In the mid-1960s, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, aka Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little (1925—1965) spoke at the Omaha Civic Auditorium. Omaha’s most important native-born son, el-Shabazz spoke on important issues and raised the bar higher for Omaha’s Black power movement. This is a history of Malcolm X’s June 30, 1964, appearance in Omaha.

Putting Together the Visit

Born in Omaha, this was the first time el-Shabazz returned to Omaha as an adult. Forced out of the city by the KKK, his family was targeted because of his parents’ community organizing and advocacy for the Universal Negro Improvement Association or UNIA.

His own activism began in 1952, when he went to Detroit to begin organizing for the Nation of Islam. 12 years later in May, 1964, he completed a pilgrimage to Mecca and officially changed his name from Malcolm X to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

In late May 1964, Charles Washington, then reporting for The Omaha Star, published an interview he did with el-Shabazz in Chicago in the newspaper. In it, el-Shabazz was quoted as saying he had “a good dose of Omaha even before I was born.” He told the story of how his family was burned out of Omaha, and how a popular and especially disgusting picture of the 1919 lynching of Will Brown in Omaha jolted him into a new awareness later in life. Speaking of when he saw it in Ghana, he said “When they want to show how the Negro is treated in America, they show this scene.”

In his first major public address following the trip on June 28, 1964, at the Audubon Ballroom in NYC, where he formally announced the founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, or OAAU.

His visit to Omaha was his first after his appearance in NYC. Organized by the Citizens’ Committee for Civil Liberties, or 4CL, an open forum at the Civic Auditorium’s Assembly Hall was announced just four days ahead of time on June 26. Surely Charles Washington’s interview influenced the occasion.

Rev. Kelsey Jones, president of the 4CL, made the announcement of the event at a mass meeting at Zion Baptist Church on June 26. Costing a dollar admission, the subject of his presentation was announced to be, “A Warning to White America” with a Q&A session to follow.

“Malcolm has a message that should be heard… If Omaha can back Goldwater, it ought to be able to stand Malcolm for one day.” — Rev. Kelsey Jones

During his announcement of the appearance, Rev. Jones said, “Malcolm has a message that should be heard… If Omaha can back Goldwater, it ought to be able to stand Malcolm for one day.” Barry Goldwater was the leader of racist conservatives who were opposed to the Civil Rights Act that year, and was the GOP presidential nominee.

Asked to explain their choice of Malcolm X as a speaker by the World-Herald on June 21, Rev. Jones said “This is not to paint a scary picture. It just may indicate the direction the movement might go.” The same article included a story from Rev. Jones about how he and colleagues were refused the right to eat in a restaurant in Nebraska City during a recent trip. “The group was told it could buy food and drink but would have to leave the restaurant to consume it.”

What Malcolm Said

A “cheering, applauding crowd” of 400 people gathering in the hall. el-Shabazz was introduced by Rev. Rudy McNair, the co-leader of the 4CL with Rev. Jones. Uniformed police and plain clothes policemen sat in the audience, and the evening’s program began at 8pm.

In their July 3 front page feature on the event, The Omaha Star headline repeated el-Shabazz’s exhortation, “Negro Must Prepare to Defend Himself or Continue at the Mercy of Racist Mob.” They opened by saying “Colorful, controversial Malcolm X declared here Tuesday night that the history of unpunished violence against Afro-Americans ‘clearly indicates’ they must be prepared to defend themselves or ‘continue to be defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob.”

Continuing, he said “A man with a rifle or club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or club.” He was adamant about the right and responsibility of Black people to defend themselves against violence by white people. The paper quoted him, “And as Americans, we will not give up a single right guaranteed under the Constitution.”

el-Shabazz demanded that it is the “duty of every Afro-American and every Afro-American community throughout this country to protect its people against mass murderers, bombers, lynchers, floggers, brutalizers and exploiters.” Answering a recent demand of President Johnson for Americans to “strike back if her peace and security were jeopardized,” he said, “How do they… expect that we will strike back for peace and security in Korea, Laos, Vietnam and not strike back for peace and security in Mississippi?… How do they expect us to be violent in Laos and peaceful in St. Augstine, Florida?”

In the days before the 4CL Town Forum in Omaha, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been in Florida leading major desegregation protests in St. Augustine. After his rental house was targeted by gunfire and a hotel owner poured acid in a pool with Black swimmers in it, King called St. Augustine “the most lawless” city he had seen. el-Shabazz responded to the violence while he spoke in Omaha, offering to send armed soldiers from the OAAU, to protect King and his protesters. He said he wanted “to organize our people into self-defense units capable of retaliating against the Ku Klux Klan in the only language it understands… The day for turning the other cheek to those inhuman brute beasts is long over.” King maintained his posture of nonviolence though, and later his work in St. Augustine became credited with helping spark national outrage that pushed for the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

The Omaha Star ended its reporting by saying, “[el-Shabazz] warned that, ‘a real, honest effort to remove the just grievances of the 22 million Afro-Americans must be made immediately or in a short while it will be too late!”

Press also came from the Omaha World-Herald, which centered their reporting the day after on el-Shabazz saying, “anything whites can do, we can do better than you.” They also concentrated their coverage on him mentioning Ghana and Mao Tse-tung. In their lead for the story, they quoted him saying, “America is the country of the past and Africa is the country of the future.”

In their coverage, the World-Herald apparently refused to refer to el-Shabazz by his chosen name. It was also much less comprehensive coverage than The Omaha Star. Juxtaposed against The Star, a selection of quotes from his speech printed by the World-Herald focused on salacious commentary in particular. He was quoted saying…

“We have a racist government in Washington that has the audacity to tell us that the South lost the Civil War.”

“The sins of the fathers are about to be visited upon the heads of their children of this generation.”

“We 22 million Afro-Americans must form a united front. There’s no need for us to be divided. We do not want integration—we want complete recognition and respect as human beings.”

“The United States Government has failed to give us our freedom and our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. But we will not be denied much longer.”

During his talk, el-Shabazz also said his goal was to do “whatever is necessary to bring the Negro struggle from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights.” Early on in the talk, he wasn’t saying the South won; he was arguing that the federal government allowed Southern-style racism (Jim Crow, lynching) to dominate the entire country, effectively making the North’s victory a hollow lie for Black Americans. All of this is to say that the World-Herald took his statements out of context to incite and incense readers and not to educate them or inform them about el-Shabazz’s overall perspective. Led by Charles Washington’s reporting, The Star was focused on the substance of his speech (self-defense and internationalism) while the World-Herald was focused on sensationalism (communism and Mao). These perspectives provide a vital record of how Omaha has historically struggled to claim its most famous son and the Civil Rights Movement, specifically within the city.

After his speech, el-Shabazz participated in a Q&A session facilitated by Rev. Jones. Questions centered on white hypocrisy, the religion of el-Shabazz, capitalism, and violence.

It’s ironic that Malcolm X spoke in Omaha on June 30, 1964. Just two days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on July 2. While the nation was getting ready to celebrate a legislative “victory,” Malcolm was in Omaha warning that without self-defense and “human rights,” legislation was just paper.

Predictable Backlash

As can be imagined, in the white conservative culture of Omaha served by the World-Herald in 1964, there was a lot of negative response in the editorial section in the weeks after the event. On July 8, one letter writer said his speech “was a big disappointment, filled with conceit and remarks of a communistic nature,” while another wrote, “Malcolm X is an anarchist who advocates overthrow of the Government.” Two days later, another letter writer demanded Revs. McNair and Jones owed Omaha an apology for inviting el-Shabazz to speak. “It would be just as ridiculous for a couple of white ministers to invite… [a] Nazi white supremacist for a speech.”

In 1992, Bertha Calloway was asked about his visit. She was quoted as saying about Omahans, “They didn’t give a darn about Malcolm… They hated him.”

Impacts

The impacts of el-Shabazz appearing in Omaha in 1964 are immeasurable. In 1992, Ernie Chambers told the Lincoln Journal-Star that he spent “about six hours with him in Omaha one summer day in 1964. Chambers was 26; Malcolm had less than a year to go.” It is no surprise to any student of Chambers, the longest-standing Nebraska State senator in history, that he soaked up every moment he could of el Shabbaz’s visit to the city.

Charles Washington’s advocacy on behalf of the memory of el-Shabazz continued, too, with his own advocacy for a Malcolm X memorial, for the creation of the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, and for other recognition in Omaha. “He was the most dedicated person that has walked the streets of the world…,” Washington said of el Shabazz.

One of the most driven people in Omaha to preserve the legacy of el Shabazz was Rowena Moore. The founder of the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, she worked outside of government confines to create an institution that today continues to shine a bright light on his legacy and is succeeding like never before. After striving for years, today the organization is a permanent memorial and their campus is the only of its kind in Omaha.

Two years after the appearance where el-Shabazz predicted them, rioting broke out in North Omaha. The effects of Omaha’s white leaders ignoring el-Shabazz’s warnings still afflict the city today.

Remembering el-Shabazz

Given that he is a native son and the most important person to ever arise from Omaha’s history, the editorial letter writers’ white supremacist sentiments were maintained by the mainstream in Nebraska for decades after.

Throughout the early 2000s, el-Shabazz was nominated several times for recognition in the Nebraska State Capital. Showing his clearly biased reporting behaviors, one of the main detractors was the former publisher of the Omaha World-Herald. The media bias of 1964 persisted directly into the 2000s within the same institution.

It was only in 2022, almost 60 years after his appearance in Omaha, that the Nebraska Hall of Fame Commission voted 4-to-3 to select him as the 27th member of the Hall of Fame. It was a historic moment, as he became the first Black person to be inducted. In 2024, a formal induction ceremony took place at the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln with a bronze bust created by artist Nathan Murray unveiled and placed in the Capitol’s Hall of Fame.

In the early years after his assassination, Charles Washington was involved in several efforts to commemorate the life of el-Shabazz. In the 1960s and 70s there was a movement to rename a public park in honor of his contributions to humanity, and there have been other proposals, but none have passed. There have also been Malcolm X Day celebrations in Omaha over the years. In 1984, the National Parks Service listed the Malcolm X Birthplace on the National Register of Historic Places and the State of Nebraska erected a marker there. It took a federal recognition before Nebraska recognized el-Shabazz. However, even today there are no official local government memorials to el-Shabazz, even in North Omaha. No schools, streets or parks are named for him, and there is apparently no will for that to change.

The Malcolm X Memorial Foundation is the main organization to carry on the substance and energy of el-Shabazz’s life and legacy in Omaha today, and one of the most important organization’s working in his name worldwide.

Maybe someday Omaha will step up and properly recognize el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

You Might Like…

• A Biography of Malcolm X in Omaha
• A History of Omaha’s Malcolm X Day
• A History of North Omaha’s Kountze Park, Once Called Malcolm X Park

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