Sir:
Recently i was made aware of your "Moments in Time" web-site on which you have posted a letter from Malcolm X to Elijah Muhammad written on 29.March.1959. In the letter Malcolm X discusses in some detail his "domestic affairs" as it relates to his wife Betty Shabazz, whom he had married just over a year before. Please let me say that i am dismayed, appalled, disheartened, and displeased with your display of this for three reasons:
First, the insensitivity associated with posting a very personal and private letter, not meant for the public consumption (Malcolm literally writes ". . . I feel compelled to tell you . . . , and would tell it to no one else but you.") on the worldwide web for the world to see including his daughters who, like most of us, know very little about their parents
relationship before they were born.
Second, that the letter has been offered for sale and is done on the heels of the Butterfields, eBay, Calhoun affair which is presently in litigation.
Third, that there seems to be no sense of respect, responsibility and care for Malcolm’s immediate family—his daughters or his extended family—his surviving siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins, and grand nephews and nieces.
While the letter is indeed, as you indicate "personal and revelatory," i
would agree that it is "a boon to both biographers and historians" but only to those biographers and historians who do not possess sense of a moral and ethical responsibility to the discipline of critical history. The exposition of the letter speaks, seemingly, to the ongoing disrespect for and to the legacy of Malcolm X and his family. i suppose that for those of us who respect Malcolm’s legacy to not only Black history, but human history, should listen more carefully to what he mentioned to Alex
Haley, his transcriber, in Chapter 19 of the Autobiography (One World Edition: with a new forward by Attallah Shabazz) entitled 1965
"When I am dead . . . I want you to just watch and see if I’m not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate." He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive as a
convenient symbol of "hatred". . . You watch. I will be labeled as, at best, an "irresponsible" black man" (p. 417).
In all of my discussions with biographers and historians whom i respect and who have been my mentors, they have always mentioned that the reporting of history from primary sources carries with it a moral and ethical responsibility to ask oneself: ‘what is the historical worth of what is being reported?’ Of what historical worth is the personal and private matters of one’s bedroom 37 years after their death when they are no longer here physically to defend themselves? How does it ADD to the discipline and positively to the individual’s legacy? i wonder, rhetorically, what you would feel if someone found a personal and private letter that you had written to someone years ago discussing the intimate
details of your relationship with your significant other and posted it on the worldwide web for the world to see, not to mention offering it for sale (to the tune of $125,000) for your family, in particular, your children to see? It appears that the political economy of capitalizing!
on emotional trauma of others continues to reign high with capitalists who think solely of self in spite of those who have been historically traumatized. This confirms what Malcolm X again once indicated when he suggested the link between capitalism and racism in a question and answer session after a symposium panel he served on 29 May 1964 at the Militant
Labor Forum Hall which addressed "Hate?Gang" Scare in NYC stated: It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism" (in Malcolm X Speaks ed. by George Breitman, p.69). In an interview granted to the Young Socialist in 1965 Malcolm stated:
". . . capitalism needs some blood to suck. . . . like the vulture . . . , it can only suck the blood of the helpless" (in Malcolm X Speaks ed. by George Breitman, p. 199).
I ask sir that you exercise moral, and ethical authority of critical history, along with human responsibility and consider negotiating the letter to his family. Indeed sir, while you see the display of this letter as a boon, i see it as a bane to Malcolm, his legacy and his family.
Najee E. Muhammad, Associate Professor,
Cultural Studies Program in Education Ohio University Athens, OH