May 19th, 2025 marks the 100th birthday of Malcolm X, an organic intellectual whose life’s work has impacted countless communities across time and space. Unapologetically Black and Muslim, Malcolm X founded two organizations in the wake of his departure from the Nation of Islam in 1964: the first is the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which was envisioned as a diasporic arm of the Organization of African Unity and aimed to mobilize Black people in the global struggle against white supremacy. The second organization was the Muslim Mosque Inc., which was an institutional vehicle for building pan-Islamic solidarity across national and ethno-racial lines. 

In this regard, Malcolm’s organizing and political thought reflects the revolutionary potentialities located in the nexus between Islam and the Black radical tradition. Cedric Robinson defines the Black radical tradition as “the continuing development of a collective consciousness informed by the historical struggles for liberation and motivated by the shared sense of obligation to preserve the collective being, the ontological totality.” As a liberatory project rooted in African peoples’ experience of slavery, colonization, and racial capitalism, Muslims have played a central role in the development of the Black radical tradition.