African Intellectuals and Decolonization

We Need a Mau Mau in Mississippi

We Need a Mau Mau in Mississippi Malcolm X’s Political Lessons for Today George Hartley On December 20, 1964, at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, Malcolm X declared, “Oginga Odinga [the vice president of recently liberated Kenya] is not passive. He’s not meek. He’s not humble. He’s not nonviolent. But he’s free.” This fact was part of a larger object lesson that Malcolm X had for black Americans: [Jomo Kenyatta, Oginga Odinga, and the Mau Mau will] go down as the greatest African patriots and freedom fighters that that continent ever knew, and they will be given credit for bringing about the independence of many of the existing independent states on that continent right now. There was a time when their image was negative, but today they’re looked upon with respect and their chief is the president and their next chief is the vice president. I have to take time to mention that because, in my opinion, not only in Mississippi and Alabama, but right here in New York City, you and I can best learn how to get real freedom by studying how Kenyatta brought it to his people in Kenya, and how Odinga helped him, and the excellent job that was done by the Mau Mau freedom fighters. In fact, that’s what we need in Mississippi. In Mississippi we need a Mau Mau. In Alabama we need a Mau Mau. In Georgia we need a Mau Mau. Right here in Harlem, in New York City, we need a Mau Mau. I say it with no anger; I say it with very careful forethought.1 16 / We Need a Mau Mau in Mississippi The most important insight of Malcolm X’s speeches and writings during the last two months of his life concerns the relationship between the African diaspora’s struggles against internal colonialism in the United States and the liberation movements’ struggles against European colonialism and U.S. neocolonialism on the African continent. The key here is the recognition that blacks on both continents are fighting the same enemy—the white power structure of capitalist imperialism. While the civil rights movement in the United States emphasized an integrationist ethos that implicitly shored up the interests of the U.S. elite, Malcolm X fought not for a civil rights movement but for a human rights movement, having learned from the examples of Patrice Lumumba and Jomo Kenyatta that a truly independent African socialism depends on the forceful resistance to colonialism. As noted above, not long before his assassination, Malcolm X told black America that in Mississippi, in Alabama, in Georgia, and in Harlem, “we need a Mau Mau.” His message to black America was that black liberation was possible in the United States as well as in Kenya, Ghana, and the Congo; that the African American struggle was part of the global struggles against imperialism; that “the revolution on the outside of the house” was troubling enough for the power structure, but they were then “beginning to see that this struggle on the outside by the black man is affecting, infecting the black man who is on the inside of that structure” (MX, 160–61, emphasis added). The influence of the African liberation movements has, in his words, never been fully told, and black America needs to follow black Africa’s example and answer the racist violence of the white man with “vigorous action in self-defense” (164–65). The greatest lesson for us to draw today from the speeches and interviews of Malcolm X from December 1964 to his death in February 1965 is to recognize the analytical and synthesizing moves of the argument he developed during this crucial period. This is especially true for his analysis of U.S. intervention in the Congo. These moves will allow us to draw similar conclusions regarding the intimate ties between imperialism abroad and imperialism here at home. The most important element of the colonization of the mind— which is the main point underlying Malcolm X’s analysis—is the role of the press in shaping public opinion, in particular the public opinion of Afro-Americans. It is through the press that the U.S. government and the imperialist power structure are able to “psycho” George Hartley / 17 black consciousness, to brainwash Afro-Americans into internalizing the colonial mythologies that justify the status quo, including the systematic violence that polices and maintains...