Book Review: Nobody Can Give You Freedom: The Political Life of Malcolm X

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

In his new book, “Nobody Can Give You Freedom,” Kehinde Andrews aims to clear up the notion that Malcolm X was just another “angry” Black man.

Instead, Malcolm X firmly believed that systemic racism deliberately harms millions of Blacks every single year. The conviction of Malcolm’s killers is a well-documented case in point. Many may have forgotten how Malcolm X lived with systemic racism before he died at age 39. He was shot 21 times on Feb. 21, 1965 by a man with a sawed-off shotgun and two other gunmen.

Who needs to shoot a man that many times in front of his pregnant wife and three children while he was delivering a civil rights speech in New York’s Audubon Ballroom? Malcolm was pronounced dead at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center at 3:30 p.m.  Malcolm was shot and killed while he was addressing the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which he’d founded the previous year after leaving the Nation of Islam and converting to Sunni Islam.

However, Andrews does not dwell on these details about systemic racism in his new book.

The point is Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam were hastily convicted of killing Malcolm X in 1965. Their trials began about a year after Malcolm’s murder, on Jan. 20, 1966, in New York County Supreme Court. The alleged killers served more than 20 years of a life sentence but were later exonerated in 2021 after a lengthy investigation by the Innocence Project revealed they were wrongfully convicted.

Systemic racism prevented investigators from discovering that the two men were actually at home with their families at the time of the shooting? Aziz was actually recovering from a police beating and had visited the hospital earlier that day. Aziz, who was released from prison in 1985, and Islam, who was paroled in 1987 and died in 2009, each served more than 20 years of a life sentence. Both endured long periods of solitary confinement in notorious New York prisons, including Attica.

“It seemed convenient to pin the murder charge on [Aziz and Islam],” Liz Mazucci, former chief researcher for the Malcolm X Project, told Time’s Josiah Bates in 2020. “Even though they didn’t quite fit the story shared with [police] through eyewitness reports and FBI informants.”

But both of these convicted killers steadfastly professed their innocence. Aziz, for example, said after he was exonerated on Nov. 18, 2021, “I do not need this court, these prosecutors or a piece of paper to tell me I am innocent,” Aziz said in a statement released by his lawyers and quoted by NBC News. “ … I am an 83-year-old who was victimized by the criminal justice system.”

And this is where Andrews’ new book comes in.

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Aiming to clear up numerous misconceptions and myths about the damage that systemic racism carelessly launches, the author of the new book about Malcolm is a European scholar who works at Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom. He serves as the director of the Centre for Critical Social Research. He is the founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity, and co-chair of the UK Black Studies Association.

“Nobody Can Give You Freedom,” comes from a famous Malcolm X quote. Andrews’ new book was released May 1 in the United Kingdom, and on Sept. 9 in the United States.

“Once you cut through the Malcolm myths you will find a legacy that either terrifies or inspires you,” Andrews wrote in a recent social media post.

In his new book, Andrews retraces the steps that Malcolm X took through Birmingham, just 9 days before he was killed. The author of the new book also speaks to many individuals who witnessed Malcolm’s impact on Black Power in Britain.

Aiming to move on past the myths and the hype, Andrews said, “The myths are the most insidious way to detract from and hide” the global unity message that Malcolm X actually developed and promoted.

“When people are writing about Malcolm, they don’t necessarily ignore his work, they just don’t center it,” Andrews told Ken Makin in a recent interview in The Christian Science Monitor. “Malcolm isn’t thought of as an intellectual, so I wanted to take his work and say, this is really the best analysis of racism you’ll find anywhere.”

Aiming to paint a clear portrait of Malcolm X, Andrews recently told The Christian Science Monitor, “People say they want to understand racism, we want to understand what to do. Malcolm helps you understand it, and it’s not comfortable. I always say, if you’re having a conversation about race, and it’s comfortable, it’s just a bad conversation.”

“It should be uncomfortable, because it’s an uncomfortable topic. It’s the reality we still have to live with … Hopefully the book can help open people’s eyes.”

In addition to reading Andrews’ new book on Malcolm, you may also scroll through some his old speeches and debates in, “Malcom X: Collected Speeches, Debates and Interviews,” which was edited by Sandeep S. Atwal. The book was published in 2014. It is a collection of 71 speeches, debates, and interviews.

Later, in a 1960 debate with Civil Rights Advocate Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X said, “The overall problem of the so-called Negro in America is not a political problem as such, it is an economic problem, a social problem, a mental problem, and a spiritual problem. Only God can solve the whole problem.”

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