Doing some research on the actual Selma march for a piece Im writing about the movie. I just learned something that I did not know. There is a scene in the movie where Malcolm X is invited down to Selma months before the march to give a speech. In real life he was invited down by the more radical youth organization SNCC which was started by Ella Baker and lead by both John Lewis and then Stokely Carmichael. The traditional more conservative SCLC leadership, including Martin Luther King, Jr. according to the movie, was worried about Malcolm Xs presence and what he would say. The film doesnt inform you of this but the speech Malcolm X gave to Black folk in Selma, Alabama in his first and only trip to the deep south on February 4, 1965 was perhaps one of his most famous: THE HOUSE NEGRO AND THE FIELD NEGRO SPEECH. In this same speech he announces the ability of Black citizens to take the United States to the United Nations and charge them with violation of their Human Rights. Malcolm X was assassinated a little more than two weeks after on February 21, 1965. Very profound and revealing regarding the actual context of events rendered in the movie: Was Malcolm Xs death related to the possibility of him merging with the traditional Civil Rights Movement, among other things. This assumes you agree to more to his death than the Nation of Islam infighting narrative. In his autobiography Ready for Revolution, Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture says Malcolm met with Fannie Lou Hamer and other SNCC activists in Harlem earlier and they all loved him. He suggests that union was the direction things we going in because of Malcolm Xs admiration for SNCC.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 02:04:17 +0000