1. J. Edgar: From Garvey to Gaye

    By: Christopher Moore, Curator and Special Projects Coordinator, Schomburg Center 

    J. Edgar, directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opens nationwide on November 9, 2011.  How will director Eastwood represent Hoover’s obsession with African-American leaders: from Garvey to Gaye?

    From Marcus Garvey to Marvin Gaye, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s investigations of African-American culture, leadership and politics were relentless, profound, and in some cases potentially deadly. As a young U.S. Justice Department agent in 1919, Hoover took early and successful aim at Marcus Garvey’s ambitions. Hoover won Garvey’s conviction, deportation, and for himself in 1924, the top job in the new Bureau of Investigation, later named the FBI.

    Hoover targets that followed included an astonishing list of African Americans, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Joe Louis, Marian Anderson, Josephine Baker, Richard Wright, Elijah Muhammad, Canada Lee, Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald, Dorothy Dandridge, Malcolm X, Lorraine Hansberry, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, James Brown, Fred Hampton, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown and Marvin Gaye.            

    Hoover was the director of the FBI until his death in 1972.

  2. “Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude it changes your behavior pattern, and then you go into some action.”—Malcolm X. Teaching Malcolm X: An Educator’s Workshop, Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at the Schomburg Center. For more information, click here. Photo Credit: Malcolm X on university tour. Photographer: Robert L. Haggins. Malcolm X Collection, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. 

    “Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude it changes your behavior pattern, and then you go into some action.”—Malcolm X.

    Teaching Malcolm X: An Educator’s Workshop, Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at the Schomburg Center. For more information, click here.

    Photo Credit: Malcolm X on university tour. Photographer: Robert L. Haggins. Malcolm X Collection, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. 

  3. Malcolm X at prayer

    During this celebration of Ramadan, the Center would like to highlight one of its publications, Standing in the Need of Prayer: A Celebration of Black Prayer. The following prayer, accompanied by a photograph of Malcolm X, is on page 25:

    In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

    Praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds,

    The Beneficent, the Merciful,

    Master of the day of Requital.

    Thee do we serve and Thee so we beseech for help.

    Guide us on the right path, the path of those upon whom

    Thou hast bestowed favours,

    Not those upon whom wrath is brought down,

    Nor those who go astray.

    - Al-Fatihah (The Opening)

    Chapter 1:1-7 of The Qur’ân

  4. Exhibitions Through January 7, 2012

    Malcolm X: A Search for Truth

    and 

    Romare Bearden: A Centennial Tribute



  5. The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera

    (Source: nypl.org)

  6. Visit the Digital Schomburg online version of the 2005 exhibition Malcolm X: A Search for Truth. (via NYPL, Malcolm X: A Search for Truth)

    Visit the Digital Schomburg online version of the 2005 exhibition Malcolm X: A Search for Truth.

    (via NYPL, Malcolm X: A Search for Truth)