John Brown and Malcolm X:
The Parallels of History

Apart from their respective lives of self-sacrifice and devotion to human rights in the case of black people, there seems to be very little that the 19th century abolitionist John Brown and the 20th century activist Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz) would have in common. They are men of different times and historical epochs, and they arose at different stages in the ongoing struggle of black liberation in the United States. In everything from politics to transportation, they are truly men of different worlds. Of course, they are men of different “races” (“race” being a social construction, not a biological fact, I place the word in quotation marks), and therefore had different experiences vis-a-vis “race” and its privileges in a white-centered society. Along with epoch and “race,” there is also the religious factor, Brown having been an evangelical Calvinist Christian, and Malcolm a Muslim.

Yet I would suggest there are some interesting parallels in their lives that may serve to be instructive for students of history and advocates for justice.

1. While subsequently embraced by the popular justice movements of their times, neither John Brown nor Malcolm X were ever deeply involved in or committed to those movements. Instead they moved in alternative streams of activism and ideology.

John Brown is rightly remembered as an abolitionist, yet he must be so only on his own terms. Insofar as the abolitionist movement of his day, he never joined it and was increasingly critical of abolitionist leadership and strategy in the antebellum era. Although his father and relatives were affiliated with abolitionist societies and institutions, the facts of his life show that Brown never joined a state or local abolitionist society. Instead, he tended to prefer to develop his own plan of action, whether assisting fugitive slaves to escape, organizing a militant defense organization, or ultimately devising his strategy to undermine slavery in the South. Of course Brown knew and interacted with abolitionists, particularly black anti-slavery activists; he also got significant personal and financial support from certain New England abolitionists (usually dubbed the “Secret Six”). Yet he never submitted to any abolitionist’s directives nor was he a joiner. To be sure, Brown sympathized with abolitionists over against the normative racism of northern society as well as slavery in the South. But he was also highly critical of the abolitionist movement and quietly scorned it in his belief that he could accomplish more by his action plan than by their oratory and "moral suasion" programs.

Malcolm X runs along an imperfect parallel insofar as his relationship to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. An equally high-minded man in his convictions, young Malcolm had family roots in the black nationalist tradition of Marcus Garvey. While Malcolm admired his Garveyite roots, he never joined Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), even though his parents had been UNIA activists. Malcolm did join a movement, unlike Brown, when he gave his heart, mind, and soul to Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam in the 1940s while serving a term in prison in Massachusetts. Yet a substantial theme in Malcolm’s Nation of Islam years is not only his harsh criticism of the larger Civil Rights movement, but also his own evolving independent leadership. It was his independent and moral integrity as a “Black Muslim” that ultimately led to a falling out with the movement, which in turn resulted in his ouster from (and later assassination by) the "Black Muslim" cult. More importantly, Malcolm remained a critic of the Civil Rights movement, just as Brown had criticized the abolitionist movement of his day. To be sure, Malcolm’s posture as an independent leader in 1964-65 show his willingness to dialogue and even collaborate with Civil Rights leaders, and he enjoyed a quiet but warm rapport with such black Civil Rights giants as Whitney Young and James Farmer. Had he not been murdered by his former “Black Muslim” brethren, Malcolm would likely have developed greater working relationships with the “accepted” black leadership. Yet he would neither have joined nor acquiesced to the prerequisites of the Civil Rights movement. Just as in life both men were strongly independent in their thinking, after their deaths, both Brown and Malcolm became lightning rods of sympathy and insight to the respective “civil rights” movements of their day. While Brown and Malcolm had criticized these movements and remained largely on the margin of their activities while in life, both the abolitionist and Civil Rights movements benefitted in real terms because of the example and sacrificial deaths of these heroic “lone rangers.”

2. Another parallel between John Brown and Malcolm X pertains to their respective religious commitments. The parallel is surely not found within the religions they embraced: Brown would never have accepted the claims of Muhammad and the Qur’an nor surrendered the doctrine of Christ's divine lordship and propitiation for sins according to the Bible. Malcolm rejected Christianity as being hopelessly contaminated by white supremacy, and likewise rejected the theological claims of orthodox Christianity as any Muslim would have done. Yet the parallel existing between the two leaders here rests more on the unique manner in which they blended devout and personal religious faith with militancy in a manner that defied the norms of their respective religious cultures.

Brown was a “born again” Christian with strong roots in the Protestant Reformation. He practiced a strong piety and personal spirituality reflected in daily prayers and Bible study that would rival any devout pastor or clergyman then or now. Every testimony by those who remembered him attests to the fact that John Brown was a genuine believer in the Christian faith. His correspondence is pregnant with scriptural allusions and reveals someone deeply rooted in a Puritan world and life view.

Malcolm, though a wayward youth, became a devout and extremely conservative and penitent young minister in the Nation of Islam. A devout reader of the Bible and the Qur’an, Malcolm’s life by all accounts is “squeaky clean” in comparison to many of his contemporaries in both Christianity and Islam. When he was put out of the Nation of Islam in 1964, Malcolm converted to Sunni Islam and thereafter became certified to spread Islam in the west. Had he lived, I have no doubt that he would have moved increasingly toward the religious sphere in expression of his activism, and probably would have become the foremost advocate of Islam in the western hemisphere. He was genuinely and devoted to pursuing a life of religious purity and service that many of his secular-minded admirers tend to overlook.

Yet in the case of both men, their piety and religious devotion has either been criticized or misunderstood because they believed in the spiritual integrity of militancy when applied to a just cause. While many critics have scored them for embracing “violence,” as essentially religious men their belief was that pacifism and so-called non-violence were inadequate and unworthy weapons in the face of a monstrous system of violent injustice. Both men preferred dialogue and democratic prerogatives to the use of force; but neither were willing to lay down the sword in the face of racist terrorism brought on by the failure or treachery of racist governments. Brown and Malcolm, however different in religious terms, shared the common belief that divine justice required good men to take up arms in order to oppose militant injustice. Both men believed that time and effort had already been too far expended on the dreams and strategies of pacifists, and that justice required the moral and righteous individual to take up arms when necessary. Both hoped that by making a unique blend of religion and militancy, greater war and bloodshed could actually be avoided.

Consequently both men shared the “tightrope” frustration so aptly described by Malcolm when he complained that he was considered too political for the religious, and too religious for the political. Neither men fit the mold of their respective conservative, passive religious brethren. Neither men saw a tension between righteous living and the use of force when necessary. Neither men were impressed by religions that bound the hands of the oppressed and promised liberation through pacifist ideals. And neither men had patience for mere oratory, both Brown and Malcolm having sought to establish their own essentially religious efforts in order to fight against racial oppression.

Finally in this regard is the unusual openness they manifested toward people of differing religious beliefs as long as they were allies in the struggle for freedom. While both Brown and Malcolm (at their most mature phases of activism) were “orthodox” and believed in submission to the authority of divinely inspired sacred texts, they freely and comfortably associated with political allies with whom they strongly differed in religious terms. Brown was friendly with Quakers, Spiritualists, Transcendentalists, and others who would otherwise have disdained his evangelical views; he did not shun or prohibit such opinions from being expressed in debate and discussion among his men, and he was willing to collaborate with such dissenters as long as they were committed to the anti-slavery cause. Malcolm not only exemplified a similar attitude but he criticized any organization or group that would not work with differing groups for the common cause of black liberation. Malcolm befriended and interacted with Christian clergymen in Harlem, founded a non-religious organization to unite black people of differing religious and philosophical views, interacted with agnostic and atheistic Leftists, and enjoyed personal friendships with allies of many different religious orientations. This kind of inward stability and mature social flexibility enabled them to build networks of association across religious lines while other leaders could work only with those of their own religious persuasion, or in spheres where religion was set aside entirely.

3. A final parallel between Malcolm and John Brown is seen in how they stand in relation to U.S. history in a number of ways. As far as African Americans are concerned, Brown has long been greatly admired, dating from the time of his hanging in 1859. Although that appreciation has lessened considerably in popular terms in our era, there is still a loyal memory of devotion to Brown in the collective mind of the black community. This loyal memory quietly surfaced last year as both CORE and the NAACP, leading black organizations, made public acknowledgment of Brown’s life and liberation activities. Obviously, Malcolm is greatly admired in the black community. In the forty-two years since his assassination, he has to a great degree eclipsed the “big” leaders of the Civil Rights movement of his time, many of whom are sadly forgotten. In memory, Malcolm also rivals Martin Luther King Jr., and even though the “mainstream” media uplift King as the singular representative figure of the Civil Rights era, the story and impact of Malcolm X continues to shadow (if not overshadow) that of the Reverend King.

Brown and Malcolm also have a “flexible” appeals across political, religious, and ideological spectrums. For instance, while Brown and Malcolm are admired by Leftist scholars and activists, they are also embraced by politically and religiously traditional writers and historians. Leftists naturally see these men as enemies of the capitalist system and certainly have grounds for seeing both men as militant advocates on behalf of the oppressed and powerless. Conservatives identify with Brown’s and Malcolm’s criticism of “liberals” in their respective eras and recognize the conservative values they expressed in life and action. While there are elements of truth in both perspectives, neither side can entirely claim Brown or Malcolm because they were sui generis, men of their own kind. People of this special nature tend to draw the currents of history into themselves in contrast to institutionally-manufactured leaders who must often be forced upon the historical record by professional scholars and politicians.

The “flexible” factor ultimately speaks to a greater characteristic that Brown and Malcolm X share with a small, select group of human beings in the larger story of humanity. People like John Brown and Malcolm X are not voted, promoted, or produced by democratic processes or leadership training programs. They seldom conform to any one mold, and while they have their own personal, individual characteristics shared in common with others, “the sum of their parts” is always greater than the whole of the leader produced by prejudice, profit, and propaganda. John Brown and Malcolm X are not just representative figures in their times and theaters of activism, but they have an expanding historical power that goes beyond their respective communities and peoples, reaching across boundaries of nation, ideology, religion, and culture. Above all, John Brown and Malcolm X walked the path which first trailed along the human concourse of struggle, then mounted upward on the bloody scaffold and stage, only to extend along a mysterious trajectory reaching the hearts and minds of men and women across time and place. It is for this reason that such phrases as “John Brown’s Soul Goes Marching On” and “Malcolm X Speaks” continue to resonate across the globe. John Brown yet marches on and Malcolm X is speaking still. These are not merely historical similarities, but ongoing spiritual parallels that remain vibrant because they bear witness to the sovereign purpose of the Almighty, Who moved both men from the margins of man’s world to the center of divine purpose in history.

LD