A Nation within a Nation

Spanning over three decades, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X engages the multiple competing—and sometimes overlapping—social and political movements that shaped the development of its central character. One of the primary bedrocks of Malcolm X’s world, and thus one of the central concerns of Anthony Davis’s opera, is the political philosophy of Black nationalism. Arguably reaching its apex with the Black Power Movement in the United States, but with roots stretching back to the 19th century, Black nationalism broadly advocates empowerment, self-sufficiency, racial pride, and separatism. It largely rejects assimilation into dominant social, political, and economic structures as a viable path for Black communities, instead championing total independence from white society. 

X traverses three distinct yet related Black nationalist movements: the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the Nation of Islam (NOI), and—albeit briefly—the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). The UNIA was a formative influence in Malcolm’s life; his parents Earl and Louise met working for the organization, which was founded by Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey in 1914. Inspired by his reading of Booker T. Washington’s autobiography Up from Slavery (1901) and its author’s arguments for Black economic self-sufficiency, Garvey initially formed the UNIA as a fraternal organization, or mutual-aid society, but struggled to find footing in Jamaica. After moving to New York City in 1916 and setting up headquarters in Harlem, the UNIA’s membership and influence skyrocketed. By the early 1920s, the movement had established 700 branches in 38 states—in addition to divisions across the Caribbean, Latin America, Canada, and Africa—and amassed millions of followers. 

At its peak, the UNIA ran several business enterprises in Harlem through its Negro Factories Corporation: grocery stores, restaurants, a laundromat, and a printing press. It launched a newspaper, The Negro World, which reached a circulation between 50,000 and 200,000 by 1920. Perhaps Garvey’s most ambitious idea was the Black Star Line (later the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company), the UNIA’s steamship company meant to advance commercial exchange—and economic autonomy—between Black communities in the Americas and Africa. Garvey financed the project by selling Black Star Line stock at $5 per share through mailed solicitations, advertisements printed in The Negro World, and UNIA meetings. Although the company did ultimately purchase four steamships and carry shipments between the U.S. and Caribbean from 1919 to 1922, the project was a financial disaster, ultimately losing up to $1.25 million. In 1923, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud for brochures advertising the sale of Black Star Line stock. After an unsuccessful appeal, he was imprisoned for two years before his sentence was commuted in 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge, who ordered Garvey to be deported.  

Though tyrannical and deceitful, the UNIA’s founder was an undoubtedly charismatic leader whose message of collective pride and racial uplift appealed to communities dispossessed by American racism. Always the showman, Garvey named himself Provisional President of Africa, organized massive parades with participants and performers decked in UNIA regalia, led nightly meetings at the organization’s Liberty Hall headquarters in Harlem—sometimes before as many as six thousand attendees— and hosted several international conventions. Garvey also created the black, red, and green flag today associated with pan-Africanism globally. 

The power of Garvey’s message can be seen in the subsequent founding of the Nation of Islam. The NOI was established in 1930 by Wallace D. Fard, a Detroit cloth peddler and former member of the Moorish Science Temple of America led by Noble Drew Ali, who advanced an exceedingly idiosyncratic vision of Islam that incorporated tenets of Black nationalism. Fard himself believed that a Black God had created man in his image trillions of years ago and that the world was run by 24 Black scientists, one of whom created the white race to rule the earth for thousands of years. When Fard vanished around 1934, his assistant Elijah Muhammad—who had been tasked with bringing the NOI to Chicago—took control of the organization.  

Muhammad advanced Fard’s teachings and expanded the NOI’s recruitment, education, self-defense, and employment efforts. Muhammad’s theological outlook more closely resembled traditional Islamic practice, though he hailed Fard as Allah incarnate and himself as a “Messenger of Allah,” or prophet. He led the NOI until 1975, at which point the movement operated dozens of businesses and schools, controlled a bank, oversaw an expanding real estate portfolio, and owned farmland in Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi—the latter to provide housing, employment, and staple crops to feed Black communities across the United States. Muhammad began corresponding with Malcolm X in 1948 while both were imprisoned, the former for encouraging NOI followers not to enroll in the World War II draft, the latter for armed robbery. When Malcolm joined the NOI in 1952, he was largely responsible for the dramatic uptick in the movement’s nationwide membership and political influence.  

After breaking with the NOI and making the Hajj, or Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm founded two organizations of his own: Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Whereas the Muslim Mosque largely drew its membership from previous NOI adherents, the OAAU was a secular group, modeled on the Organization of African Unity, that aimed to promote solidarity among Black communities in the United States and Africa. In so doing, he effectively disaggregated the foundational elements of the NOI: Islam and Black nationalism. Malcolm was assassinated within a year of the founding of the OAAU; leadership of the movement then fell to his sister Ella Collins, who led the organization until its dissolution in 1986.