- I sat down with Micah and Wayne State University Professor Dr. Tareq Ramadan, who is also the project manager for the Malcolm X house restoration to talk more about the home's history, its future, and Malcolm X's life in the Detroit area.

Here's that conversation.

Tareq and Micah, welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you for having us.

- So Tareq, I wanna start with you.

I think most people are vaguely familiar with the idea that Malcolm X spent some time here in Detroit and in the Detroit metro area.

But I think most people don't know very much about what that time was like, what he did when he was here.

So let's start with the idea of this house in Inkster.

Tell me why this is an important part of understanding who Malcolm was and understanding the work that he did over his lifetime.

- Well, thank you for having me, Stephen.

I appreciate it.

And it's an honor to be here with you today.

So Malcolm's residence in Inkster in 1952 and 1953 represent really one of the most understudied parts of his life.

And it's incredibly significant.

It's a pivotal sort of moment in his life although it was a very sort of short run.

It's in Inkster that Malcolm essentially acquires, formally, the X to his name.

It is also where Malcolm joins the Nation of Islam, officially, when he's residing with his brother Wilfred Little, who owned the house in Inkster at 4336 Williams Street.

And it's also where Malcolm begins his professional career with the Nation of Islam as an Assistant Minister.

So those are, obviously, incredibly important sort of milestones in his own personal and professional life.

And I think that's why the house in Inkster is, I think, of such profound significance when trying to examine, you know, Malcolm's life in its totality.

- Yeah.

And so what kinds of things did he do while he was here in Detroit?

The kinds of outreach and the kinds of people he might have touched when he was here that, again, help us understand his work?

- Well, during the early part, after his arrival, Malcolm was actually quite, quite ill. And it was actually a quite turbulent time in his life.

You know, trying to gain his footing.

He had just been released from prison after several years in Massachusetts.

And so he was really trying to establish himself, trying to essentially, you know, acquire some sort of footing, some stability.

And so Wilfred invites him to his house to live with him and his family.

And that's sort of part of the agreement between him and the parole officers in Massachusetts.

And so they work out this sort of deal, and he ends up living with his brother.

And his brother takes him in and cares for him.

And Wilfred is really Malcolm's best friend and helps facilitate his role within the Nation of Islam.

He sets up a meeting between him and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

And from that point forward, Malcolm begins to sort of make way into the Nation.

He begins to help garner recruits at the Detroit Temple Number 1.

But Malcolm's sort of life doesn't just, his life in Detroit and in Inkster doesn't really end there.

Malcolm continues to return to the city.

He speaks at several instances at the Detroit Temple Number 1.

He also comes back and gives speeches and talks and public presentations.

He did so, for example, at the Ford Auditorium, which is no longer standing.

He also does so at the King Solomon Baptist Church at Wayne State University.

So Malcolm continues to return to Detroit, continues to engage in the community, and continues to raise the profile of the Nation of Islam.

And even after he leaves the Nation, he continues to come here in order to advocate both Black empowerment, but also engaging with his audience regarding his sort of new political vision for African Americans, alongside trying to establish a broad sort of global network that seeks justice from oppression.

- Yeah, yeah.

So Micah, you have gone through this house in Inkster and seen what is coming together in the shape of this museum.

Tell us about that experience.

- So yeah, I got to see the house a couple of weeks ago.

And it's just amazing what the contracting team has done compared to what the house looked like five, six years ago.

It was completely gutted, and the siding was off on the house.

And now, people have signed if they come and visit.

And so I know that will be eventually painted over, but it's just nice that they have that and it will be with the house forever.

- Yeah, yeah.

So Tareq, tell us about finding the house, deciding to do what you have done with it and that whole process.

I mean, this is a difficult thing to do with anything.

But here, the care and the attention that I think you probably had to give to make it, you know, authentic and respectful of his legacy is probably much more than people would think.

- You're absolutely right.

It really required a lot of personal investments and time and effort and energies.

So I'm thankful to be working with an incredible team at Project We Hope Dream & Believe, which is an Inkster-based nonprofit organization which owns the house and has been maintaining the house, preserving the house.

And so over the past several years, Mr. Aaron Sims, Mr. Dawon Lynn and others in our organization have been really critical to really trying to preserve that home.

And so I had reached out sometime in 2020 and officially joined the organization.

I had called Aaron, who's now a very, you know, close friend and colleague of mine and told him, "Look, I'm very interested in this house.

"Malcolm has been my intellectual hero since childhood."

I didn't know Malcolm lived just five miles away from me.

I had driven past that house several times, or at least past that street several times, you know, as a teenager and, you know, growing up.

And so when I found out in 2018, I reached out initially and wasn't a lot of traction at the beginning.

I think I was a little bit distracted.

But 2020, I reached out.

We got together, we spoke.

And, you know, I said, "What can I do to help this project?"

And we discussed that.

And then I reached out to my colleague, Dr. Krysta Ryzewski, at Wayne State University.

She put me in touch with the State Historic Preservation Office in Lansing.

And from there, I got in touch with, you know, more people at the office.

And they really helped to facilitate the initial phase of trying to get recognition for the house and trying to get a grant for the house.

And so I was directed towards a grant, the African American Civil Rights Grant through the National Park Service.

Wrote the grants, applied for it, and we ended up receiving it several months later for $380,850.

And so that was the grant that ultimately led to the renovation and rehab project, which is led by Mr. Arthur Edge, who is overseeing the entire renovation of the home.

- Yeah, yeah, - Yeah.

- Micah, tell us how it felt, I guess, to be in the house.

I mean, being inside history that way I think makes impressions on all of us.

- So it was kind of a surreal moment.

I mean, I got to see the bedroom that Malcolm and his brother once shared, and going down to the living room where Malcolm was probably reading the Quran and spending time with his family.

I live right next door in Dearborn, and I never knew that Malcolm lived in Inkster until a few months ago.

So it was just, it was just great to witness a piece of history.

And I was glad I was able to tell the story.

- Yeah, yeah.

Tareq, talk about the hopes for this museum and who you hope to reach.

Again, I think lots of people don't know this part of his legacy.

Lots of people in this country still don't know much about Malcolm X, right?

They know that name, but they either have little information or, in some cases, bad information about him.

What do you hope to accomplish with this museum in this house where he lived?

- Well, we hope to tell Malcolm's story.

We hope to provide insight into who Malcolm was as a person, as an activist, as a human rights defender, as a civil rights leader.

We hope to, you know, bring aspects of Malcolm's life that are maybe not as well known, to really emphasize the centrality of Inkster and Detroit in Malcolm's life.

And I think that the museum will help exemplify (recording distorted) the archeological excavations led by Wayne State University's Department of Anthropology, Krysta Ryzewski, my colleague, in setting a sort of social history of the home which includes Malcolm and his family.

And also, we are acquiring, you know, pieces, relevant historical pieces, whether they be photos or newspaper archives or clippings and things like that.

And really want to immerse the audience, the visitors who come to the museum who wanna learn about Malcolm.

We're also going to help illustrate African American history in Inkster as well.

Because, you know, Malcolm arrives here in sort of mid-century Inkster.

It's still a village at the time.

It's a growing place.

Gradually, there's a growing African American community, but the village is still plagued, you know, with certain socioeconomic issues that have a broad sort of impact and actually have an effect on where people can live in the city.

And so, we hope to tell that story.

It's really a multifaceted story that centers Malcolm, but also is absolutely critical to understanding, I think, you know, broader Inkster history as well.

- Mm-hmm.

How does this connect to the broader story of Malcolm X and who he becomes over time?

How do you sort of draw that line from this house and this place to all the other things that he did?

- Well, I think that, you know, living here in Inkster and joining the Nation of Islam and ultimately sort of beginning his professional career here in Inkster and Detroit, I think it provides us with new insights that I think are really pertinent to the story of Malcolm X.

You know, Malcolm claims Detroit as his own in one of the last speeches he gives a week before he's assassinated.

And he says, "I'm from Detroit.

"I used to live out here in Inkster."

And so he describes sort of the broader social political sort of landscapes that existed in the 1950s and 1960s here.

And so he's very cognizant and aware of the local politics as well.

He talks about Dearborn, for example, and, you know, Dearborn's sort of longstanding, you know, history under Mayor Hubbard and his views on race.

And he acknowledges those and he talks about them in one of his last speeches.

So, you know, I think that this is a bridge, right?

Him living in Inkster, it's hard to understand Malcolm X, or el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, without understanding the sort of formative period in his life, at least in the professional sense, without understanding what happened in Inkster and Detroit in the early 1950s.

And I think without that, we don't have a full sort of articulation of who Malcolm is and where Malcolm acquired some of his, you know, some of his motivations.

- Sure.

- So I think that that's an important part of his story to be told.

- Yeah.

And you are writing a book manuscript about this, Tareq.

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, so I'm currently writing a book that explores the relationship that Malcolm had to Detroit in particular.

It'll reconstruct his life and aspects of his life while in Inkster.

But it really sort of looks at issues like identity and belonging and how Detroit fits into that picture.

Now Malcolm himself was a South Brooklyn Detroiter.

In his book he says so, but also in a speech that he gives at Ford Auditorium one week before he's killed when he says, "You know, I'm from Detroit."

And so he claims the city as his own.

And so most of his family lives here, you know, in and around Detroit.

And he had longstanding ties to Detroit that goes back to, you know, at least since the 1940s and that we have documentary evidence for.

And so Detroit is a central sort of socio-geographic feature in Malcolm's life.

And so what I hope to do with this book manuscript is to really explore his relationship to the city.

- Yeah, yeah.

You also had an interesting experience with some of your students there at Wayne State in the process of trying to get this designated an historic landmark.

Talk about the archeological excavation that you took part in.

- Yeah, so in 2022, we launched a sort of joint project between Project We Hope Dream & Believe and Wayne State University's Department of Anthropology.

And we got together and we engaged in a series of archeological excavations at the house.

This was led by Dr. Krista Ryzewski, who's a historical archeologist and a colleague of mine, and also the Department Chair.

And with volunteers and with students and faculty, we worked together to excavate the home, the property around the home.

We removed items from within the home, underneath the home, and the area immediately outside the home.

And we have about 1,000 or so artifacts that we are hoping to analyze, photo documents.

And we envision creating an exhibit that highlights some of the important findings, some of which date from the time that Malcolm was likely at the home.

- Yeah.

What are some of the things that turned up?

- So one of the most fascinating items, I believe, is a coin from 1952.

It's a penny.

And it was found a few centimeters below the surface area under the porch.

And so it dates from the year that Malcolm arrived at the house, 1952.

And to me, that's one of the most, I think, crucial sort of findings that link at least, you know, that era and, sort of indirectly, Malcolm, you know, to the home.

Now, of course, we have no idea if Malcolm dropped that penny when he was sitting on the porch.

(Stephen laughing) But neighbors did tell us that he liked to sit, you know, on the porch and sometimes read.

And so did it fall out of his pocket one day?

You know, we don't know for sure.

But there's also a late 1950s, early 1960s metal stroller that we also believe belonged to the Little family.

And so, yeah, we have to sort through these artifacts, but we hope that it helps provide, you know, a fuller sort of picture of what life was like at the home in the '50s and 1960s.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, Tareq Ramadan and Micah Walker, it was great to have both of you here to talk about this wonderful restoration and the coming museum in Inkster.

Thanks so much for being with us on "American Black Journal."

- Thank you, it was a pleasure.

- That'll do it for this week's show produced in partnership with BridgeDetroit.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

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