Malcolm X: The Power of Speech1

The politically-charged revolutionary sixties, with its anti-racism, anti-establishment themes, brought forth a multitude of charismatic leaders gifted in the art of rhetoric, including masters of elocution like Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Elridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton, and Little Bobby Seale, along with Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. However, out of all the fine rhetoricians of the sixties, one particularly individual stands out: al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, known to most as Malcolm X.

Malcolm X was born on May 19th, 1925 and was martyred in 1965. He was an influential African American civil rights leader who articulated the need for self-defense against white racist violence. A precursor to the Black Power movement of the late sixties, Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska. The son of Louis and Earl Little, Malcolm became a rebellious youth after the death of his father who was brutally murdered for advocating the ideas of Marcus Garvey, the famous black nationalist from Jamaica. Although Malcolm spent a few years in a foster home, he became an excellent student and was even elected class president. His dreams of becoming an attorney were cut short, however, when his teacher told him that such ambitions were not reasonable for a nigger. Deeply disillusioned, Malcolm’s life went downhill from that point. By the age of 14, he had moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts, a predominantly black section of Greater Boston, where he lived with his half-sister Ella Collins. It was there that Malcolm started to engage in criminal activities, eventually drifting to New York City where he became involved in Harlem’s underworld of drugs, prostitution, and robbery.

While serving a sentence for burglary from 1946 to 1952, he studied extensively and was eventually converted to the ideas of Elijah Muhammad. Upon his release from prison, Malcolm became an active member of the Nation of Islam, a black supremacist cult, changing his slave name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X. As a result of his studies in prison, and the thorough training he received at the hands of Elijah Muhammad, a self-professed prophet, Malcolm became the leading spokesman for the Nation of Islam to the outside world. Over time, however, an ideological split developed between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad. While Elijah Muhammad attempted to remain apolitical, Malcolm was deeply politicized. While Elijah Muhammad advocated the return of African Americans to Africa, Malcolm insisted in improving the conditions of black people in the United States.

As a result of these significant differences, Malcolm X was suspended from his position as Minister in the Nation of Islam. After completing a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in 1964, Malcolm X announced that he had embraced orthodox Islam, and rejected the racist doctrines of Elijah Muhammad. As a result, Malcolm founded a mainstream Muslim mosque and continued to publicly condemn the Black Muslim cult, accusing the adulterous Elijah Muhammad of religious fakery. As a result of his travels throughout the Middle East and Africa, Malcolm developed a more optimistic attitude regarding the potential brotherhood between white and black Americans. As an orthodox Muslim, Malcolm completely rejected the racist doctrines of Elijah Muhammad and expressed his opposition to the separation of the races. After several attempts on his life, Malcolm’s worldly mission abruptly ended on February 21st, 1965, by assassins connected with the Nation of Islam.

Despite his death, Malcolm X remains famous as a result of his powerful rhetoric, a skill he learned from many sources of inspiration. Malcolm picked up some of his skills as a speaker by listening to Christian sermons, particularly those of his father, a freelance Baptist preacher. In fact, Malcolm was exposed to outstanding speech-makers during his childhood, a conditioning that definitely most certainly played an important role in formulating his future modes of delivery. As an avid reader, Malcolm X also learned a great deal through self-education. Despite the fact that he suffered from a speech impediment, stuttering, and reading difficulties, Elijah Muhammad also played a fundamental role in training Malcolm as a preacher.

If Malcolm X was a great speaker, it was primarily because he was an extraordinarily clear thinker. In fact, he was especially gifted at synthesizing political and philosophical ideas. A superior man in the art of speaking, Malcolm had a veritable genius for rhetoric. His fine intellect, and razor-sharp wit, combined with the force of his personality, made him a brilliant speaker. A passionate and powerful person, Malcolm X seemed haunted, driven, and even captured by his own anger at the injustice that was suffered by his people. The tone of his voice and the style in which he spoke were subject to strategic control. Even when expounding upon intellectually elevated subjects, the content he conveyed was comprehensible to the most cynical, fatalistic hustler. As a result of his rhetoric, Malcolm provided a radical insight into the black experience in America. In fact, his rhetoric contains, very much, the stamp of racial conflict.

When comparing Malcolm X to other outstanding orators, we notice that they all share some common traits. The one thing that all good speakers have in common is the language they use. Good speakers speak to the people in the language of the people. Since Malcolm’s message was aimed at the masses, he spoke to them in normal, plain, every day, unelaborate language. Although Malcolm expressed himself in highly intellectual terms when debating other intellectuals, he avoided complex and sophisticated vocabulary when speaking to ordinary individuals. The reason for this was obvious. Had he stood up in front of uneducated crowds of black people, and started to speak to them as if he were lecturing at graduate school at Harvard, he would soon have lost his audience. They would not have been able to understand him. Rather than connect with his audience, he would have alienated it. Since Malcolm X understood his audience, he spoke to them in terms that they could easily understand, speaking in the latest street slang. Since Malcolm X was an ex-hustler, an ex-con who had spent nearly a decade between bars, and was former hoodlum, thief, dope dealer, peddler, and pimp, the people of the ghetto could relate to him. Unlike other Uncle Tom blacks who belonged to the privileged class, and who benefited from the scraps that Uncle Sam tossed from his table, Malcolm X kept it real because he had risen up from the gutter. Black people trusted Malcolm as they knew he would always speak the truth, stand up for them, and never sell out.

A man of the people who spoke to the people in the language of the people, Malcolm delivered speeches which described the violent nature of American society. He believed that racist whites were at war with blacks in a cruel and violent conflict. Although Malcolm employed colloquial English, he never resorted to curses or racial slurs in order to get the crowd growing. Even when provoked, the strongest word he ever used was “hell.” Even though he could come across as rhetorically rough, he never expressed himself in a tasteless fashion. Malcolm X was very much a man of acquired education, class, and culture.

Much like Jesus, who spoke in parables that simple people could understand, Malcolm X expressed his ideas through images and fiery rhetoric. He made especially good use of allegory and animal imagery for practical effect, a literary device he learned from his father and other black Protestant preachers. Speaking of white racists, Malcolm said: “Get the apes off our backs.” Speaking of America, he said: “It used to be like an eagle, but now, it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood, whether they were strong or not. But now, it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless.” Speaking of white supremacists, Malcolm said: “You can let those hooded people know…those were…snakes. Those were twenty-one snakes that killed those three brothers in Mississippi…There is no law in any society on Earth that would hold it against anyone for taking the heads of those snakes.” On another occasion, he said, “If I go home, and my child has blood running down her leg, and someone tells me that a snake bit her, I’m going out and kill snakes, and when I find a snake, I’m not going to look and see if he has blood on his jaws.”

While Malcolm described whites in animal terms, he also used animal imagery to describe black people. He did not hesitate to describe slaves in animal terms, saying: “You came to America on a slave ship, in chains, like a horse or a cow or a chicken.” Denouncing the effort of whites to dictate the direction of the civil rights movement, Malcolm said, “They think we are savage animals here. They can’t tell us what to do, how to live. How can a cat tell a dog what to do?” When describing the slave mentality that African Americans suffered from, he compared them to caged lions. As he explained, “If a lion is in a cage, his roar will be different from the roar of a lion who is in the forest. But both the lion in the forest and the lion in a cage are lions. That is what matters. Lions love lions; they hate leopards.”

As Malcolm explained, it was often difficult to distinguish between blacks who were friends and blacks who were enemies. As such, Malcolm also described blacks in animal terms, saying: “I hear a lot of you parrot what the man says.” Speaking of his rival civil rights leaders, he said: “Our leaders…are parrots. It’s like running from the wolf to the fox.” Malcolm described the world as a jungle in which wolves, foxes, ferrets, snakes, and vultures, hunted one another. When Malcolm was being hunted down by assassins in 1965, he described himself as being in jungle, saying: “Those who would hunt a man need to remember that a jungle also contains those who would hunt the hunters.” In fact, Malcolm’s concept of society was based on two laws of the jungle: 1) The conflict between natural enemies, and, 2) the survival of the fittest.

As has been lucidly shown, Malcolm X was an outstanding orator. The language he used, his imagery, his metaphors, and his similes, were stunning. Malcolm’s tone of voice, his repetition, his pauses, and his stylistic flow made his delivery impressive. Malcolm’s use of humor for comic relief was highly effective. By gradually changing the tone of his voice, he controlled his audience like a conductor controls an orchestra. Malcolm’s shift from formal to informal language, from serious to funny, and from general to specific, was also strategically superlative. In short, Malcolm X was a brilliant speaker and one of the most eloquent African American orators in history.

Bibliography

Haskins, James. Profiles in Black Power. New York: Doubleday, 1972.

X, Malcolm. The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard. Ed. Archie Epps. New York: William Morrow, 1968.

- -. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements: Selected Speeches and Statements. Ed. George Breitman. New York: Grove Press, 1965.

• 1. This essay was the author’s independent study for an English class at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. As an early effort, it may rely exceedingly on the sources in the bibliography.