By Nvasekie N. Konneh

 Malcolm X was a trailblazing figure of his time. He was just 39 years old when he was

assassinated on February 21, 1965. His life, vision, his words, works, and his actions have

inspired generations upon generations of people around the world when it comes to racial

 

equality. His message is still being echoed today after 61 years since he was assassinated on

February 21, 1965. His militant voice against racial injustice and oppression gave birth to

the Black Art and Black power movements of the 60s in the US. On the 101st year of his

birth since May 19, 1925, we have selected poems by some well-respected African

American poets who wrote these poems as tribute to this great Pan African hero, Malcolm

X. Renowned poets whose poems are shared here are Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoy

Jones), the founder of the Black Arts Movement, and other members of the movement,

including Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sonia Sanchez. The poems written by these great poets

were part of the collection of poems titled: For Malcolm X: Poems on the life and death

of Malcolm X.  These poems also include a short poem by Malcolm X himself. titled,

"Music."

Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. He became a Muslim when he

joint Nation of Islam when he was in prison in Massachusetts. He became of the

electrifying speakers of the civil right movement. While Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the

integrationist movement, Malcolm led the Black Nationalist movement of the same struggle

for racial justice and equality in the US.

Malcolm X

By Sonia Sanchez

do not speak to me of martyrdom

of men who die to be remembered

on some parish day.

i don't believe in dying

though i too shall die

and violets like castanets

will echo me.

yet this man

this dreamer,

thick-lipped with words

will never speak again

and in each winter

when the cold air cracks

with frost, i'll breathe

his breath and mourn

my gun-filled nights.

he was the sun that tagged

the western sky and

melted tiger-scholars

while they searched for stripes.

he said, "fuck you white

man. we have been

curled too long. nothing

is sacred now. not your

white faces nor any

land that separates

until some voices

squat with spasms."

do not speak to me of living.

life is obscene with crowds

of white on black.

death is my pulse.

what might have been

is not for him/or me

but what could have been

floods the womb until i drown.

Music 

By Malcolm X

Music is not created

It is always here

surrounding us 

like the infinite particles 

that constitute life, 

it cannot be seen but can only be felt. 

Music without the Musician

is like life without Allah

both in desperate need of a home,

a body.

Malcolm X 

By Gwendolyn Brooks

ORIGINAL.

Hence ragged-round,

Hence rich-robust.

He had the hawk-man’s eyes.

We gasped. We saw the maleness.

The maleness raking out and making guttural the air

And pushing us to walls.

And in a soft and fundamental hour

A sorcery devout and vertical

Beguiled the world.

He opened us —

Who was a key.

Who was a man

A Poem for Black Hearts

By Amiri Baraka

For Malcolm's eyes, when they broke

the face of some dumb white man, For

Malcolm's hands raised to bless us

all black and strong in his image

of ourselves, For Malcolm's words

fire darts, the victor's tireless

thrusts, words hung above the world

change as it may, he said it, and

for this he was killed, for saying,

and feeling, and being/ change, all

collected hot in his heart, For Malcolm's

heart, raising us above our filthy cities,

for his stride, and his beat, and his address

to the grey monsters of the world, For Malcolm's

pleas for your dignity, black men, for your life,

black man, for the filling of your minds

with righteousness, For all of him dead and

gone and vanished from us, and all of him which

clings to our speech black god of our time.

For all of him, and all of yourself, look up,

black man, quit stuttering and shuffling, look up,

black man, quit whining and stooping, for all of him,

For Great Malcolm a prince of the earth, let nothing in us rest

until we avenge ourselves for his death, stupid animals

that killed him, let us never breathe a pure breath if

we fail, and white men call us faggots till the end of