Here, for the moment, are two texts. One, a speech by al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, better known as Brother Minister Malcolm X; the other is the organizational pamphlet-- the call to arms, if you will-- of the Front for the Liberation of the New African Nation (FROLINAN).
These texts are in some senses polar, for instance if we consider them as representing a teleology of black nationalist thought. In another sense, these texts are grandfather and grandson: Malcolm X who inspired the Black Panthers, FROLINAN stemming from the Black Panthers, rising in response to the other's absence. The texts are very different, although a good case could be made that Malcolm's speeches of 1965 would fit quite snugly with the FROLINAN platform. But who wants a snug fit when an illuminating diversity is available to be studied?
Between these two texts there is a great deal of history to be threshed out, even if less than two decades seperate them. The transition in Black Nationalism from a movement and idea veiled in a Holy Shroud to one secured to the ground with Marxist and Trotskyite stakes is signifigant. Black Nationalism has been successful through both means. (It would be an interesting analysis, to get down to nitty gritty and decide which approach ultimately had more impact.) And both of these texts are fundamental, in their own veins, to the understanding and implementation of the greater Black Nationalist movement-- whether it be based, in the case of the Malcolm X speech, on racio-mythologies; or, in the case of the FROLINAN platform, on leftist race/class analysis. Both are fascinating, and both are valid: as platform, as motivation, as side-arm.The Texts
