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SELLING MALCOLM X
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Monday 20:00 |
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How did his archive turn up for sale on an internet auction site? |
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Programme Details |
8pm Monday 7 February 2005 |
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February 21st 2005 marks the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He was only 39 years old. Nearly forty years after his death a bizarre twist of fate almost resulted in the selling of Malcolm X's papers to the highest bidders.
In March 2002 Malcolm X's papers, letters, speeches, diaries, photographs found themselves up for sale in separate lots on eBay - the internet auction site. Earlier in 2002 one of Malcolm X's daughters had transferred Malcolm's papers to Florida and deposited the papers in a storage rental facility. After defaulting on the payments, the contents of the unit were then sold off and bought by a Florida market trader.
On finding out about the impending sale, Joseph Fleming, a New York attorney representing some of the Malcolm X family members, moved swiftly to recover the documents. He was supported by Howard Dodson, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, which is part of the New York Public Library.
Tony Phillips travels to the United States to talk Joseph Fleming and Howard Dodson about the remarkable recovery of the Malcolm X papers and finds out how they made their way from the auction block to the safety of the Schomburg Center, which is coincidentally situated on Malcolm X Boulevard. He also meets Professor Manning Marable of Columbia University, a historian currently writing a biography of Malcolm X. He also travels to upstate NY to meet the actor, writer and close friend of Malcolm X, Ossie Davis. It was Ossie Davis who wrote and delivered the poignant eulogy at the funeral where he famously referred to Malcolm as "our shining black prince".
Alongside the lawyers and academics and public servants Tony Phillips spends time with Ilyasah Shabazz, the third of Malcolm's six daughters. Together they are given permission to look through some of the personal letters between her parents and read some of her father's revealing diary from Mecca - when he had broken ranks with the Nation of Islam and embraced orthodox Sunni Islam. It was in these diaries that he wrote for the first time about feeling a sense of brotherhood and humanity with white people. And perhaps the most emotionally charged of the artefacts was Malcolm's leather bound copy of the Holy Quran which on touching it left his daughter speechless.
The Malcolm X papers promises to provide new insights into the depth, breadth and complexity of his life and worth; The Selling of Malcolm X aims to do the same.
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