One of Malcolm X's final gospels

Presidents, prime ministers and stars of screen have addressed the Oxford Union, but none electrified the famous debating chamber quite like the man who spoke there 50 years ago, Malcolm X.

Already a global icon of race militancy, widely viewed as the ultimate extremist and prophet of hate, Malcolm X appeared an unlikely figure to speak at the Union’s end of term ‘Queen and Country’ debate.

But the man dubbed “the angriest black man in America” showed himself to be a brilliant speaker, who quoted from Hamlet as he articulated the struggles unfolding for both Africans and African Americans, to a predominantly white audience in almost the ultimate bastion of privilege.

Just two months after standing up in the Oxford Union Malcolm X would be dead, gunned down in his home city of New York by black Muslim assassins.

“The Oxford Union debate,” observes the Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Junior, “was one of the last gospels Malcolm X was able to preach to the world”.

This year America commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ “British Invasion” which saw the band’s famous appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. For Prof Gates, Malcolm X’s legendary performance in Oxford was a reverse transatlantic journey that should be celebrated.

“On the night of December 3, 1964, Malcolm X arrived to debate the topic of ‘extremism in the defence of liberty’, in a world swirling with social struggle in the US, a nascent war in Vietnam, and the awkward birth independence in post-colonial Africa.”

But it was also a time of tension, unrest and changing attitudes in Oxford too. For Malcolm X arrived to speak at the very time when 2,000 students were demanding an end to the exclusion of black students from university housing.

On the eve of Malcolm X’s visit, a survey on Oxford University lodgings suggested 59.2 per cent of landladies interviewed would refuse an application by a “coloured” student.

The anniversary of the visit was remembered yesterday with a forum hosted by Pembroke College on race relations in Oxford in the 1960s until the present day, and reflections on Malcolm X.

Last night the Oxford Union once again debated ‘This house believes extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice’, this time featuring Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty.

And the anniversary is being marked by a book written by Stephen Tuck, professor of modern history at Oxford University and director of the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.

The book tells in detail how the Muslim black revolutionary and the historic centre of Western learning came together half a century ago and the effect the visit had on Malcolm X. But it also sheds new light on Oxford in the 1960s and the many years of anti-racism protests in the city.

Rather than being a chance coming together, Prof Tuck tells us: “By 1964 black students at Oxford needed Malcolm X to come and he felt it was urgent to go. Why that was so reveals much about Malcolm X’s life and thought and the university’s engagement with race and rights.”

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, his mother was a fair-skinned, well-educated Grenadian, while his father was a carpenter and occasional preacher. The young, academically-gifted Malcolm was advised to follow his father into carpentry, with his teacher making clear that his dream of becoming a lawyer was “no realistic goal for a nigger”.

In search of a better life Malcolm moved to Boston, where he ended up being jailed for eight to 10 years after being part of a team on a stealing spree in a smart white area. His time in prison saw him finding the religion of Islam and his involvement with the Nation of Islam, introducing him to the issue of black nationalism.

Prison would provide good preparation for the Oxford Union, with the Norfolk County inmates engaged in weekly debates.

On being released from prison, he became the Nation of Islam’s most prominent spokesman, travelling extensively around the United States. By 1953 the FBI had opened its file on Malcolm X, which grew in size as he embarked on travels to the Middle East, Africa and finally Europe.

His separatist ideology meant he dismissed the goals of integration being put forward by the civil rights movement, insisting “the white man is not going to share his wealth with his ex-slaves”, while condemning the movement’s non-violence philosophy as “soft”.

Malcolm X strides on to the stage in the debating chamber

For Prof Tuck the debate at Oxford marked his ongoing transformation “from a small-time hustler to the world’s most famous black nationalist and from a dogmatic black supremacist to a proponent of human rights”.

The invitation to speak in Oxford came from the radical Jamaican student, Eric Abrahams, who had been elected as President of the Union and viewed Malcolm X as a hero. Abrahams would later become the first black reporter with the BBC. In his reply to the Union, Malcolm X said he accepted the invitation”without hesitation” because Oxford students were “on fire” against racial discrimination.

In a high-profile campaign, students had demanded that all landladies who wished to remain on the Oxford’s delegacy list be required to sign a pledge to accept any student, regardless of colour.

“The very week of the debate, Oxford’s Delegacy of Lodgings met in something of a panic,” writes Prof Tuck. “Although they opposed discrimination, they also feared losing landladies when student rooms in the city were at a premium.”

Initially, Malcolm X, however, wondered whether he had made a mistake. “I remember clearly that the minute I stepped off the train, I felt I’d suddenly backpedalled into Mayflower time,” he told a friend.

Then when he was taken to the Randolph Hotel, the receptionist insisted that he sign his surname in full in the guestbook.

The historic appearance at the Oxford Union, where Malcolm X’s main opponent was the Conservative MP Humphrey Berkeley, was thankfully filmed and we can see how close the revolutionary came to losing his temper after Berkeley mocked his “pseudonym” surname.

His real name, Malcolm X replied, had been taken by Berkeley’s forefathers, who had raped and pillaged their way through Africa.

“I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name,” he said.

The social, political and economic system of his own country was based upon “castration of the black man”, he thundered, insisting on the right of a black man to defend himself, even if it meant being labelled an extremist.

The only difference between America and South Africa, he told the Union was that “South Africa preaches separation and practises separation” while America “preached integration and practices segregation”.

“I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil,” said Malcolm X. He lost the vote by 228 to 137 but won the admiration of many who heard the speech, rated by his supporters as one of the most stirring he had ever delivered.

The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union: A Transatlantic Story of Antiracist Protests, University of California Press, £14.95