The Awakening of Malcolm X

Sixty years ago today in Mecca Malcolm "stepped out of a prison"

“In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again.”

              – Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X), after his 1964 Mecca pilgrimage

Sixty years ago today, a man who would come to be recognized as one of the most important American voices to emerge from “The Sixties” wrote a letter that reflected his widening perspective. In Mecca on his hajj, Malcolm X wrote of the profound effect the experience had on his thinking:

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.

– Malcolm X, Letter from Mecca, April 20, 1964

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NOTE: This is the fifth in a series of essays, “The Long 1964 at Sixty,” I plan to write on what was happening in 1964, “The Year ‘The Sixties’ Arrived and the Battle Lines of Today Were Drawn,” as I put it in the subtitle of my most recent book, The Times They Were a-Changin’. Portions of them will be taken straight from the book, but other parts of the essays will be new commentary.

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By the beginning of the 1960s, Malcolm X had emerged as the best-known spokesman of the Nation of Islam (NOI), sometimes referred to as the “Black Muslims.” His charisma, intellect, and speaking ability far exceeded those of the group’s nominal leader, a man named at birth Elijah Robert Poole who insisted on being called “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad” (THEM, as Malcolm referred to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad by 1964 when writing notes about him). “While black nationalist and separatist ideas coming from Elijah Muhammad seemed cranky, cultlike,