The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

“Now, I know you don’t want to be called ‘black,’ he said...You want to be called Negro. But what does Negro mean except ‘black’ in Spanish? So what you are saying is: ‘It’s OK to call me ‘black’ in Spanish, but don’t call me black in English.”

When Ley Payne hears Malcolm speak, he confronts his own self-loathing. He will later recount Malcolm’s quote in an essay called “The Night I Stopped Being A Negro.” Malcolm helps him embrace his identity as a black man and to defy any attempt to classify black people as inferior.

“King offered racists the other cheek, Malcolm the back of his hand. Freedom was so important to him that Malcolm counseled risking all, except one’s sense of self-respect, in the fight. Nonviolence, he taught, unduly narrowed an oppressed peoples’ options.

Over the three decades of researching Malcolm’s life, Les Payne always considered the message of the above quote to be the core takeaway from Malcolm’s ministry. Freedom was the master virtue, to be pursued at all costs. Nonviolence could lead to myopia and delay or diminish needed changes. As always, Malcolm led by example. He risked—and lost—his life living the values he preached to others.

“If fear of the gunmen gripped Mrs. Little, her children detected no sign in her tone and body language…The children, in fact, drew lasting strength from the manner in which their mother stood her ground that spring evening before the bullying white strangers on horseback.”

Louise refuses to submit to the armed Klansmen who demand to see her husband. She is calm and defiant. Her children see these traits and will live their lives in similar fashion. The Little children did not believe they had to treat white people as their superiors, because the most important people in their lives—Earl and Louise—insisted that they were not anyone’s inferiors.