Across The Sea Of Time

Yesterday would have been Malcolm's 81st birthday. You can't help but he intrigued by this man's life after reading "Striver's Row." What's missing in detail from Spike Lee's treatment and the Alex Haley book is the story of Macolm's life growing up in Lansing in the 30's. I was pretty ignorant of the segregation and degree of racism that existed in the North in the relatively recent past. Kevin Baker based much of his research for "Striver's Row" on Perry's comprehensive biography. The controversial issue of Malcolm's sexuality was brought up in the Perry bio (not that there's anything wrong with that) Here's a glimpse from the guardian: "Some black activists are enraged by suggestions that their hero might have been gay - or at least bisexual. The controversy has been stirring since the publication of Bruce Perry's acclaimed biography, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America (Station Hill, New York) in 1991. Based on interviews with Malcolm's closest boyhood and adult friends, Perry suggests that the US black nationalist leader was not as robustly heterosexual as his Nation of Islam (NoI) colleagues have always insisted. Malcolm X joined the militant Muslim NOI in 1949, attracted by its teaching that Allah would deliver black people from white bondage. By the 1960s, Malcolm had developed NOI ideology in new directions, becoming America's leading spokesperson for black consciousness, pride and self-help. Sexual freedom was not, however, part of his agenda.
Yet Perry's book documents Malcolm X's many gay experiences. A schoolmate, Bob Bebee, recalls the day they stumbled on a local boy jerking off. Malcolm, Bebee recalled, ordered the youth to masturbate him, and subsequently boasted he had given him oral sex. Later, from the age of 20, Malcolm had sex with men for money - as hinted at in Spike Lee's 1992 biopic - and he had at least one sustained sexual liaison with a man."
While this should no way downgrade Malcolm's achievements, another black icon, I feel, deserves upgrading. As a kid I don't think I appreciated how great Sammy Davis Jr. was. It didn't help that he was a Nixon supporter in his later years and the countless times I heard him do "Mr. Bojangles" and other lame shtick on the horrible Ed Sullivan Show. I just treated myself to the Sammy/Buddy Rich CD at Academy Records (a boost for a depressing day of work). Here's Sammy (and Buddy) at their best.