On May 19, we celebrate the birth anniversaries of three revolutionaries of the great freedom movements of Africa, Afro-America and Asia: Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, and Lorraine Hansberry. We added three essays or speeches to OPP’s Archives section, one by each, which contribute to the continued struggle against imperialism and white supremacy.
Malcolm X, who turns 95, was born in Omaha, Nebraska as Malcolm Little. His name change came after his spiritual awakening upon his introduction to to the Nation of Islam — which replaced the name of the slave owners who once owned his ancestors with an “X” — signified a rejection of white supremacy to carve a new path for African Americans in their struggle for freedom. As he says in his speech given at an Oxford Union Debate in 1964,
“X is not my real name, but if you study history you’ll find why no black man in the western hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa, and took us into the western hemisphere and sold us there. And our names were stripped from us and so today we don’t know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name.”
He ended the speech by saying
“And I, for one, will join in with anyone—don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.”
Malcolm was taught about the common destiny of humanity as a student of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. In accordance with the Bandung and Non-Aligned Movement, he believed that a coalition of non-western nations and people must unite under the principles of eradicating the political and social vestiges of colonialism from the world. He threw his support toward the great struggles of his time, such as the Cuban Revolution and the Chinese Revolution. As a member of the Nation of Islam, he grew to reject the values of western civilization which placed people into categories, dividing them in the struggle against their common oppressor, and considered himself an Asiatic Black Man — a concept which unified the peoples of Africa and Asia as one — not merely based on color, but on the basis of struggle against western domination and values of freedom.
Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietnamese Revolution, turns 130. He indicted the values of the West in his article, A Civilization that Kills:
“If lynching-inflicted upon Negroes by the American rabble is an inhuman practice, I do not know what to call the collective murders committed in the name of civilization by Europeans on African peoples.”
Since the day the whites landed on its shores, the black continent has constantly been drenched in blood. There, mass murders are blessed by the Church, lawfully sanctioned by kings and parliaments and conscientiously perpetrated by slavers of all calibers, from yesterday’s slave traders to today’s colonial administrators.
While Ho Chi Minh is widely considered as the leader of Vietnam who led his people to defeat France and the United States, he was furthermore an exemplar of the moral sophistication of the non-western world. The people of Asia and Africa, and oppressed people around the world embraced him as one of their own because he shed light on the divine nature of all people and reminded them of the power of faith against seemingly impossible odds. He was described by Amrita Pritam, the Indian poet who met him in 1958, as a “Monk-King” and “a flower which was in full bloom even in the autumn of political decay.”
Like Malcolm and Ho Chi Minh, Lorraine Hansberry championed the liberation of humanity from the West. She is most known for doing so through the medium of art. Lorraine, who would be 90 years old today, was active in Civil Rights, peace, and labor activism both before and after she became an acclaimed playwright. In her journalism and activism, she drew the connection between lynching and the wars in Korea, denounced American foreign policy for oppressing people abroad while neglecting justice at home, and spoke out against McCarthyism for trying to silence fighters for peace. She refused to separate the struggle for freedom from the struggle for justice in the tradition of her mentors Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois. As an artist committed to freedom, she called for her peers to oppose injustice in their art even in the most difficult times. We have uploaded her 1962 speech at a rally to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, A Challenge to Artists. In this speech she puts a challenge to artists whose art is disconnected from struggle and lives of people and ties their apathy to McCarthyism.
“Well, I am afraid that they are primarily where the ruling powers have always wished the artist to be and to stay: in their studios. They are consumed, in the main, with what they consider to be larger issues—such as “the meaning of life,” etc…I personally consider that part of this detachment is the direct and indirect result of many years of things like the House Committee and concurrent years of McCarythism in all its forms.”
She challenges artists to oppose McCarthyism, to produce art that is meaningful and is connected to the lives and struggle of the masses of people. In doing so she calls for art that fights for peace and that fights against injustice.
Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, and Lorraine Hansberry rose organically from the people that produced them and revealed to their people their great capacity to make freedom real. Therefore, their histories carried them forward in the struggle against the values of the West to make full men and women out of oppressed people. They provide for us the moral basis needed to shape ourselves into better human beings. Their legacy stretches far beyond their time, providing a strong foundation for future generations to stand upon in our struggle for a more just and beautiful world.
Avant-Garde: A Journal of Peace, Democracy, and Science 
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