About Us
Eve Arnold:
When I Met Malcolm X
"People Yelled. 'Kill the White Bitch' and Spit on me."
"People Yelled. 'Kill the White Bitch' and Spit on me."
Assigned by LIFE magazine in 1960, the Magnum photographer spent over two years documenting Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. She traveled with them from New York to Chicago and Washington D.C. to capture their meetings, rallies, and daily lives. Arnold’s work from her year spent with the Nation of Islam comprises a powerful mosaic illustrating the strength and energy of a new force in America — a force operating in tandem with the era’s young, increasingly mainstream Civil Rights movement, but with utterly divergent aims and tactics. At the very center of her portrait of the Black Muslim movement was Malcolm X, who Arnold described as kind, gracious and incredibly helpful to her in her work. The unspoken teamwork, in a sense, that Arnold describes and celebrates went beyond simple access. Instead, she remembers Malcolm X finding her subjects to photograph, arranging shots and ensuring that she had interviews for the text.
When Arnold submitted her photographs to LIFE, an editor initially rejected them on the grounds that the Nation of Islam were not well known. When the editor consented to seeing the pictures in layout, the closing photograph of women at prayer was placed above an Oreo cookie advertisement, and the magazine ultimately pulled the material. The next year, Esquire published the images; Arnold observed that the Esquire piece was something of a launch pad to her later, landmark work. In summing up the experience of spending so much time in such close contact with Malcolm X at the height of his riveting career, Arnold wrote that she was “privileged to work with one of the most dynamic leaders of the century.”
He was a really clever showman and apparently knowledgeable about how he could use pictures and the press to tell his story.
Eve Arnold
He was a really clever showman and apparently knowledgeable about how he could use pictures and the press to tell his story.
Eve Arnold
“...I photographed him for the first time in 1961 at a Black Muslim rally in Washington. Over the following eight months, Malcolm periodically allowed me into his entourage. We developed a strong friendship. Some of my friends guessed that I was physically attracted to the leader; I told them that it was electrifying to be near him. I followed him to meetings and rallies across the country. People yelled, “Kill the white bitch!” and spit on me. When I arrived home and took off my wool sweaters, I would find the back polka-dotted with cigarette burns. Malcolm suggested that I visit him in Chicago, where the Nation of Islam had organized an economic boycott, setting up their own shops, schools, factories and restaurants. At the hotel, he would phone me every morning with a schedule and a meeting point from which I would be escorted and unharmed throughout the community. Every morning I would receive a second phone call from someone with a Southern accent who said, “Get the hell out of town before it’s too late.”
“I had one more provocative assignment to carry out for LIFE magazine--a political piece on Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. After months spent researching and vainly trying to reach Malcolm X, I finally got a commission for the story from LIFE and I found an intermediary, an African-American journalist named Louis Lomax. I paid him a thousand dollars (about seven thousand dollars today) for the promise of an introduction to Malcolm X. Lomax was two hours late for our meeting at a New York restaurant. When he finally showed up, he said, “You don’t want to do a story, you just want to sleep with a Black man, don’t you?’ I gave him a piece of my mind and headed for the door. Lomax stopped me and apologized saying he was just testing me. Then, he agreed to put me in touch with Malcolm X. I did not anticipate how attuned Malcolm would be to every nuance of my work. He obviously had an idea of how he wanted the public to see him and maneuvered me into showing him the way.”