Sixty years after his murder on Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X has yet to be recognized with a monument in Boston, where he lived as a teen in the 1940s and 50s.
The city has a park and a boulevard bearing his name. And murals depicting his iconic image.
But even on the city’s most prominent civil rights monument, The Embrace, you won’t find Malcolm X among the 69 engraved names of local civil rights leaders — people like education pioneer Ruth Batson and former state representative and community organizer Mel King. Their names are etched in the concrete below the massive bronze sculpture depicting the entwined arms of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
Imari Paris Jeffries, the president of Embrace Boston, the organization that brought The Embrace sculpture to the city, says Malcolm’s exclusion from that moment was largely a technical matter.
“We intended to put Malcolm X on there,” he said, but “we had a hard time contacting his family to get final confirmation.” The organization only used names approved by family members.
But the conversation is not over, Paris Jeffries said.
“Malcolm X would be the next major monument we’d like to focus on,” Paris Jeffries said, adding that the organization may try to include a sculpture of Malcolm X at its new headquarters site, now under construction in Roxbury.
And the organization is not the only one thinking about Malcolm.
A true monument to Malcolm
Malcom X lived in a house on Dale Street in Roxbury for about ten years. Ella Collins took custody of her rough-edged teenage half-brother Malcolm Little in 1941, until he wound up in prison on charges of theft and breaking and entering. Rodnell Collins, Ella’s son who now owns the house on Dale Street, likes the idea of a new monument in Roxbury for his uncle.
Collins feels it would not have been appropriate to include Malcolm’s name on The Embrace plaza, because the civil rights pioneers named — with the exception of Dr. King — all lived full, natural lives. Malcolm was murdered at age 39.
“You don’t put the names of the living with the fallen,” he said. “These people have fallen and lost their lives.”
Collins said the Dale Street house is the true monument to Malcolm, though he does not plan to ever make it a fully public space.
While it is currently in disrepair, Collins said the plan is to renovate the house and use it as living space for student interns, who would come to Boston to spend time working in community service projects.
“The second and third floor is where Malcolm lived. And that will be open to the public on special occasions and special holidays,” Collins said.
This summer he is planning to stage a reading of a play about King, Medgar Evers and his famous uncle in Malcolm X Park, just down the block from the Dale Street house.
Boston re-thinks memorials
As Boston approaches what would have been the slain civil rights activist’s 100th birthday in May, leaders are considering the possibility of at least a temporary monument or sculpture.
Last year the city launched “Un-Monument,” a program to experiment with temporary monuments and public art displays as a way of re-thinking how memorials are chosen and created.
Karen Goodfellow, Boston’s director of Transformative Art and Monuments, said long-term projects need to be approached thoughtfully.
“Let’s take a moment and experiment. Let’s work with artists. Let’s have public dialogue. Let’s have people be able to respond to these temporary monuments we put out and share, whether they feel like they resonate or not,” she said.
That program will announce a new round of projects in April, and she confirmed one proposed project is on Malcolm X.
Whatever the format of a Malcolm memorial might take, JoAnna LeFlore-Ejike believes it is critical that residents of Boston be reminded of the history he made and the role Boston played in that story.
LeFlore-Ejike directs the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, which runs a memorial site on the Omaha, Nebraska property where Malcolm X was born.
“We have a generation of children who are going to grow up and have no idea who people like Malcolm X are,” she said, adding that monuments can serve as a teaching tool.
“Black people have this storytelling tradition, right? But we don’t always have opportunities to, you know, see a mural or see a monument,” she said.
She feels Malcolm X would have a clear message for people today.
“The number one thing he would be focused on and encouraging us to do that — not just only as Black folk, but as as the human race — is to unify our spirit of diligence and resiliency.”
