The 100 Greatest Americans

[Doc]

OK, if you are going to get offended, Doc, I will get offended that Malcom X is on the list.  MLK was a leader who had a moral backbone.  Malcom X was IMO little better than a punk in comparison.  "By any means necessary?"  OK, the ends justifies the means, Malcom, you and the KKK are from the same cut of cloth, just different colors. 

Occhi
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I agree with you completely Occhi. The commonly remembered bits about X are not the picture of a good man.

But at the end of his life he saw the error of his ways. He changed. He recanted much of what he said. He expressed that, perhaps, violence was a mistake and there was a better way. He spoke out and attacked his own creation, the militant movement that he himself had spawned. He spoke out against the Nation of Islam. He said, quite movingly, that he had acted in error. And then he was murdered. X shouldn't just be remembered for his life, but also for his death and the events and the turning of the tables that led up to it.

X may have been a punk, but so was I at one time. I believed I would never get a fair shake as a minority, so I did the whole "By any means necessary." Malatov cocktails, violence, beating, burning, and looting. I started down the slippery slope of racism. I started believing the only way to get a fair deal was to put the Fear of God into Whitey. I too, believed it was time to rise up from the fields, kill all the house negros, and kill the Massah. I believed that minority empowerment could only come at gunpoint. For a very brief time in my life I plunged deeply into every last bit of anger and frusteration I had bottled up in my soul. It was raw, emotional, and very powerful. It felt so much like the right thing. How could anything that felt this good, this right, be wrong? I went down that path. But I got rescued. I got snatched. And I had somebody get it into my thick skull that this was WRONG! I changed. Men change. X changed. And that should be remembered. It took some BIG brass balls to turn traitor to the Nation of Islam, and speak out that it was WRONG to do these things. Doing so put his life in danger, put his family in danger, and ultimately cost him his life.

Occhi, I ask, would you have the courage to do the same? In the end, it's God who judges, not us. And thank goodness for that. If my whole life was remembered, discounted, and condemned by a few of my actions from when I wasn't as old and wise I am now, well, I don't know what I would do.

Some of us live greater lives simply because we spent so much of our lives living as punks. We spend the rest of our days making up for that.

Something to think about my friend.