Why We Have to Reckon With the Real Malcolm X

When Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” which is currently being revived at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, premiered in the mid-1980s, it seemed like a radical act of elevation: The opera lent grand pathos to the story of Malcolm X by giving his life the arc of a tragic hero. And at that moment, Malcolm X was a hero, achieving a grandeur on the world stage in death beyond what he had achieved in life.

As a proud member of Generation X, I witnessed firsthand the iteration of Malcolm X that exploded into popular culture during the 1980s and 1990s, peaking with Spike Lee’s virtuosic 1992 biopic, “Malcolm X.” By 1999, Malcolm X’s resurgence (remember “X” hats?) meant that his image had become mainstream enough — and safe enough — to be placed on a postage stamp. He had finally received the unofficial imprimatur of an American government that had imprisoned, harassed and surveilled him during his life.

My generation found in Malcolm a regal standard-bearer. But there was much we missed in Malcolm’s journey. His sense of humor, love for his wife and children, compassion toward strangers, his childhood trauma and fears and anxiety over impending death are all vulnerabilities we now understand as culled from strength. He still looms over our political and cultural ferment, as his call for Black dignity informs our understanding of everything from the election of Barack Obama to the murder of George Floyd, and his spirit radiates through political movements from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition. But when we revisit him, we may find we encounter, and even crave, a Malcolm X who is not omniscient, and who would not seem destined for a postage stamp, but one who dwells in an ambiguous world of doubt.

When, in the summer of 1989 as an eager 16-year-old, I watched “Do the Right Thing,” I remember sitting in stunned silence in a movie theater in Queens as two epigraphs appeared: one by Martin Luther King Jr. condemning violence and one by Malcolm X explaining the need for self-defense and dignity with an awe-inspiring clarity that elicited cheers from the theater’s Black patrons. A few years earlier, in 1987, the playwright Jeff Stetson had premiered “The Meeting,” a fictionalized account of an extended meeting between Malcolm and Martin Luther King Jr. The play offered catharsis to a Black community still mourning the loss of both figures by imagining a historical past where they found a political rapprochement while still alive.

This ’80s-era artistic rediscovery of Malcolm — which arrived, not coincidentally, as the nation embraced the political conservatism and neoliberalism of the Reagan-Bush years — also came with a wave of enlightening new considerations from scholars, writers and journalists, including the influential anthology “Malcolm X: In Our Own Image” and Michael Eric Dyson’s book “Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X.”