In January, we as a nation set aside a day, the third Monday, to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — as we should do. Yet no such day exists to honor the memory of Malcolm X, whose role in the struggle for the rights and dignity of African Americans is equally valuable.
If that is not already obvious from the lessons of history, it becomes clearer in a diary kept by the Muslim thinker and leader in his waning time on earth. On Nov. 1, 2013, Third World Press announced the forthcoming publication of The Diary of Malcolm X, edited by Herb Boyd, a prolific writer and historian, and Ilyasah Al-Shabazz, the third eldest daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz.
As the black theologian James H. Cone writes in an afterword to the book, understanding Malcolm is essential to understanding and appreciating Martin. He explains that while the latter was a “political revolutionary,” the former was a “cultural revolutionary,” who helped Negroes to redefine, rename and reclaim our black selves and our history, thus getting us ready to accept the freedoms and to live the dream Martin secured.
Malcolm X, soon to be El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, kept a diary in 1964, from mid-April to the end of May and from July to November covering his pilgrimage to Mecca and travels through the Middle East and Africa after his departure from the Nation of Islam and less than a year before he was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965.
The diary records Malcolm X’s movements and reactions during his extraordinary trip to take part in the pilgrimage and his travels to meet with African leaders to build momentum for a movement that put the black American’s civil-rights quest in an international and pan-
African context within the larger struggle for human rights.
It chronicles his impressions of ordinary people he met and reflects his profound awe over the warm reception he receives as a leader and American Muslim meeting people of many colors and races who seem far more able to live in harmony and unity than his fellow citizens were at the time.
