Malcolm X at 100: Protecting the Genius We Too Often Abandon

This week, May 19, 2025, marked what would have been the 100th birthday of Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. 

We rightly celebrate his power and clarity, marking him a revolutionary icon. Yet, his legacy is too often reduced to a before-and-after narrative of transformation. There was Malcolm before prison and Malcolm after prison.  

But the truth of Malcolm’s brilliance and leadership runs deeper than a prison conversion. His story is so much more than a life on the “wrong track” that went right. We are so quick to focus on Malcolm's transformation that we lose sight of the story beneath the surface. 

His parents, who were educators and activists, grounded him in Black pride through the teachings of Marcus Garvey. His intellectual gifts were there from the start. Before the trauma, before the headlines, before the speeches, Malcolm was elected president of his seventh—and eighth-grade classes. 

But Malcolm was also a prodigy placed in harm’s way. The system didn’t protect his brilliance. Instead, it dismantled his family. Malcolm’s father was murdered for his activism, and his reeling mother was institutionalized. His siblings were scattered.

Malcolm’s wasn’t just a story of a boy turned criminal; it was a story of a boy wounded by a system designed to crush his spirit before he could rise. And yet, he rose to greatness still. 

In marking his 100th birthday, I’m struck by how easily we could have lost Malcolm X before the world ever knew him. The world was just one different decision or alternative event away from being denied the benefit of his life’s work, prematurely truncated as it was. 

But what if we never knew him, his genius, and his impact at all?

What if he had been killed by a cop, or by another gangster, or during a burglary gone wrong? 

What if the rage and despair he carried had consumed him before his purpose could carry him to his place in history? 

The fact is, that story plays out every single day. A young Black man or woman with promise, with potential, with dreams, cut down by bullets, buried by broken schools, swallowed by the criminal justice system. 

It happens with such chilling regularity that there is collective immunity, and harm is meted out with impunity. But the profound and devastating loss of that genius, that potential for progress, to our communities, our people, and the whole world is real.  

The violence that robs young people of their futures and all of us of their potential impact doesn’t always look like blood on the sidewalk. 

Sometimes it looks like underfunded schools—poor schools, and poor instruction. 

Sometimes it looks like children whose lives are forced into further disarray because their parents are incarcerated, simply because they can’t pay bail while they await trial. Or, because families are broken up, children are institutionalized and/or placed in foster care systems.

Sometimes it looks like a court declaring school funding in Pennsylvania unconstitutional, and policymakers responding by making only 6% of the funding equitable, leaving 94% of students in the same unjust conditions.

That’s violence, too—violence that can be just as deadly over time.

This leaves us with a pertinent and persistent question: How do we protect the genius of those who are hurt, angry, and abandoned? How do we meet their trauma with compassion, their marginalization with empathy, and their brilliance with opportunity? How do we help adults face the moment and have the mindset that no child should be cast away and given up on? 

Malcolm understood that education was not neutral; it was either liberation or oppression.  

At the founding of the Organization of African American Unity (OAAU), he challenged us to recognize education as a weapon of freedom. But he didn’t mean just more educators; he meant more prepared, invested, and justice-minded educators—teachers who understand that they, ideally alongside the communities they profess to serve, are often a critical line of defense between a young person and despair. Unfortunately, too many are falling down on the job simply because of their mindsets.

As a student, I attended Nidhamu Sasa, a school that understood its role in the community. It was more than a place of learning; it was a place of healing and flourishing. It was truly what Malcolm envisioned schools to be for Black students. 

As an educator, I worked with and learned from servant leaders, not saviors parachuting in to “fix” children. As both a student and later as a nascent teacher, I was taught that educators are to serve as anchors who affirm, support, and sustain students and partner with communities—the same communities that weathered generations of assault.

Black children don’t need superhuman heroes. They need a social system that cherishes their humanity and exists to support and protect them. They need schools designed to recognize their humanity and teachers who see their potential and acknowledge the injury they experience. They also need policies and investments that treat their futures like they matter.

To fully honor Malcolm X, we must honor not only the man he became, but the boy he was. 

We do that by creating a system of care that recognizes young people's full humanity, the deep connections between trauma, talent, and triumph, and the need for enduring investment in communities long before a crisis emerges.   

That means funding schools like all of our futures depend on it. It means building a foster system that heals, not harms. Critically, it means listening to the youth who are still crying out to be seen.

On this centennial of Malcolm’s birth, we should celebrate the great things he did as a man, but also work to protect the next Malcolm, whose name we don’t even know. 

Because we cannot afford to keep losing them.