Malcolm X burns in the imagination of Black artists — serving as a muse for poets, rappers, and filmmakers who channel his demands for justice and liberation. Now a bronze bust of the human rights activist in Nebraska’s Capitol — a space that once shunned its most famous native son — is one of the latest examples of his impact on both art and resistance.
Although he was born in Omaha, the child who would become El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz only lived in the city for about a year. Due to harassment and violence from white supremacists, his family moved to Milwaukee.
“He only left at a young age because his family was chased out of Nebraska because of their world view on the philosophy that Black people should be equal and self-sufficient in this country,” JoAnna LeFlore-Ejike, executive director of the Omaha-based Malcolm X Foundation, said last May at the bust’s unveiling.
“Malcolm X, at least in Nebraska, has been seen as a controversial figure for a lot of reasons, in my opinion, that are completely ridiculous,” Nathran Murray, the artist behind the bust, tells Word In Black.
So Murray used his artistic abilities to tell the truth: “Malcolm X was a human rights leader who was trying to make the world a better place,” he says. “He had a lot of courage and integrity, to the point that he was speaking truth to power.”
It took Murray eight months to create the bust using bronze, water-based clay, rubber casts, sanders, and patina on the recessed areas to give the artwork an aged look.
Throughout his creative process, Murray says he worked closely with the Omaha-based Malcolm X Foundation — and one of Malcolm X’s six daughters, author and community activist Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, who gave him a holistic and informed view.
Shabazz, who saw her father killed when she was just 2, “had a lot of input on how Malcolm X is perceived and how he’s been represented,” Murray says. “One of her comments was that people who have done him in the past have made him look angry with a big vein popping out of his forehead.”
Malcolm X and the Artistic Push for Black Pride and Power
The Nebraska State Historical Society’s announcement that it had chosen Murray to create the bust described the sculptor as a “socially engaged artist and educator” who “explores issues of race, ethnicity, and intersectionality, particularly how these aspects of identity are expressed in people and their stories.”
Through that lens, Murray is a modern-day torch bearer of the Black Arts Movement — a cultural push focused on Black identity and power, which began on Feb. 22, 1965, one day after Malcolm X’s assassination.
LeRoi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka, headed to Harlem, where he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, which hosted a variety of arts workshops. Baraka wrote that he wanted “to create an art, a literature that would fight for black people’s liberation with as much intensity as Malcolm X our ‘Fire Prophet’ and the rest of the enraged masses who took to the streets.”
The movement, which “emphasized self-determination for Black people, a separate cultural existence for Black people on their own terms, and the beauty and goodness of being Black,” according to the Poetry Foundation, took off. By 1969, renowned poet Gwendolyn Brooks joined a group of writers to create “For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and the Death of Malcolm X,” honoring the civil rights leader’s life, assassination, and influence.
Painters of the time also centered Brother Malcolm in their work. In 1971, artist Wadsworth Jarrell, founder of Chicago’s AfriCOBRA movement, depicted Malcolm X in “Black Prince,” based on a 1963 photo. “At AfriCOBRA, we didn’t adhere to non-violence movements,” Jarrell told the Smithsonian Institute. “We adhered to more of the militant movements. Militant figures, like Malcolm X.”
In a 2017 interview with the Tate Modern, painter and Alabama native Jack Whitten explained that in his 1970 abstract painting “Homage to Malcolm,” he wanted to show that “Malcolm had a grasp of the universal aspect of the struggle that he was involved with. He knew that its that convergent into the universal that gave him more power.”
The triangle shape of the painting references Malcolm X’s visit to the pyramids. And, Whitten said, the “painting had to be dark, it had to be moody, it had to be deep, it had to give you that feeling of going back deep down into something. And in doing that, I was able to capture the essence of what Malcolm was about.”
Embraced by the Hip Hop Generation
Some critics argue that the Black Arts Movement died out in the 1970s, but Malcolm X’s influence on art thrived through hip hop.
The name and cover of Boogie Down Production’s 1998 album “By All Means Necessary” are a direct homage to Malcolm X. The group’s MC, KRS-One — which stands for Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone — dubbed himself as hip hop’s Malcolm X. And with lyrics like, “We’ve got to fight the powers that be” and “‘Cause I’m Black and I’m proud,” the 1990 release of “Fight the Power,” by hip-hop legends Public Enemy invoked Malcolm X’s spirit of Black pride, power, and activism.
Two years later, in 1992, Denzel Washington and Spike Lee introduced a new generation of young Black moviegoers to Malcolm X’s story and teachings — and inspired another generation of artists.
“Ryan Coogler told me his father took him to see Malcolm X when he was 6 years old. Sat on his knee. I’m not sure what you could comprehend at 6 years old, but he said that film made an impact,” Lee recently told Newsweek.
Use Your Art to Serve the Community
Since the sculpture’s debut, Murray says reactions to it have been “fantastic.” But the artist, who grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, attributes the negativity about Malcolm X to the spread of law-enforcement-driven misinformation.
“A lot of it had to do with the COINTELPRO propaganda saying that Malcolm X was militant.” He was seen “as a domestic terrorist,” he says. ” That lingered in a lot of people’s minds — a lot of white people’s minds, mostly.”
The result of that propaganda: the nearly 20-year fight to get the civil rights icon inducted into the state’s Hall of Fame. But in 2023, Nebraska finally made Malcolm X its 27th member and the first Black person to be honored, commissioning the bust from Murray.
Since the unveiling, Murray says he “loved hearing people’s stories. I loved hearing how happy and honored people were. I loved hearing people say it was about time — that it should have happened 20 years ago.”
And he hopes future generations of Black artists will continue to be inspired by Malcolm X, know their own power, and continue to use their talents to serve their communities.
“Be authentic to your own truth. Be thoughtful about how it relates to the past, and how it relates to people like Malcolm X who dedicated his life to [resistance],” Murray advises. “What we have the most control over is what we’re doing in our own communities, the people we’re connecting with, the stories that we’re telling.”