg O' Westby and Michael Marancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap.

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“So Malcolm X is granted parole in 1952. He gets out of prison,”

a completely different person than who entered prison almost seven years earlier. And he was on a mission to recruit and get as many people as he could to join the nation of Islam and had a direct sort of go get him tiger from Elijah Muhammad. And so as soon as he was parole, he joined a temple number one and Detroit. He traveled to Chicago to meet Elijah Muhammad in person and he said like I said, he said, you know, go out there and do your thing. Like he knew

he had a sort of a shining star because he was again, he was tall, he was handsome, he was charismatic, he was super smart. And within a year there were only about 400 members of the nation of Islam at the time. Within a year he brought that to about a thousand. But that would grow to 6,000 by 1955 and then in the early 1960s about 75,000 up from a, you know, 400 when Malcolm X came on the scene. So a lot of that, not all of it, obviously, but a lot of that is really due to him being

the face, you know, I guess sort of the second face and then ultimately the face of the nation of Islam.

Yeah, for sure. His rhetoric, the things he was saying and like you said, the charisma and just how well spoken he wasn't that the point he makes, it's like, you can be white and he's talking about you being a white devil. Sorry, you all white people are white devils. He was uncompromising in that, right? It wasn't like, yeah, I mean some of them are okay. No white people were okay in this philosophy. And he in addition to that rhetoric, he also just knew how to work the media

and what, what, you know, levers to pull and he pushed Elijah Muhammad way out of his comfort zone to allow him to do new stuff with the nation of Islam that helped bring in tons and tons of people.

One of the first big ones was a documentary from Mike Wallace of all people back in 1959

called the hate that hate produced. And it just basically said, look at these guys, but at the same time, listen to what these guys have to say and it exposed the world to black Muslims and it really helped drive up membership. Yeah, for sure. He was not trying to make friends in his job even within his own community. You know, we we talked about him being a hard liner and ascetic and he said that everyone should practice asceticism and you know, he went to Philadelphia

“at 1.955 and said, all right, everyone here is needs to get their act together. You need to”

lose weight even. He had leaders in Philadelphia weighing their members twice a week and there were penalties if you didn't lose the poundage that he required because he wanted everyone to look a certain way about a year later in 1956, he met civil rights activists Betty Sanders when she joined his temple and two years later when he called her from a gas station phone and proposed

they married in January 1958 and later that year had the first of what would be six daughters.

Yeah, all daughters, right, the whole whole long the way even twins, I think the last ones born were twin daughters. So yeah, you said that he wasn't really trying to make friends and he didn't care whether he took people off. So the old guard, the existing guard of the nation of Islam, who had been around long before Malcolm X came along, they were not happy with this. They didn't not like to be told that they were doughy and had to diet or else they'd be suspended. But he was

attracting people who were very much in line with himself. So very quickly as he started to build up the roles of the members of nation of Islam, the philosophy and the viewpoint of that group

radical, much more politically active version of the nation of Islam. That was the Malcolm X brand of nation of Islam. Yeah, I mean Elijah Muhammad told him to stay out of politics because he was just a complete separatist. He didn't want to be involved in anything that the white

white America was doing. But Malcolm X basically started doing his own thing. One of the big

sort of early things he did that ended up being a huge deal was he founded their newspaper. It was

“called Muhammad Speaks. And it became a really had a pretty wide distribution. And I remember even”

growing up seeing on the streets of Atlanta members of the nation of Islam. I feel like they were giving them away. I don't think they were selling them. But he had pretty firm quotas established for members to give these things out and had a pretty wide circulation. Yeah, he also would do things like debate white people. He did it Oxford. He did it Harvard on like race relations. He would take questions from white reporters. All of this stuff was like not what Elijah Muhammad was was

driving with. But Malcolm X was getting such results that Elijah Muhammad would just kind of be like

I don't want to do in that but then when Malcolm went ahead and did it there wouldn't be any real consequences for it. So as he's doing this is becoming more and more emboldened. And one of the

“things he sets aside at Sun Chuck is that the American essentially the racial struggle in the”

United States that was really beginning to become part of the American preoccupation at the same time in the '50s. It was really civil rights movement. It was really starting to take shape. And this again, this was totally opposite from what you were saying Elijah Muhammad wanted, which was isolation, separatism, not just from white America, from non black Muslim black America too. Like he had no inclination to join the civil rights. Elijah Muhammad to join the civil rights fight because

they weren't black Muslims. So therefore they were essentially lesser versions of black Americans. Yeah, for sure. You know part of the complications of Malcolm X is that he had some anti-Semitic views at times. He had some pretty dark views of Jews in America and I guess all over the world but specifically America. And this was especially sort of a you know a thumb in the eye of Jewish people because they were a lot of Jewish people were the white people that were kind of really heavily

involved in this civil rights movement. Obviously there are all kinds of people but Jewish people were leading the charge for white America and the civil rights movement for the most part.

“Yeah, that's why they were also really highly critical of the NAACP is because they essentially said”

white people had allowed white people to join the white people to take an over and we're now steering the boat. So you could not be white and be joined the nation of Islam. Sorry. They would not let you in. Still won as far as I know. Yeah, for sure. But the media was loving this. The media loves to pit people against one another. So they had two really clear like you I think you described in the spoils early on in Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X because it couldn't be any more

different not only in kind of the way they looked and how they talked and the things they were saying but they're ultimate goals. So you know they painted Dr. King as a saint they paid in Malcolm X as a pariah and the I don't know if it's irony but something you can't forget is that you know Malcolm X was making some waves but his reach was nothing compared to what Dr. King was doing. Dr. King was much more but threat if you know is how they would have called it back then to white

America and integration then Malcolm X was because he was he was a fringe revolutionary at the time.

So he was you know he was kind of fortunate to be in the newspapers at all even though you know the media was painting them as enemies and they kind of you know enemies as a weird word they they didn't hang out Dr. King didn't return calls. He was offered like debates for Malcolm X and stuff like that and he kind of just didn't want anything to do with that brand because he had such a sort of a good thing going he had some momentum. Yeah and he was worried also that you know it would

it would scare the white coalition that he'd helped build to support the civil rights movement away from the civil rights movement. If I was done news like oh yeah and also this guy is philosophy too we're going to incorporate the race war. Yeah he had every reason to stay away from Malcolm X and frankly kind of wisely did but like you said this was the media saying like you got Malcolm

and you know you didn't listen to MLK then we were going to go the Malcolm X way as far as America was concerned in the near future so we should probably go the way that Martin Luther King is

suggesting. Yeah you know reading this stuff I always was hoping that I would find out that they were

secretly in cocoots with one another doing sort of a good a good cop bad cop thing because

“they were both well aware of that and I think they judging from some of the quotes I've seen”

they were they were both aware that it was it was helping the cause ultimately and even Malcolm X even though that's not what he was after he knew that there were gains coming on that side because he was so scary to white America. Exactly yeah I think it was kind of like how food companies price fix they don't have secret meetings but they just kind of make signals in the market in public and that's kind of what they I think they were doing they were working together

without actively working together. Yeah it's like food companies fixing grocery prices so yeah and I mean he was like really outspoken about what he thought about Dr. Martin Luther King he called him a fool and Uncle Tom he also said that he was subsidized by the white man that the essentially again that white people had taken over the real levers of power with the civil rights movement and that it was completely useless now but even even if that weren't the

case he was such a critic of the civil rights movement because he's he was basically saying like if you're starting a revolution and the revolutions goal is to love your enemy like that's

ridiculous that's stupid like that's never going to work it doesn't even make sense so what are

you doing like all you're doing is is distracting and continuing to keep subjugated the people who you're supposedly trying to liberate and integrate. Yeah he called the march on Washington the farce on Washington Malcolm X did and he said quote was whoever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing we shall overcome while tripping and swaying along arm and arm with a very people they're supposed to be angrily revolting against so you know I'm not taking sides but he's

“making a lot of good points at the time you know I think the idea that you can catch more flies”

with honey than vinegar is true but it was I think they almost needed they're almost needed to be two sides of the same coin happening at the same time yeah I don't know it was it's pretty interesting how it all worked out and if you're wondering if the federal government was concerned they absolutely were this started in 1950 when Malcolm X was still in prison he wrote a letter to Harry Truman who was president and he said I'm a communist I'm opposed to the Korean war and

President Truman said maybe we should get a file going on this guy with FBI and they did that a couple of years later yeah he had also captured the attention of the NYPD around that time where there was a protest because the Harlem police had brutalized a member of the nation of Islam and there was it like just a bunch of people came out on the street and we're shouting about it because the guy had been beaten so badly of school been cracked open and they wouldn't disperse so

Malcolm X was inside essentially negotiating that the guy should get care and taken to the hospital with the police officials and managed to get them to agree to that but the crowd was still angry wouldn't disperse and the cops were trying it wasn't very effective so Malcolm X went outside and apparently didn't say a word just waved his hand and the crowd stopped yelling and just dispersed

“and apparently the I think the police commissioner witnessed this and was like that that's too much”

power for anyone man to have especially somebody who believes that the black race is going to take over from the white race and that the white race is all devils like that that's scared them tremendously and it also really caught their attention he it put him on their radar essentially forever yeah for sure and as far as the FBI goes he you know like I said they started a file on him which they also had on on Martin Luther King and you know John Linnon and everybody else we've

talked about all this stuff but there was a something they found out later from the files was at one point Jay Edgar Hoover told the New York Agency office they needed to do something about Malcolm X but like you said early on they had a hard time doing anything because in 1958 an informant

said that Malcolm X was of high moral character he doesn't smoke he doesn't drink him he's always on

white America of course that didn't matter but they couldn't pin anything on him essentially

and they even think and I don't think it's a spoiler to say that he was assassinated but I feel like everyone knows that but they even think that the FBI because they had so many informants inside the nation of Islam that they knew about the plot to assassinate him and just let it happen yeah I saw that too and not just the FBI but also the NYPD just let it happen so just real quick Chuck I see we take a break in a second and talk about his break with the

nation of Islam but it's I just wanted to kind of give a thumbnail sketch of like what he was saying

“you can go listen you should start with maybe the ballot or the bullet there's a great speech that”

gets his point across from this era but essentially what he's saying is black people have to learn to do for themselves integrating and then saying like you know hey let's all just share

from the same pot with white people isn't gonna work because white people will always hang it over you

so we have to figure out how to do it ourselves using the nation of Islam that's how you prop somebody up get them on the right path put them on the moral path in a way from temptation and then after that you teach them black nationalism so now they feel good about being a black person and then from that point on they have the dignity and the motivation to to make something for themselves as a community that was his goal that's ultimately he what he was preaching that was

the kernel of the whole thing that's right so we're gonna take that break and we're gonna come back with the sad end and the split from the nation of Islam right after this in 2023 former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal the family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story this began a years-long court battle to prove the truth you doctor this particular test twice in silence correct i doctor the test ones

it took an army of internet detectives to crack the case i wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for some like the greatest disinfectant they would uncover a disturbing pattern two more men who'd been through the same thing regular lesbian i could mention it my mind was blown i'm Stephanie Young this is love trap for scosty police as the season continues Laura owns finally faces consequences ladies and gentlemen breaking news at america

pecania's laurel owns has been indicted on fraud charges this isn't over until justice is served in Arizona listen to love trapped podcast on the i-hart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts you know real doll the writer who found up willy wanka metilda and the bfj but did you know he was also a spy was this before he wrote his stories i must have been

“our new podcast series the secret world of role doll is a wild journey through the hidden”

chapters of his extraordinary controversial life his job was literally to seduce the wives of

powerful americans and he was really good at it you probably won't believe it either okay i don't think

that's true i'm telling you okay that was a spy did you know dog i cozy with the rose of else play poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congressman and then he took his talents to Hollywood where he worked alongside Walt Disney and offered hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film how did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as

kids the true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote this into the secret world of role doll on the i-hart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey there this is Josh from

“stuff you should know with a message that could change your life the stuff you should know”

think spring podcast playlists is available now whether spring is sprung in your neck of the widget or not the stuff you should know think spring playlists will make you want to get your overalls on get outside and get your hands in the dirt you can get the stuff you should know think spring playlists on the i-hart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts so Chuck Malcolm X's become he's the face of the nation of Islam to the press to the public

people like they know the name Elijah Muhammad you might even have seen him speak but it's way likely or that you've seen Malcolm X speak and that's who you associate is the head so if you're the protege and you become that the the power kind of shifts like that the mentor doesn't usually like that kind of thing then on top of it the mentor Elijah Muhammad

were worried that Malcolm X would actually take over so there was a lot of reason for there would be jealousy back biting court intrigue and get rid of Malcolm X one way or another and that's essentially what happened yeah I mean his kids thought that they were going to be next in line

basically and you know I mentioned the FBI had lots of people on the inside of the nation of Islam

they used those people to kind of stoke that strife internally and you know try and disrupt it from within and we're fairly successful at that because it was not smooth sailing at this point so you know the real fracture comes you know all this is sort of leading up to

“what I think was the real fracture was when Malcolm X finds out about Elijah Muhammad”

having three children out of wedlock with three very young members of the nation of Islam and essentially started looking upon him as a false prophet that was just sort of a guy in power that was using that power to a flander and he was like I don't think he's fit to lead the nation of Islam anymore and in 1963 of April of that year he confronted Elijah Muhammad about this and that was not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted to hear. No for sure and now like now Malcolm

X was a big problem because this is not something that Elijah Muhammad wanted out to the public it would immediately discredit him and so do you remember kind of at the beginning I was saying

how Malcolm X had to kind of compartmentalize and turn off critical thinking and stuff like that

to allow himself to submit to Elijah Muhammad after this after he realized that this guy's actually not the real deal he was able to kind of grow and spread like one of those sponge dinosaurs that you put water on and they grow or a different analogy would be like Apache Chief in the Justice League when he grows like really really big essentially that happened the moment he realized that Elijah Muhammad was a false prophet and he was able to finally grow and become the Malcolm X that he

always had the potential to be he had thrown off the shackles placed on him he got an out from under the thumb of the leader of the nation of Islam but that also unfortunately meant he had

“no place in the nation of Islam any longer yeah I think the final nail in the coffin was when”

Kennedy was assassinated he got explicit direction from Elijah Muhammad to to shut up about it to not say anything to the press to just let this pass because it was such a monumental thing for all of America certainly for white America and he was like we need to stay out of this if we know what's good for us and Malcolm X did not do that he went to the reporters and he said that Kennedy's death was quote a case of chickens coming home to roost in quote and Elijah Muhammad was

super upset he said you're suspended for three months a month into that he removed him from most of his leadership roles and that was the writing was on the wall that that was really the beginning of the final split yeah and just one little aside about that Chuck him saying a case of chickens coming home to roost there is so much more background and subtext to it and all

“the stuff you saying that led up to that but that's the polquot right that's the thing that you just”

pulling it sounds like a pretty awful thing to say or at least heartless but if you go back and read that stuff you like you find there's so much more context of the stuff he was he's quoted for and like you said kind of a toward the beginning a lot of it seems pretty reasonable when you

listen to the words he's saying yeah for sure you know after he was expelled basically

not formally expelled but you know removed from his formal duties he went down to stay with caches clay a future Muhammad Ali at his place in Miami and he stayed there for a week he was given him a spiritual guidance leading up to his heavyweight bout was sunny list and he had not cleared this with Elijah Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad got mad about that as well and left him off the guest list for a convention in February where caches clay and you know had his coming out as

Muhammad Ali so that was a very meaningful snub at the time yeah I was disappointed in Muhammad Ali because he was basically like oh that sucks man sorry see ya yeah so now this is the break this is the schism and at this point now the nation of Islam is doing everything they can to mock and discredit Malcolm X and say that he was a turned coat and a Benedict Arnold and a hypocrite and Malcolm X has gave it right back one of the first things he did was to tell the media that

Elijah Muhammad had kids out of wedlock with teenage girls that were around him he said that he had

big deal and I think at that point he realized like he had just taken his life into his own hands

yeah so that's all basically sort of early through spring 1964 later in 1964 a very important trip happened when he made the Hajj to Mecca and this was you know kind of the final big life-changing moment for him he came back a Sunni Islam member and he had changed his name for Malcolm X to El Hajj

“Malik El Shibaz and I believe even his wife and daughters took the name Shibaz like you know”

throughout the rest of their lives as well and while he was there he had a transformation another transformation kind of like he did in prison but the other way he came full circle and said he had encountered pilgrims of all colors from all parts of this earth displaying a spirit of

unity and brotherhood like I've never seen before and he essentially flipped and said you know

what there are good white people and we can and should work together and he came back and started to do that work and really poured himself for the first time into the legit official civil rights yeah he told Martin Luther King like I'm all in he he founded the organization of Afro-American Unity he was trying to essentially teach black Americans about their African heritage but that at the same time he had also zoomed in on this idea that he needed to take the struggle for

American civil rights to the world like the UN or the African Congress and basically say hey this is the same thing this is part of the black struggle worldwide like this is part of this global problem it's not separate it's not its own thing so we need to figure like all these other countries need to get involved too and start pressuring the US to do something about it which is a pretty clever idea actually and it was not something that Martin Luther King was doing at

the time from what I understand yeah for sure they would eventually meet there was a very famous single meeting with Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X it was not something they planned because it's not like Martin Luther King Jr got on board immediately and was like oh great you're joining the movement like I don't think they still he's still really liked in that much but they literally bumped into each other in the hallway when they were at the Senate when the civil

rights bill was being debated there at the capitol building and it was like oh it's you and they

“shook hands I think he told him in person I'm throwing myself into the heart of the civil rights”

struggle face to face there was a photographer there so there's a very famous picture of them together and then later that year in July 64 as when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and it was signed in the law by Lyndon Johnson and that was not the the end for Malcolm X though he thought he was just getting started very sadly yeah so this was you said that was May of 1964 within just a few months he would be dead and it's just so sad that he

underwent that transformation and all of a sudden his potential is really starting to blossom

he turned into like a full butterfly for the first time and he's struck down he the first thing

that happened that kind of just foreshadowed his death was his house was fire bombed by he was quite sure members of the nation of Islam apparently one of the bombs was thrown through a window that would have landed in and on the three of his little girls in their room but luckily it shattered on the outside of the window and didn't make it through but it burned his house essentially down and this was a house that was owned by the nation of Islam so they went as far as to accuse him

of burning it down because they had evicted him from the house and so out of spite he burned it down which was obviously not true yeah which is full circle because I don't think we mentioned that when their house was burned down when he was a little kid they actually accused his dad or old of burning his own house down so the same thing happened all those years later that was on February 14th, 1965 on February 18th they formally evicted him and then on February 21st he was murdered he

“was shot and killed in front of his in front of Betty in front of the girls I think there were four”

girls at the time because Betty was pregnant with the twins that would be born after his death and this was in Harlem at an organization of Afroamerican unity meeting and they arrested three members of the nation of Islam one confessed and said the other two weren't involved but the all three were convicted even though later on I think in 2021 they were the other two were exonerated after the attorney general of New York saw that they had buried some expulpatory evidence

NYPD apparently helped pave the way by arresting a couple of his body guards on BS charges so he was short security on that day and it was at his funeral like he made quite a name for himself

“I think 1500 people showed up which is a pretty good turnout for your funeral and Ossi Davis”

who was very much in with the Martin Luther King version of the civil rights movement he led Malcolm X's funeral because he was just that moved by him even though he didn't see it I and a bunch of stuff like he realized what a loss this was for the blood community in the world yeah for sure you know I mentioned that the twins that were born after he died they you know obviously grew up without their dad and the other girls weren't that much older

and they always just knew him as dad he you know I think the ones that were kind of didn't even

know him at all they weren't raised by Betty as like hey your dad was a revolutionary he was this or that that apparently they'd learned about him mainly in school because Betty always wanted him just to be dad and my husband and so they were you know they went on to do a lot of great things as well we should probably do one on Betty should pass at some point she was a great woman and his daughters all you know became activists in their own way as well um so yeah I kind of mentioned

like to how just sad this is that he was struck down especially at the time he was struck down but if you look back at like the time frame of all this stuff this guy changed the world or left such an indelible mark that people are still learning from him all these years later over essentially the course of ten years um that's that was the about the timeline that we're talking about from when he took up the nation of Islam's teachings to when he was assassinated by the

“nation of Islam it was just about a decade and that's how much of an impact that he made over just”

that time yeah there was a pretty great quote that who is this was this Julia that helped us with yeah Julia helped us big time yeah she found a great quote from poet Maya Angelou who Malcolm X visited in at her home in Ghana at one point and um basically kind of summarizing uh what guts it took to make that transformation in full public public view after being

so public and militant um she said that it takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say

say everybody you remember what I said yesterday well I found out that's wrong and she just thought that was an amazing thing to be able to do and it really was you know not a lot of people can own up to um kind of being on what they thought later was the wrong path you know yeah it is remarkable um so you can go read the autobiography of Malcolm X also I've seen that Malcolm X speaks

“is a really great book I think it's his collected speeches there's the Spike Lee movie there's”

make it plain the PBS documentary and then there's just tons of like his speeches are just all over YouTube so if you're interested in this at all like there's a lot you can still learn from Malcolm X even with him being dead all these years yeah the can't recommend the book and the movie enough uh the book sold 400 thousand copies the year was released in 1967 and it sold 5 million to date and the movie uh was a big kit too it grows close to 50 million bucks which is not bad for

for a long you know true story biopic like you know with political overtones uh had a couple

of Academy Award nominees certainly Denzel because he was amazing as always and the great

Ruth E. Carter for custom design even though neither one would win it was fairly controversial when Al Pacina won for Sentival Woman overall Denzel yeah it was people thought it was a pretty big sub including Spike Lee he saw he thought it was um due to the controversy of the film obviously in the character and and he also thought it was a bit of a makeup call for Pacino losing so many times so uh he would get some due though later in 2010 when the film was added to the national film

registry as being culturally historically or aesthetically significant beautiful that's a great ending Charles uh you got anything else that's it uh well that's it for Malcolm Mech's Chuck just said that's it so obviously everybody it's time for listener mail yeah this one's a little long but it's one of the great emails we've gotten because uh after we did our what I think was a really fun episode on the fire festival debock yes we heard you know in that we talked about the

you see this oh I haven't seen that yet it's pretty fantastic so uh hey guys here

“and you talk about this uh credit card brought me back to some very special memories of my early days”

in New York uh when I first moved there in 2014 I stumbled upon the Magnusus and thought it sounded

like the perfect way to meet new people since I was new there and excess uh the cool Linux exclusive parties and parts of the city so I applied and was surprised to be accepted as a member I quickly found myself at fun rooftop parties with open bars great tickets to shows and sports games and snagging reservations for restaurants that were impossible the book all of which seemed to be too good to be true for the $250 annual feet which should have been my first

clue that something was wrong uh the first real crack came when I took advantage of an offer to get floor seats to a Beyoncé concert for only $200 and had to obtain the tickets by meeting a quote Magnusus Concierge and the parking lot outside of the preview the tickets I got felt like they had just been bought from a scalper and they probably were but it did work out and it was a great show uh not long after I had will call tickets to an MBA game through a quote partnership they

had with the team when my friends and I showed up to grab the seats no in behind the ticket counter had ever heard of Magnusus that was a moment I started asking questions and when I reached out about the issue and about canceling my membership they actually refunded it almost immediately in fact they refunded my feet so quickly it was almost alarming like they were hoping I'd just quietly go away thankfully I managed to exit the whole thing before the house of cards came

crashing down so hearing you guys explain how the whole thing worked was fascinating and weirdly nostalgic despite the sketchiness at the end I actually do have some pretty fun memories from that brief period when it felt like I had unlocked some secret VIP version of New York City I look forward to your next stop at the bellhouse and that is from Kevin Kevin that really was one of the all-time best emails we've gotten yeah I was I was hoping a Magnusus member would

“write in and we got two you should be playing the loto”

probably should um thanks a lot Kevin if you want to be like Kevin and send us one of our all-time

great emails we always love those you can wrap it up spank it on the bottom and send it off to

stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows in 2023 bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax you doctor this particular test twice in silence correct I doctor the test once it took an army of internet detectives to uncover

a disturbing pattern two more men who'd been through the same thing regular us the end I could manage any my mind was blown I'm Stephanie young this is love trapped Laura Scottsdale police

as the season continues Laura owns finally faces consequences listen to love trapped podcast on the

iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey there this is Josh from stuff you

“should know with a message that could change your life the stuff you should know thanks bring podcast”

playlists is available now whether spring is sprung in your neck of the wood yet or not the stuff you should know thanks bring playlists will make you want to get your overalls on get outside and get your hands in the dirt you can get the stuff you should know thanks bring playlists on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts you know roll doll he thought I'd really wonka in the bfg but as you know he was a spy in the new podcast the secret world of rolled doll

I'll tell you that story and much much more what you probably won't believe it either was this before you wrote his stories I must have been okay I don't think that's true I'm telling you it was a spy listen to the secret world of rolled doll on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this is an iHeartPodcast guaranteed human