there's no Malcolm X thread yet as far as i can tell

this feels like a weird way to start it but i am freaking out about this story

almost every detail is practically incredible. Malcolm X read some kid's article in the Brown Daily Herald and decided to set the record straight! a 19-year-old Richard Holbrooke forced the university's hand and made them let him come. Malcolm X told a joke about cannibalistic spearchuckers eating white people at BROWN UNIVERSITY IN 1961. Brown has been pretending this whole event never happened (maybe honestly did not know it had happened?) for 50 years. holy shit.

the former student who owns the only known recording of this speech seems to have had forgotten she even had it until the kid who unearthed this whole story called her up recently???

i need to hear/read this speech. someone needs to transcribe it 50 years ago.

I heard that story on NPR on Friday night, it was really interesting.

i was just reading this, what a crazy thing

I NEED TO KNOW SO MANY THINGS

this must just be a drop in the bucket of all that's unarchived from the civil rights/black power/black arts movement.

1961, wow

woah that's amazing

i am so jealous of those effing kids. i saw a lot of people speak at brown in my time, but damn.

also way to go, malcolm burnley.

Wow - that's pretty incredible.

richard holbrooke was kind of a badass, going head-to-head with the Brown administration at 18 and winning.

also, i like how holbrooke introduced Malcolm X as one of two speakers "on the American Negro and his future" and then in his speech Malcolm X pointed out that the NOI rejected the use of the word "Negro." also am i reading this right that because an NAACP dude dropped out at the last minute the other speaker on the American Negro and his future was a white Brown undergraduate?

sorry i keep posting i guess i am frantically trying to reconstruct the event

Erica and I were chatting about this and it sounds like Katherine Pierce wasn't formally a second speaker. It's more like she gave her pov as an introduction/context for Malcolm X's speech. maybe that's what Holbrooke meant by "two points of view"? also i think katherine pierce is str8 crazy for just having this recording in her bedroom for 50 years and not, i don't know, telling someone. i can see how if you're 20 and white and living in new england and the civil rights movement is happening right now and not a historicized/romanticized period in the past you might not recognize as it's happening how important a piece of history you own, but how about after malcolm x was assassinated? this is all because i am being driven mad by all the unknowns here.

he had tea and cookies with students who wished to chat with him after the speech

I wonder what Malcolm would have been doing and saying the past 45+ yrs. What a loss.

here's the thing: i don't have a *deep* experience with malcolm x. but the movie came out when i was 13 and was "interested in black culture" or whatever weird white-suburban trip i was on then and i saw it twice in the theatre and i just thought it was cool. like wearing cross colours or marithe & francois girbaud was cool. and i feel like i've had positive feelings about malcolm x ever since.

Malcolm X was assassinated 55 years ago today. Part of the decapitation of radical Black leadership. pic.twitter.com/Ah5CQNjeu5

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) February 21, 2020

very acute and funny and it hasn't aged a goddamn day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kf7fujM4ag

As mentioned in the Spike Lee thread yesterday, his centenary today.