By Herb Boyd | SACOBSERVER.COM WIRE SERVICES

NEW YORK (NNPA) – “Malcolm X seemed to be everywhere.”

This was the general consensus in the activist community last week as hundreds turned out at a number of events to pay tribute to Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz), particularly on Monday, the 40th anniversary of his assassination.

It was two weeks ago at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture that the Malcolm moments began when Warner Home Video announced the release of Spike Lee’s film “Malcolm X” on DVD. Remembering Malcolm, who was only 39 when he was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, received additional impetus with the death of Ossie Davis.

Davis, 87, died on Feb. 4 in Miami Beach while there making a film. At Malcolm’s funeral, Davis delivered the memorable eulogy that forever enshrined Malcolm “as our Black shining prince.”

The shining prince got a fresh veneer of love and respect, even among hordes of young people who were discovering the real Malcolm for the first time. “I thought I knew a little about him from the film, but I’m learning that he was a lot more than that,” said a young participant at the ceremonies held at Abyssinian Baptist Church Monday evening.

Trying to capture the essence of Malcolm on film is daunting, and it is even harder to sum up his legacy and impact in a program, no matter how reasonably long or how many witnesses and experts on the panels and at the forums.

But at least three events gave it a shot - and did quite well. At the Schomburg Center, the Malcolm X Museum presented Jeff Stetson’s engrossing play “The Meeting.” It is based on a fictionalized meeting between Malcolm and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In reality, the two only met once, fleetingly, on March 26, 1964, in the nation’s capital.

While that exchange was brief, Stetson has stitched together a highly imagined encounter that both captured their evolving political maturity and their enduring integrity. All the performers were convincing: Michael Green (Dr. King), Lawrence Winslow (Malcolm), and Ron Wilks (Rashad).

This was followed by a panel (Professor Bill Sales, educator/activist Yaa Asantewa, and Shaun Neblett, a member of the Malcolm X Museum’s board of trustees) that provided the packed auditorium with further enlightenment on Malcolm and brief remarks about the performance.

Asantewa, best known for her forthright stand against the city’s board of education and her determination to teach an African-centered curriculum, said the play expressed a need for unity in the Black community. “It suggests that we should work as one, if we’re going to make things better for us,” she said of the play.

Later, during the question-and-answer session, Asantewa stressed the need to understand that Malcolm was talking about self-defense, not violence. “And he was not an American hero,” she continued, challenging an earlier point. “Malcolm was always an African man. He was opposed to American foreign policy and against racism.”

What Asantewa said of Malcolm was strongly reiterated at Earl Hall on Columbia University’s campus the next day. “Malcolm struggled against empire,” said Professor Robin Kelley, a noted anthropologist and historian, now teaching at Columbia. “He was anti-colonial and anti-imperialist. It’s hard to predict what Malcolm would think if he were alive today, but I believe he would embrace the situation in Darfur, Sudan, and oppose the war in Iraq.”

Kelley’s remarks came after Professor Manning Marable’s recitation of Malcolm’s life, noting his rise from criminality to world acclaim as a political thinker and an intellectual. These points were given further exposition by Farah Jasmine Griffin, Jessica Buchanan, Bryonn Bain, Sonia Sanchez, and Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid. Imam Rashid placed Malcolm’s life within a religious context, carefully charting his religiosity that grew from the strictures of the Nation of Islam to orthodox Islam.

This Malcolm moment was co-sponsored by the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, the Center for Contemporary Black History, the Association of Black and Latino Graduate Students, and the Black Students Organization.

At about the same time people were assembling at Columbia, some of Malcolm’s daughters were at the center of a celebration at the newly renovated Audubon Ballroom that by May 19, Malcolm’s birthday, will be called the Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center.

A number of prominent political figures were in attendance, most notably the Rev. Al Sharpton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

There is no point attempting to list all of the people that crossed the stage at Abyssinian Baptist Church for the Institute of the Black World 21st Century celebration of Malcolm’s life and influence. Percy Sutton, founder and chairman emeritus of the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation, recounted his days with Malcolm, stirring the crowd with his recollection of riding with the leader in a car, accompanied by heavily armed body guards. ‘“They think they’re guarding me,’” Sutton recalled Malcolm saying.

Malcolm told Sutton a story about a man named Omar and his appointed rendezvous with destiny, and then stunned his lawyer with: “My destiny is that someone will kill me.”

Malcolm’s life may have been snuffed out, but “they kill our Black shining princes,” boomed Viola Plummer, one of several veteran activists saluted at the event, including Regent Adelaide Sanford, Preston Wilcox, Sister Kefa Nephphys, Jitu Weusi, the Rev. Herb Daughtry, and Herman Ferguson.

Ferguson, a founding member of the Organization of the African American Unity, was effusive in his praise and recollections of Malcolm. Rather than relay some of his impressions, see the long interview he did in Souls journal, sponsored by the Center for Contemporary History at Columbia. However, it should be noted that Ferguson did reveal some portions of conversations he had with Malcolm.

“When I became part of the OAAU, Malcolm told me that the only things he had to offer were prison and the graveyard,” Ferguson said.

Among the highlights at Abyssinian was the indomitable Sonia Sanchez, and she was as passionate here as she was earlier in the evening at Columbia. After reciting a long roster of heroes and heroines, Sanchez chose her own special way of ululation and conjuring the magnificent of the fallen Malcolm.

M-1 of dead prez read with impeccable resonance the eulogy Davis delivered at Malcolm’s funeral, and the Welfare Poets and crew electrified the church with its rap and rapture. As Ron Daniels and James Turner declared toward the program’s end, though a good job had been done remembering Malcolm, ''there is still a lot of work to be done'' to live up to his name and immeasurable contributions.

“If you truly want to carry on Malcolm’s legacy, then you’ll go back to your communities and organize,” Daniels said, conveying once again the admonitions put forth by the church’s pastor, Rev. Calvin Butts; Haki Madhubuti; Professor James Smalls; Carlos Russell; Monifa Akinwole-Bandele; Marta Vega; and Grenada’s Ambassador Lemuel A. Stanislaus.

“Malcolm may be gone in the flesh, but his spirit is everywhere,” said poet Shani Jamila.

This story comes special to NNPA from the New York Amsterdam News.