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Alkalimat Leads Effort to Salvage Malcolm X Journals |
| By
Rebecca K. Shell |
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Mar 8, 2002 |
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The recent discovery and pending auction of four journals, personal letters and photographs of Malcolm X has sent civil rights historians and Malcolm X scholars into a fury.
According to Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, director of the University’s Africana studies department, the value of these documents cannot be measured. “It is shocking to think that these documents could be broken up and sold like any other product,” says Alkalimat. “A dollar number cannot be set to the historical information and knowledge that the journals contain.”
Alkalimat is leading the campaign “To Stop the Selling of Malcolm X.” Along with scholars and historians all over the world, he hopes to raise enough money to purchase the artifacts before they are auctioned on March 20 by Butterfields’ auction house in San Francisco. “We want to raise enough money so that we can make an offer on the documents before the auction even takes place,” explains Alkalimat. “Along with the legitimacy with saying that it’s a movement that is supported by scholars, we hope the auction house will accept our bid.”
After learning that the collection was up for auction in late February after his sister stumbled across the items on the popular online auction house eBay, Alkalimat began contacting other historians across the country to ask for help to raise the funds.
He also set up information about the campaign on his already popular Web site devoted to Malcolm X. The site encourages visitors to help fight the impending sale. According to Alkalimat, the Web site, www.brothermalcolm.net, receives about 3,000 hits a day from 85 countries and it is the number one visited Malcolm X site on the search engine Google.
“It will be very interesting to see what happens in the next couple of weeks before the auction,” says Alkalimat. “By being able to study the collection, we can learn more about Malcolm X during the final years of his life.”
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