A pair of typed, signed manuscripts written by civil rights activist Malcolm X could make $200,000-300,000.
They will sell as a single lot in Swann Auction Galleries’ Printed & Manuscript African Americana sale on March 30.
Malcolm X was a senior member of the Nation of Islam from 1952 to 1964
The articles were printed in the Los Angeles Herald Dispatch, a newspaper for the American Muslim community, under the by-line God’s Angry Men in July and August of 1957.
Malcolm X joined the Nation of Islam, a black supremacist organisation, in 1952 and remained a senior figure until 1964.
Prior to 1957, he was a relatively unknown figure.
That all changed with the beating of Nation of Islam member Hinton Johnson by New York City police in April that year. After the assault, Johnson was taken in to a local police station.
X, backed by thousands of furious protestors, led negotiations to get Johnson out of the precinct and into a hospital. Famously, he dispersed the protestors with a single gesture.
This extraordinary display of power caused the police to sit up and take notice. Clearly this was a figure to be reckoned with.
After this incident, X became a regular face in the news media.
These articles directly reference the Hinton Johnson incident.
Each closes: "I myself - being he who was lost and dead, buried here in the rubbish of the West, in the thickest darkness of sin and ignorance (hoodwinked) by the false teachings of the Slave master - am able to stand upright today PERPENDICULAR, on the square with my God ALLAH, and my own kind (here and in the East)…able for the first time in 400 years to see and hear."
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