Malcolm X
Enlightened
The movie “One Night in Miami.”
“One Night in Miami” spends the bulk of its time in Malcolm X’s hotel suite, where the four men gather to celebrate Ali’s monumental victory — a celebration that turns into a long and sometimes contentious night of debate and discussion about each man’s place in the world in 1964, and what they’re doing to advance the cause of racial and social equality. Chicago Sun times
Malcolm has an intense vision. He needs Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke to understand his cause.
Malcolm is trying to raise Sam’s consciousness regarding his music. Sam was a brilliant business person. He owned his masters to his songs and his label. And he produced a lot of black artists. Sam felt as though his way was making a mark. But Malcolm felt that if Sam wrote songs about the struggle, it would help the cause. He also told him he had the most-effective gift out of them all.
When Sam Cooke tells Malcolm he sticks primarily to old-fashioned love songs because protest music does not sell, Malcolm plays a recording of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which had become a mega-hit.
He tells Sam that his music was just music handed down from the church or staying in line with what white people wanted him to sing. He explains to Sam that Bob Dylan is a white man who wrote a song about oppressed people. And that Bob Dylan’s song said more about the struggle than anything Sam had ever written.
Sam gets upset by what Malcolm said, and it hits him in his soul. Later on in the movie, he reveals to Jim Brown that he had already heard Bob Dylan’s song before Malcolm mentioned it, and it upset him because he felt it should have been him that wrote the song. It was a profound scene where the actor portrayed how we all feel when the truth hits our fears, and we know we should be do something else.
Then the song, A Change Is Gonna Come comes to fruition by Sam Cooke. It is one of my favorite songs of all time and delivers the lyrics of their struggle.
Jim Brown has a moment with Malcolm and says that it is always the lighter-skinned Blacks who are the most radical. And the light-skinned blacks were treated sometimes, with the most hate from the Blacks.
Jim Brown is confused and tells Malcolm that he is wondering if he is trying to prove something to white people or black people. So if Jim Brown was a little confused, you could imagine some of the people who did not know Malcolm.
When I was twelve years old, I remember seeing Malcolm X on television a lot. He scared me because he mentioned white people as devils, and it felt like deep hate. I was confused because growing up in the projects, there was diversity, and I played with all races. It didn’t matter what race you were. It was who was available to play. So it was alarming for me to see him on television, and I felt like his hate was-directed towards me.
Malcolm, lived in East Elmhurst, Queens. Not far from where I lived. I was afraid of what he represented before he went to Mecca. He mentions in the movie that he will go to Mecca soon. And anyone who has watched Denzel Washington play Malcolm X, which by the way, he should have won the Academy Award for in his stunning performance. In this movie, Malcolm goes to Mecca, and sitting next to him in worship are his Muslim brothers, who are white he has a different insight. And he sends this message.
About the Archive
The Black Nationalist leader said he had gained new religious insights from his religious experience in Mecca, the holy city of Islam. He said that for the first time in his life he had felt no racial antagonism toward whites nor had he sensed any antagonism on their part against him.
“There are Muslims of all colors and ranks here in Mecca from all parts of this earth,” he wrote.
“During the past seven days of this holy pilgrimage, while undergoing the rituals of the hajj [pilgrimage], I have eaten from the same plate, drank from the same glass, slept on the same bed or rug, while praying to the same God — not only with some of this earth’s most powerful kings, cabinet members, potentates and other forms of political and religious rulers — but also with fellow‐Muslims whose skin was the whitest of white, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, and whose hair was the blondest of blond — yet it was the first time in my life that I didn’t see them as ‘white’ men. I could look into their faces and see that these didn’t regard themselves as ‘white.’
“Their belief in the Oneness of God (Allah) had actually removed the ‘white’ from their minds, which automatically their attitude and behavior toward people of other colors.”
Can we imagine a world where a person’s race is removed from our minds?
The spirituality Malcolm witnessed in Mecca, where color did not exist. Only that they were all part of the human race. Isn’t that our struggle now in America.
I watched the movie two times and was brought to tears. Regina King did a superb job as a director. And I came away finally understanding on some small level what Malcolm must have felt like when you can taste the vision and can’t get the ones you need the most to understand. It must have been an extremely lonely place.
He later embraced Sunni Islam and regretted his time with the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X passed away on February 21, 1965, at the age of 39 when he was assassinated by three members of the Nation of Islam. There are the episodes on Netflix “Who Killed Malcolm X ” that does not agree that is was only three of them.
The point of this story is while watching the movie it amazed me when a person becomes so crystal clear on a vision that there is a force that comes out of them and they try to raise people’s consciousness. And there is immediate resistance at first from the people you are trying to relate to and slowly if they choose that little light will shine through and get the message. I heard a small voice say who does this remind you of while watching the movie. It reminded me a little of Stephen in the Bible.
Stephen is first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as one of seven deacons appointed by the Apostles to distribute food and charitable aid to poorer members of the community in the early church. According to Orthodox belief, he was the eldest and is therefore called “archdeacon”.
Stephen’s testimony (Acts 6:8–7:1–60)
He contented for the faith with those who were ultra-liberal in their beliefs. Using the God-given wisdom provided by the Holy Spirit, Stephen was able to cut through their weak arguments. They responded by conspiring to lie about him in an effort to stir up the people and members of the local synagogue.
Their conspiracy resulted in Stephen being taken into custody, brought before the council of the synagogue, and charged with blasphemy. During this inquisition, false witnesses were set up. After their false testimony, the high priest asked Stephen if these things were true. Instead of disputing the accuracy of their charges, he took the opportunity before the large numbers of people there to share the Gospel of Salvation, beginning all the way back with the calling of Abraham out of idolatry.
Stephen explained how God fulfilled the promises He had made to Abraham through the events in history. He showed that time and time again when it looked like the promise of coming of the Messiah would be prevented, God intervened. Eventually, Stephen told how Jesus was the one who came as the fulfillment of God’s promises. Stephen then told how they, being set in their stiff-necked unbelieving ways, resisted the Holy Spirit’s conviction just as their fathers before them had resisted the preaching of the prophets who told of Jesus’ coming. He concluded by charging them with the murder and betrayal of the “Just One,” or Messiah.
When the counsel and others heard this they were furious and offended and began screaming and insulting him. However, Stephen did not back down. Instead, under the power of the Holy Spirit, he looked up into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at God’s right hand. He continued by telling them what he was seeing, which enraged them so much they attacked him.
As they attacked him, they drug him outside the city and stoned him to death. However, before he died, he called out to God, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Immediately after this, he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” and then he died.
Stephen was so argumentative: he wanted to prove to the world that the scripture was true: that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, prophesized from the earliest teaching. Stephen became so enthusiastic that he suffered a reaction. The people, because of lack of understanding, could not receive those truths all at once.
We should listen to Spirit and adjust ourselves to the new ideas that are being poured into the mind. Where there is no receptivity we should not talk to people about Truth. As Jesus said, “do not cast your pearls before the swine.” The Spirit of Truth within one is the judge as to where one shall express Truth and where one shall not. Metaphysical Bible Dictionary.
Would following the above recommendation of the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary of Stephen have prevented him from being stoned to death or Malcolm’s death? Or are they born to come to this Earth and do what they did? That is the eternal-question.
We have all been rocked by others for our beliefs of how we view the world. Or it can be for choosing yourself first and standing your ground in a marriage or any relationship. Occasionally the people who have stoned you come around and realize what you were talking about, and others are just gone permanently.
It can be an isolating place, but sometimes that is where all your power grows and the birth of a different life.
“Their belief in the Oneness of God (Allah) had removed the ‘white’ from their minds, which automatically their attitude and behavior toward people of other colors.”
I had to repeat those words from Malcolm X one more time because they are so profound. The expunging of skin color from our minds. That would be a New Earth.