STAYING POWER

THE MEMORY OF MALCOLM X remains in the public consciousness after he was immortalized in the biographical movie by Spike Lee. The filmmaker told Newsweek why the life and message of the leader and human rights activist still resonates on the 100th anniversary of his birth

- KEVIN POWELL

BROOKLYN, FOR FILMMAKER SPIKE LEE, IS WHAT Harlem was for Malcolm X: a community pulpit from which to do his life's work and muse on America. For Malcolm, it was routinely a gritty street corner transformed into a pop-up rally, the tools of his trade the fiery speeches, the Nation of Islam newspaper, his unapologetic media interviews and his uncanny ability to mix and remix deft intellectual observations, including the most uncomfortable and harsh, with the raw poetry of the people.

For Lee, it is his provocative storytelling transformed into town hall meetings on this country's social ills, the tools of his trade the hot-button movies, the ever-changing façade of his red-brick multistory headquarters on South Elliott Place in the heart of the Fort Greene neighborhood, espousing one cause or another, one leader or another, his unapologetic media interviews and his uncanny ability to mix and remix deft intellectual observations, including the most uncomfortable and harsh, with the raw poetry of the people.

From the prescient moment when Lee's late mother Jacqueline, a teacher of the arts and Black literature, had him read The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a bony, baby-faced youth, Lee has proclaimed, habitually, that it is the most important piece of writing he has ever come across. President Barack Obama has said similar. But what is it about Malcolm X, a Black man, and his rags-to-revolution story that keeps him ever-present as we mark, in 2025, the 100th anniversary of his birth on May 19, 1925, and more than 30 years since Lee's ambitious screen narrative?

Or rather, why does Malcolm—a widely debated man, one who is loved and hated, revered but also feared, universally studied yet often wildly misunderstood—still linger in the global public imagination?