Lansing street renaming to honor Malcolm X appears to be on track

Malcolm X Historical Marker in Lansing

The following post was written by Doug Warren a long-time Lansing resident and independent radio producer. He recently spoke at a Lansing City Council public hearing in favor of renaming Main Street in honor of Malcolm X.

If a Mount Rushmore style monument was ever chiseled to honor the greatest African-Americans in history, it is safe to say that the face of Malcolm X would sit alongside the likes of Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Â

In the history of Lansing, aside from R.E. Olds, there has been no one who called our city home who has made a bigger impact on world history than Malcolm X.Â

And yet to date, aside from blink-and-you-will-miss-it Michigan Historic Marker on the site of his long demolished childhood home, at the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Victor, there has been no local government monument that Malcolm X even inhabited the city of Lansing.Â

To date there are Malcolm X Boulevards in Harlem, Brooklyn, Dallas and Boston. There is a Malcolm X Avenue in Washington D.C. and a Malcolm X Street in Coolidge, Arizona.Â

Publicly funded schools, aside from Lansing’s own El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy, include Malcolm X Elementary and Recreation Center in Washington D.C.; P.S. 262 El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Elementary School in Brooklyn; Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark, New Jersey; Madison, Wisconsin has a Malcolm Shabazz City High School. There are Malcolm X Academies in Detroit and San Francisco; a Malcolm X Elementary in Berkley, California and Malcolm X City College in Chicago.Â

There are parks named in his honor in Boston and Philadelphia. Government resolutions in honor of Malcolm X’s began with Malcolm X Week in his birthplace of Omaha, Nebraska in 1971. Malcolm X Days have been celebrated in Boston in 2009 and Omaha in 1989. And last but certainly not least; the United States Postal Service issued a Malcolm X stamp as part of their Black Heritage Series in 1999.Â

And yet, there is nothing aside from the aforementioned historic marker, to acknowledge or honor a man who spent the formative years of his life in Lansing and nearby Mason. The city where his father was murdered; where his family was torn apart and his mother institutionalized by an unfeeling social service system; where, despite the family tragedies, he excelled in school, becoming President of his 8^th grade class. And finally, the city he returned to in 1958, as a cleaned-up ex-con and rising Muslim minister, to marry his wife Betty.Â

The honoring of Malcolm X by the City of Lansing is decades overdue. And now, over forty-five years after he was gunned down while delivering his final speech in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom, Lansing is on the brink of writing that wrong by renaming Main Street, once the main traffic artery of the city’s black community, Malcolm X Street.Â

During the August 23 public hearing at Lansing’s City Hall, an overwhelming showing from a diverse group of citizens voiced their approval of the name change. While there was some opposition from a couple of Main Street business owners concerned with the costs they would incur from the change, the support outweighed the opposition by a healthy margin. With the public support behind the change, now it will be up to the eight members of the City Council to finalize the renaming when they vote on the measure during their Monday, September 13 meeting.Â

For longtime Lansing resident, Ammahad Shekarakki’, last night’s show of support was the result of an effort that he alone began over four years ago.Â

Shekarakki’, a retired GM worker, 101^st Airborne and Vietnam veteran, and a nearly four-decade resident of the city, has tirelessly worked to garner support for a street to be renamed in Malcolm X’s honor. Despite even the doubts of longtime friends, he pressed on, speaking at numerous City Council meetings and spreading the word at various public gatherings, until even his once-pessimistic friends were won over to the cause.Â

As one of Ammhad’s pessimistic friends I have to say that his perseverance inspired me – and eventually caused me to act – as I first spoke in front of the City Council about the need for a street to be renamed in Malcolm X’s honor at the March 8, 2010 meeting.Â

As a white man, I can admit that the first time I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I felt uncomfortable as I read repeatedly about how “the devil white man,” had historically sought to enslave and often eradicate minority populations worldwide.Â

But as the saying goes, “the truth hurts.” And being a fan of the truth in all its forms, I admired Malcolm X’s honesty about not only his hatred and mistrust of white people through much of his life, but for his ability and willingness to assess his own shortcomings and admit his own mistakes. And most importantly, I admired him for his ability to overcome all of those obstacles to become someone whom I consider one of the greatest and most inspiring leaders in our nation’s history.Â

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is truly a universal story of redemption, self-discovery and enlightenment. And for me, the most powerful excerpt from the entire book is the following passage (pages 340-41), which I read at last Monday night’s City Council meeting. It is an excerpt from his open letter to the world, which he wrote at the end of his Islamic Hajj (i.e. pilgrimage) to Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 1964:Â

“You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to re-arrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.Â

“During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) – while praying to the same God – with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the ‘white’ Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.Â

“We were truly all the same (brothers) – because their belief in one God had removed the ‘white’ from their minds, the ‘white’ from their behavior, and the ‘white’ from their attitude.Â

“I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man – and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their ‘differences’ in color.Â

“With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called ‘Christian’ white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster – the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.Â

“Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities – he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the white of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth – the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.”Â

During his life and in much of the history written after his death, Malcolm X has been painted as a dangerous radical, a violence-prone former street thug who preached hate and racial separation. And in post September 11^th America, he has even been described a forefather of Islamic terrorism. While his criminal record in Boston and New York, his subsequent seven-year incarceration for burglary and his admitted one-time hatred of white America remain public record; the painting of him as a dangerous radical and Muslim terrorist are laughable at best. As the above autobiographical excerpt and his post-Nation of Islam activity show, Malcolm X, aka El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was about to embark on a all-out effort to unite people of all colors and religions to create a color-blind American Republic that could finally fulfill its founding doctrine and create a society where the only race that truly mattered was the human race.Â

It’s never too late to honor a hero. And on September 13, 2010, I hope that the City of Lansing will honor one of its own when Malcolm X Street becomes a reality.
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Read a post on Mittenlit.com about a book on Malcolm X speeches published by MSU Press.