Michael X

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Michael X (1933 - 16 May 1975), born Michael de Freitas in Trinidad and Tobago to a Portuguese shopkeeper and a Bajan-born mother, was a self-styled Black revolutionary and civil rights activist in 1960s London. He was also known as Michael Abdul Malik and Abdul Malik. Convicted of murder in 1972, Michael X died by hanging in 1975 in Port of Spain's Royal Gaol.

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[edit] Biography

Michael X
Michael X

Michael de Freitas emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1957, where he settled in London's Notting Hill district (the Notting Hill Gate area). He became a pimp, drug pusher, and gambling-house operator; he also worked as a strong-arm man for Peter Rachman, the property racketeer.

Michael X became a Black Power leader in Britain. Writing in The Observer in 1965, Colin McGlashan called him "the authentic voice of black bitterness."[1] In 1967, he became the first non-white person to be charged and imprisoned under England's Race Relations Act, which was designed to protect Britains' Black and Asian populations from discrimination.[2] He was sentenced to 18 months in jail for publicly urging the shooting of any black woman seen with a white man.

In 1969, under the name Abdul Malik, he founded the Racial Adjustment Action Society, and became the self-appointed leader of a Black Power commune on Holloway Road, North London called the "Black House." The commune was financed by a young millionaire dropout benefactor named Nigel Samuel. Michael X said, "They've made me the archbishop of violence in this country. But that 'get a gun' rhetoric is over. We're talking of really building things in the community needed by people in the community. We're keeping a sane approach."[3] John Lennon and Yoko Ono donated a bag of their hair to be auctioned for the benefit of the Black House.

In what the media called "the slave collar affair," Marvin Brown, a businessman associated with the Black House, was beaten up and made to parade about the house with a spiked collar around his neck as Michael X and others threatened him with extortion.[4] The Black House, underfinanced and undertaken with volunteer labour, closed in the autumn of 1970.

The Black House burned down in mysterious circumstances, and soon Michael X and four colleagues were arrested for extortion. His bail was paid by John Lennon in January 1971.[5]

In February 1971, he fled to his native Trinidad, where he started an agricultural commune devoted to Black empowerment 16 miles east of the capital, Port of Spain. "The only politics I ever understand is the politics of revolution," he told the Trinidad Express. "The politics of change, the politics of a completely new system."[1]

He began another commune, also called the Black House, which also burned down in February 1972. Michael X was tried in 1972 for the murder of Joseph Skerritt, a member of his "Black Liberation Army" who refused to obey orders to attack a local police station. Skerrit's body was discovered with that of Gale Ann Benson by police who had come to the commune to investigate the fire. The bodies had been buried in a shallow grave. Benson, also called Hale Kimga, was the daughter of Conservative MP Leonard F. Plugge. A witness at his trial claimed that Michael X struck Benson with a cutlass on her neck.[6] Michael X fled to Guyana a few days after the fire at his commune and was captured there. He was charged with Benson's murder but never tried for the crime.[7] The Save Malik Committee -- whose members included Angela Davis, Dick Gregory, and Kate Millet -- and others, including the well-known radical lawyer William Kunstler who was paid for by John Lennon,[5] pleaded for clemency, but he was hanged in 1975.[7]

[edit] Legacy

Michael X is the subject of the 1980 essay by V.S. Naipaul, The Return of Eva Perón and the Killings in Trinidad. He is also believed to be the fictional model for Jimmy Ahmed in Naipaul's 1975 novel Guerrillas. Under the name Michael Abdul Malik, Michael X is the author of From Michael Freitas to Michael X (André Deutsch, 1968).

Michael X's position in English politics was exaggerated, according to Stewart Home, who wrote, "The RAAS (Radical Adjustment Action Society) black power group which Malik led was largely a paper creation, with the membership figures being massively exaggerated for the benefit of the press. Malik as a 'scare' figure provided good copy, stories about him sold newspapers and as a result exposing the fact that his organised following was in reality minuscule was not on the agenda of those journalists giving him column inches."[4]

Michael X left behind fragments of a novel about a romantic black hero who wins the abject admiration of the narrator, a young English woman named Lena Boyd-Richardson. Inspecting the hero's bookshelf, Lena Boyd-Richardson is impressed at finding "Salammbô that masterpiece of Flaubert's" free of dust. "I discover that he not only has the books but actually reads and understands them I was absolutely bowld, literally. I took a seat, and gazed upon this marvel, Mike."[1]

[edit] Cultural references

Michael X is a main character in The Bank Job (2008), a dramatisation of a real-life London bank robbery in 1971. The film claims Michael X was in possession of indecent photographs of Princess Margaret and used them to avoid criminal prosecution by threatening to publish them. X's file in the National British Archive remains classified until 2054.

[edit] Further reading

  • Humphry, Derek. False Messiah - The Story of Michael X (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Ltd., 1977).
  • Malik, Michael Abdul. From Michael de Freitas to Michael X (André Deutsch, 1968).
  • Naipaul, V.S. The Return of Eva Perón and the Killings in Trinidad (André Deutsch, 1980)
  • Sharp, James. The Life and Death of Michael X (Uni Books, 1981).

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Didion, Joan (June 12, 1980) "Without Regret or Hope." New York Review of Books.
  2. ^ Eds. (November 10, 1967) "Black Muslim Gets One Year in Britain." New York Times.
  3. ^ Eds. (January 29, 1970) "London Getting a Black Cultural Leader." New York Times.
  4. ^ a b Home, Stewart (October 23, 2005) "Pressure." Mute magazine.
  5. ^ a b Bill Harry - The John Lennon Encyclopedia
  6. ^ Reuters (August 22, 1972) "Michael X Doomed in Trinidad Murder." New York Times.
  7. ^ a b UPS (May 17, 1975) "Militant is Hanged in Trinidad After Long Fight for Clemency." New York Times.