For Malcolm X

BY MARGARET WALKER

All you violated ones with gentle hearts;

You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak;

Whose voices echo clamors of our cool capers,

And whose black faces have hollowed pits for eyes.

All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery bums

Hating white devils and black bourgeoisie,

Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns,

Gather round this coffin and mourn your dying swan.

Snow-white moslem head-dress around a dead black face!

Beautiful were your sand-papering words against our skins!

Our blood and water pour from your flowing wounds.

You have cut open our breasts and dug scalpels in our brains.

When and Where will another come to take your holy place?

Old man mumbling in his dotage, crying child, unborn?

Poem Analysis

Margaret Walker

For Malcom X By Margaret Walker

The poem, For Malcom X, is obviously rooted in history being based on Malcom X. As a little bit of “back
story”, for those who haven’t heard of Malcom X he is considered a pivotal figure in the fight for racial
equality in America. Born an African-American, Muslim he sometimes took a militant stand in his efforts
to gain equality. Many hail him as a hero and a man to be revered. Although some question whether his
methods were justified and cite those such as Martin Luther King who helped bring about equality
without using violent methods. The truth is that both men were massively influential in the changes that
were made in the US.

For Malcom X is far from complimentary although it seems to recognise the profound effect that the
man had, it certainly does not look at him from a kind perspective. I found this pretty surprising though
it could be that Walker disapproved of Malcom X’s methods.

For Malcom X By Margaret Walker

Explore For Malcom X

1 Form and Tone2 For Malcom X Analysis3 About Margaret Walker

Form and Tone

The poem is written in free verse and separated into two stanzas. The first is eight lines long the second
is six lines long. There is no discernible rhyming pattern. The line lengths are very different and the
metre is uneven. The poem is very dark and morbid and talks of Malcom X’s death. You could well class
the poem as an elegy. Although the title suggests it is in memory of Malcom X it paints him in the way
most scholars perceive him as an ambiguous figure who did some good and some harm.

For Malcom X Analysis

First Stanza

The poem, which can be read in full here, starts in a very bleak fashion. It addresses “violated ones” this
is a powerful adjective and straight away offers a stark contrast as the narrator describes them as having
gentle hearts. It stands to reason that in this line Walker is probably addressing the black community.
Once again in the second line we see the comparisons which act almost as oxymorons. She refers to
these people, who may well be the followers and supporters of Malcom X as Violent dreamers. These
early comparison are really notable and create an astonishing effect. Are they being used as a device to
put across the double edged sword that is the violent protests that Malcom X and his supporters grew
famous for?

The next line uses a really interesting concept as Walker uses the alliterative phrase “cool capers” A
caper is sometimes used to describe a crime, but isn’t a word that is associated with “hardcore crime” IE
violent crimes that hurt individuals. Referring to any crime as cool though creates another jarring
comparison. I think these comparisons are used to create grey areas and cast aspersions on what people
hold to be true.

The descriptions that Walker then continues to use are not complimentary at all, from her physical
description, describing these people as having “pits for eyes” to her description of the type of people
that she is addressing. It becomes apparent though that she is not purely addressing black people,
although she is in part, she is also addressing “hating white devils” presumably this means racist white
folk. She refers to these people as “Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns” the image of
“thumbing ones nose” is the suggestion here that they are keeping secrets? I think this could be
interpreted this way. But what of the “burning red suns” is this a euphemism for a burning cross?

Perhaps the most startling line of all is the last lion of the stanza when Malcom X is described as their
“dying swan” This is interesting for several different reasons. Not least of all the fact that Malcom X is
described as being “theirs [your]” does this mean that in the poets eyes that Malcom X belonged to
these people? The Black bourgeoisie etc. There are also two other interesting points here. Swans are
generally (though not always) white. Malcom X most certainly wasn’t white! The very notion could be
considered pretty offensive and finally a dying swan is a term often used to describe somebody who is
“making a meal of it” You can’t really make a meal of your own death! So is the poet lessening his
plight? I wouldn’t have thought that would be the case considering her work on equality. Maybe this is
her way of belittling his methods and his “ends justify the means” tactics. This probably wouldn’t have
sat entirely right with Walker who was a scholar and therefore possibly quite liberally mined (a lot of
people working in education are).

Second Stanza

From the very first sentence here we see Walker appearing to almost mock Malcom X, when you read
the first two words “snow white” this almost stands in defiance of the man’s movement towards black
empowerment. It also mentions his religion although uses an older spelling of Muslim that is less
commonly used today. The second line once again pours ambiguity on what we thought we knew. It
would appear up until this point that Walker was very much against Malcom X but in this next line she
describes his words as beautiful but concurrently compares them to sand paper. This is to put across the
idea that his words grated. But is this necessarily a negative? Walker used positives and negatives in
abundance throughout the poem, but words grating on the correct people might not be an entirely
negative thing.

The next two lines are particularly graphic and harrowing as Walker describes “our” blood flowing from
his wounds. What is unclear is who the “our” that she refers to. Can we take it to mean innocent black
people? That would be my best guess. In the final line Walker prophetically predicts somebody rising up
to fill the void left by Malcom X. When she uses the phrase “holy place” I think that this could be
considered sarcastic. She really doesn’t seem to have much positive to say about the guy. The two
suggestions for “people” that could take his place are a crying child or a mumbling old man. Neither one
of these would on the face of it look like a positive role model. Does she choose these two “contenders”
to the throne deliberately to emphasise the point of how futile the actions of Malcom X were?

About Margaret Walker

Margaret Walker is an American Poet originating from Birmingham, Alabama. This must have made her
early life quite difficult as a young black girl living in an area that is notoriously racist, or at least
historically has been. At a fairly young age Walker and her family moved to New Orleans. Walker was
highly educated and ended up receiving a doctorate. She became part of the African-American literary
movement in Chicago. Although a much celebrated poet Walker has a modest body of work. She spent a
great deal of her profession working as a professor at what is now Jackson University. This is a facility
that was traditionally used predominantly by the black community. Walker died of breast cancer in 1998
at the age of 83. Her work towards equality was recognised when the centre in which she used to work
was redubbed as the Margaret Walker Centre.

Frederick Douglass

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

and terrible thing, needful to man as air,

usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,

this man, superb in love and logic, this man

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

For My People

BY MARGARET WALKER

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs

repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues

and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an

unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an

unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the

gone years and the now years and the maybe years,

washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending

 hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching

dragging along never gaining never reaping never

knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama

backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor

and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking

and playhouse and concert and store and hair and

Miss Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn

to know the reasons why and the answers to and the

people who and the places where and the days when, in

memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we

were black and poor and small and different and nobody

cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to

be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and

play and drink their wine and religion and success, to

marry their playmates and bear children and then die

of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox

Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New

 Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy

people filling the cabarets and taverns and other

people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and

land and money and something—something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time

being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when

burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled

and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures

who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in

the dark of churches and schools and clubs

and societies, associations and councils and committees and

conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and

devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,

preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by

false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way

from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,

trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,

all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a

 bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second

generation full of courage issue forth; let a people

loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of

healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing

in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs

be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now

rise and take control.

If We Must Die

Claude McKay - 1889-1948

If we must die—let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;

Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!