New book reveals Malcolm X secretly met the KKK to discuss setting up a ‘separate state’ for Black Americans

By 
·October 13, 2020
Portrait of American political activist and radical civil rights leader Malcolm X (1925 - 1965) as he holds an 8mm movie camera in London Airport, London, England, July 9, 1964. Shortly after breaking his affiliation with the Nation of Islam, and just days after his formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), Malcolm X was in London en route to Egypt to attend a meeting of the Organization of African Unity and to meet with the leaders of various African states. (Photo by Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

Portrait of American political activist and radical civil rights leader Malcolm X (1925 - 1965) as he holds an 8mm movie camera in London Airport, London, England, July 9, 1964. Shortly after breaking his affiliation with the Nation of Islam, and just days after his formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), Malcolm X was in London en route to Egypt to attend a meeting of the Organization of African Unity and to meet with the leaders of various African states. (Photo by Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

This week, a shocking new revelation was made that in 1961 Malcolm X discussed an unlikely truce with the Ku Klux Klan which proposed the white supremacist hate group helping to carve out a “separate state” for Black Americans.

According to The Times,  an account of the meeting is detailed in the new book ‘The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X’, which claims the civil rights leader met with the Klansmen at a secret summit in Atlanta where they discussed their shared opposition to racial integration.  

circa 1962: American political activist and radical civil rights leader, Malcolm X (1925 – 1965) standing at a podium during a rally of African-American Muslims held in a Washington, DC arena. He is wearing a formal jacket and a white bow-tie. (Photo by Richard Saunders/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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Details of the unlikely alliance emerged in a never-before-published interview with Jeremiah Shabazz, a Nation of Islam minister who hosted the gathering at his home. Although working at two extreme ends of the fight for racial equality, the KKK reportedly invited the Nation of Islam to join forces because they recognized both organizations were staunchly opposed to school desegregation, which was gathering pace after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.  

The narrative also suggests the Klan proposed an alliance with the Nation of Islam to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. who was leading the charge against the “evil” of segregation.  Malcolm X rejected King’s doctrine of nonviolence and instead argued for racial separatism.

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The iconic civil rights activist joined the Nation of Islam while serving a prison term in Massachusetts and in 1961 was sent to “meet with them devils” at Shabazz’s home to speak to the KKK in the meeting which was first approved by the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. 

One member of the Klan was to have tried to “break the ice” by berating the Jews, whom he thought to be another common enemy. After this, Malcolm X proposed “complete separation of the races” in which the KKK would assist the Nation of Islam to acquire land for Black people to live in a “separate state” as a form of reparations.

Allegedly, the Klan also suggested that Nation members wear “purple robes” as a nod to the KKK’s infamous white costumes. But ultimately, the meeting was infiltrated by an FBI agent working undercover in the Klan. 

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