MALCOLM’S AFRICA MISSION
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t the only Black leader with “a dream” of attaining equality for Black Americans and racial harmony in the U.S. Malcolm X (inset) also had a dream — to bring the American government before the United Nations to be held accountable for the suffering and injustices Black Americans have faced for generations.
In “Brother Malcolm X’s Strategic Pan Africanism: An Important Guide for People of African Descent,” a new book compiled and edited by A. Peter Bailey, the route to Malcolm X’s goal — which involved thousands of miles of travel in the African continent — is explained through correspondence, news releases, government documents and other detailed information.
“Aside from the introduction, it’s all firsthand material. The only thing I wrote myself was the introduction,” said Bailey, noting that official documents, correspondence, literature from Malcolm’s newly founded Organization of Afro-American Unity human rights group, and other sources make up the book’s content and highlight Malcolm’s 1964 mission for Black Americans one year before his assassination in New York.
“The first part of the book is Brother Malcolm making his case — what he wrote in letters, what he wrote in news releases, what he issued to the African countries,” said Bailey. “He believed that the United States should be taken before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and be accused of violating human rights of Black folks in this country. And in fact, that’s why our Organization of African American Unity (OAAU), is called a human rights organization, not a civil rights organization,” explained Bailey, a founding member of Malcolm’s nonreligious OAAU and editor of the group’s newsletter in the mid-1960s.
Malcolm established the secular OAAU in June of 1964 in Harlem after leaving his high-profile position in the religious Nation of Islam, where he gained respect as an internationally known, no-nonsense Black leader. But bringing America before the world body would require the support of U.N. member nations, so Malcolm sought support from the leaders of the recently independent nations of Africa, the ancestral home of Black Americans.
“One of the things I really enjoyed about the book is that when he went to Africa in early 1964, he had audiences with seven African leaders of one and a half to three hours each. At the time, one of the United Nations’ member nations would have to bring the case for Black Americans before the Human Rights commission,” said Bailey, adding that Malcolm made his case for U.N. action against America directly to the new African leaders, whose countries were members of the United Nations.
A group of amazing, historic leaders — Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame
Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Milton Obote of Uganda, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, and Sékou Touré of Guinea — sat and spoke with Malcolm. Ultimately, Malcolm never achieved his goal of bringing charges of America’s racism before the international body, but he did have successes, said Bailey, referring to the results of Malcolm’s parleys with African leaders.
“They did something that they never did before. They invited him to come to the 1964 Organization of African Unity meeting in Cairo,” said Bailey. “It was the first time that a Black person from America had been invited. The event was for diplomats and heads of state, but they treated him like he was a foreign minister or something. And he issued a document to them, which is in the book. The African leaders in the OAU, issued a resolution condemning White supremacy and racism in the United States, and that had never been done,” he continued, adding that the resolution is in the book.
Copies of “Brother Malcolm X’s Strategic Pan Africanism” are available through the author. For sales and information, call Peter Bailey at (202) 291-4560.