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By Root 1766 0

for condemning all whites. By contrast, throughout most of his public career Malcolm sought to place whites on the defensive in their relationship with African Americans. He keenly felt, and expressed, the varied emotions and frustrations of the black poor and working class. His constant message was black pride, self-respect, and an awareness of one’s heritage. At a time when American society stigmatized or excluded people of African descent, Malcolm’s militant advocacy was stunning. He gave millions of younger African Americans newfound confidence. These expressions were at the foundation of what in 1966 became Black Power, and Malcolm was its fountainhead.

Malcolm came to occupy a central space in the rich folk tradition of black outlaws and dissidents, fighting against the established social hierarchy. In the antebellum era, such men of resistance were Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner. In African-American music, this tradition includes the notorious folklore of Stagger Lee, the inventive blues guitarist Robert Johnson, and the charismatic hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. What these black outlaws all had in common was a cool contempt for the bourgeois status quo, the system of white supremacy and its law and courts. More significantly, the tradition of the black outlaw was to transgress the established moral order. In this respect, Detroit Red as Malcolm constructed him was the antihero, the hepcat who laughed at conventional mores, who used illegal drugs and engaged in illicit sex, who broke all the rules. A close examination of the Autobiography illustrates that many of the elements of Detroit Red’s narrative are fictive; despite this, the character’s experiences resonate with black audiences because the contexts of racism, crime, and violence are integral aspects of ghetto life.

The other dimension of Malcolm’s appearance was his identity as a righteous preacher, the man who dedicated his life to Allah. Again, this was a role that resonated deeply with African-American culture. Through his powerful language, Malcolm inspired blacks to see themselves not as victims, but possessing the agency to transform themselves and their lives. Like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm boldly insisted to blacks that racism would not define their futures; that, instead, people of African descent were destined for greatness. He developed a profound love for black history, and he integrated into many of his lectures insights taken from the heritage of African-American and African people. Malcolm encouraged blacks to celebrate their culture and the tales of black resistance to European colonialism and white domination. And despite his genuine conversion to orthodox Islam, his spiritual journey was linked to his black consciousness. Only weeks following the assassination, the poet Amiri Baraka proclaimed, “Malcolm’s greatest contribution was to preach Black Consciousness to the Black Man. Now we must find the flesh of our spiritual creation.” To Baraka, Malcolm represented a black aesthetic, a set of values and criteria for cultural representations that affirmed the genius and creativity of people of African descent. Malcolm provided the template for what black artists should aspire to achieve. “The Black artist is needed to change the images his people identify with, by asserting Black feeling, Black mind, Black judgment,” Baraka asserted. In March 1965, Baraka left Greenwich Village and migrated to Harlem, where he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/ School (BARTS). This became the foundation for the flowering of the modern black arts movement, involving thousands of poets, playwrights, dancers, and other cultural producers. Malcolm became their muse, the ideal expression of blackness. Even the New York Times, measuring his continuing influence in Harlem, observed that “the central idea of Malcolm’s that has taken hold since his death is that Negroes must hold fast to and nurture their own black culture, and not have it ‘integrated out of existence.’ ”

Stokely Carmichael, perhaps Black Power’s most important architect, traced his own development