Malcolm X at 100: How his legacy has been celebrated — and co-opted — in pop culture

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American civil rights activist and revolutionary Malcolm X would have turned 100 years old this year.
Before he was assassinated in 1965 at the age of 39, Malcolm X had become a prominent figure in the Nation of Islam, known for his eloquent and passionate public speeches about Black nationalism and the critiques of American society.
To commemorate his life, Commotion host Elamin Abdelmahmoud talks to professor Mark Anthony Neal, and culture critics Sandy Hudson and Matt Amha for a brief look at the commercialization of Malcolm X's legacy over the decades, and how it has or hasn't aligned with his actual mission and message.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
Elamin: Mark, Malcolm X came to prominence at a time when we obviously didn't have social media, internet. What do you think it was about his understanding of mass media that made him become this iconic voice that we now know?
Mark: He came of age in the early parts of the electronic media era, right? He would have watched film as a kid. He would've been a young adult when television became a thing. So he was always sensitive to the representation of Black bodies and Black culture in the context of these films. Just think about a little Malcolm watching a Tarzan movie and trying to put in context what he was seeing, in terms of the way that Africans were treated.
But I think more importantly, he was a photographer in his own right. So he was always concerned with capturing and documenting what was happening. And then, of course, the critical moment for him was when CBS News does their special, The Hate That Hate Produced, which really is a thing that allows more Americans in 1959 to find out what the Nation of Islam was and who Malcolm X was. He had to learn on the fly how to navigate media culture in that context.
Elamin: Sandy, I'm curious for you because you are someone with real-world experience being an activist. As you look at the ways Malcolm X engaged with the media, what do you make of the way that he leveraged it?
Sandy: I think it was wonderful. I think he really understood media. He was the one who said, "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." And so he really understood the power of media, and he didn't trust it. But that didn't stop him from using the media as a tool for education and to try to influence people to understand his goals, and to reach his goals. I certainly take that lesson from him, and I have tried to use that lesson in my own activism — using the media as a tool for mass education.
Elamin: Matt, obviously there's something quite intentional about the ways that Malcolm X leveraged media. What do you make of the way that he approached it?
Matt: I mean, Malcom was a showman in a lot of ways, you know? He understood the theatre of emerging media which, as Mark points out, at the time would have been colour television. I think he was a master of spectacle — and that isn't to say that it is in any way shallow. But it's to say that you understand the way that media and public attention functioned, and he understood how to ultimately bend it to his will. He was a kind of forebearer in that sense, in a lot of ways.
Elamin: I want to spend a moment on that idea of it being theatre, because I don't think you are saying that it's fictitious in any kind of way. But you're saying it's a way to sort of get attention, and direct it towards the thing that you want that attention to be on.
Matt: Well, what I mean to say by theatre is, there's a famous instance in 1957 where a Black man named Johnson Hinton is beaten in Harlem. He takes thousands of Black men from Harlem and marches down to the precinct in his community and stands them outside and makes demands of the NYPD, who eventually yield. That imagery of having hundreds of Black men standing outside of the precinct, making this demand of the New York Police Department, is a moving image. I mean, radicalism is about your belief system, but there's also a kind of aesthetic demonstration of radicalism as well. And the press at the time, and still to this day, often respond to that, right? And he, to me, was a kind of master of using that and turning it on its head, as Sandy says, for the purposes of political education.