31 Facts About Detroit Red

Detroit Red committed various crimes, being sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and burglary.

Detroit Red was the public face of the organization for 12 years, advocating Black empowerment and separation of Black and white Americans, and criticizing Martin Luther King Jr.

Detroit Red subsequently embraced Sunni Islam and the civil rights movement after completing the Hajj to Mecca, and became known as "el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz".

Detroit Red was posthumously honored with Malcolm X Day, on which he is commemorated in various cities across the United States.

Detroit Red excelled in junior high school but dropped out of high school after a white teacher told him that practicing law, his aspiration at the time, was "no realistic goal for a nigger".

Related searches

Detroit Red befriended John Elroy Sanford, a fellow dishwasher at Jimmy's Chicken Shack in Harlem who aspired to be a professional comedian.

Detroit Red established temples in Springfield, Massachusetts ; Hartford, Connecticut ; and Atlanta.

Detroit Red met Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of the Zambian African National Congress.

Detroit Red called the 1963 March on Washington "the farce on Washington", and said he did not know why so many Black people were excited about a demonstration "run by whites in front of a statue of a president who has been dead for a hundred years and who didn't like us when he was alive".

Detroit Red proposed that African Americans should return to Africa and that, in the interim, a separate country for Black people in America should be created.

Detroit Red rejected the civil rights movement's strategy of nonviolence, arguing that Black people should defend and advance themselves "by any means necessary".

Detroit Red's speeches had a powerful effect on his audiences, who were generally African Americans in northern and western cities.

Detroit Red was largely credited with the group's dramatic increase in membership between the early 1950s and early 1960s.

Detroit Red inspired the boxer Cassius Clay to join the Nation, and the two became close.

Detroit Red revealed an assassination attempt made on his life, through a discovered explosive device in his car, as well as the death threats he was receiving, in response to his expose of Elijah Muhammad.

Detroit Red said he was planning to organize a Black nationalist organization to "heighten the political consciousness" of African Americans.

Detroit Red expressed a desire to work with other civil rights leaders, saying that Elijah Muhammad had prevented him from doing so in the past.

Detroit Red was delayed in Jeddah when his US citizenship and inability to speak Arabic caused his status as a Muslim to be questioned.

Detroit Red had received Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam's book The Eternal Message of Muhammad with his visa approval, and he contacted the author.

Detroit Red spoke regularly at meetings held by MMI and the OAAU, and was one of the most sought-after speakers on college campuses.

Detroit Red was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems that we face as a race.

Detroit Red's philosophy is known almost entirely from the many speeches and interviews he gave from 1952 until his death.

Detroit Red said that the Nation of Islam followed Islam as it was practiced around the world, but the Nation's teachings varied from those of other Muslims because they were adapted to the "uniquely pitiful" condition of Black people in the United States.

Detroit Red taught that Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation, was God incarnate, and that Elijah Muhammad was his Messenger, or Prophet.

Detroit Red rejected the civil rights movement's strategy of nonviolence, advocating instead that Black people should defend themselves.

Related searches

Detroit Red felt that calling the movement a struggle for civil rights would keep the issue within the United States while changing the focus to human rights would make it an international concern.

Detroit Red said that he and the other members of the OAAU were determined to defend themselves from aggressors, and to secure freedom, justice and equality "by whatever means necessary".

Detroit Red emphasized the "direct connection" between the domestic struggle of African Americans for equal rights with the independence struggles of Third World nations.

Detroit Red said that African Americans were wrong when they thought of themselves as a minority; globally, Black people were the majority.

Detroit Red is credited with raising the self-esteem of Black Americans and reconnecting them with their African heritage.

Detroit Red is largely responsible for the spread of Islam in the Black community in the United States.