“Spirit in Opposition”: Malcolm X and the Question of Palestine

Contemporary political events in Palestine and the United States have drawn renewed interest in the long history of militant Black-Palestinian solidarity. Although many historical accounts typically begin in the post-1967 Arab-Israeli War moment with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers in Algiers, this article traces a foundational period of Black radical coalition building with Palestine through Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. In doing so, it privileges systems of intergenerational exchange and emphasizes the ways in which broader political developments, from Egyptian anti-imperialism to the birth of the Third World project, helped establish the basis for the Black Power movement’s identification with Palestine. The article argues that the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X’s border crossing and concomitant efforts to forge ties with Arab-world liberation movements explicitly rendered Palestine a referent of the Black Radical Tradition.