Durham black leaders frustrated with debate over Malcolm X and having to ‘go extra’

An African American member of the Durham City Council is tired of black people having to go the extra step to prove themselves.

“So often black leaders, and black folk in general in this country, have been asked to take that extra step to prove our legitimacy, validity, patriotism, love of country,” council member Mark-Anthony Middleton said Monday night.

He was talking about a proposal to amend a resolution honoring Malcolm X more than half a century after he was assassinated.

Malcolm X was a black nationalist and civil rights leader who was also a leader of the Nation of Islam, which he later broke away from and criticized. His views on race changed from separatism to inclusion before he was killed in 1965.

For the second year, City Council member DeDreana Freeman wanted to honor Malcolm X. He had been recognized several years ago by a previous council, also.

Her first attempt last year failed in the wake of another controversy, the council’s statement opposing militarized policing that mentioned Israel.

Then this spring, Freeman brought a new draft resolution to the council, which then hashed out how to recognize Malcolm X’s life including his time in the Nation of Islam without promoting what many now consider a hate group.

The council finally passed the resolution honoring Malcolm X’s life around midnight Monday after two failed amendments and heartfelt testimony.

Debate frustrates

The Malcolm X resolution was passed at the same meeting that the city’s latest crime report, with a rise in homicides, was presented.

“It frustrates me to even have to have this debate,” Freeman said.

“It is far more important for us to talk and to address how there are so many black men sitting in jail, and night after night as I receive these messages there are black men dead in the street,” she said.

Middleton didn’t want to add anything to the statement, which council members already had changed to delete some references to Malcolm X’s time in the Nation of Islam.

Adding a disclaimer, he said: “To me as a black man, as a black leader in this city, hearkens back to those days when we have to always qualify ourselves as a leader, as a citizen. We’re always suspect. There’s always that lingering question, are you really such-and-such, so you gotta go extra.”

It’s exhausting, he said.

New resolution planned

However, Middleton, council member Vernetta Alston and others agreed with Mayor Steve Schewel’s suggestion Monday night to write a new, “freestanding” resolution or statement condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Middleton and council member Charlie Reece will draft the statement, which they will bring to the rest of the council on June 6.

Middleton said it deserves to be a full, separate statement condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, unrelated to the Malcolm X resolution.

“We have to honor our Jewish brothers and sisters, and we have to honor who we are as well, and they’re not mutually exclusive,” Middleton said.

Four of the seven Durham City Council members are African American: Middleton, Alston, Freeman and Mayor Pro Tem Jillian Johnson.

2018 policing statement

The decision to draft a new statement follows a year of fallout after the council’s April 2018 statement against militarized policing that mentioned Israel.

The statement triggered three lawsuits, several meetings with Jewish leaders and a Human Relations Commission ruling. Area rabbis repeatedly asked the council to remove the reference to Israel, which was part of a memo by Durham Police Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis stating there are no current or planned police training exchanges with Israel.

While Schewel and Middleton met with Jewish leaders and others concerned about the statement, the mayor said last year he did not plan to revisit the issue. But it kept coming up, including speakers shouting at the council during the citizen comments time at work sessions.

Middleton said Monday that he would have written the policing statement differently. Schewel wrote it, and the rest of the council endorsed it.

Reece and Middleton will write the new statement together, with input from the community, they said.

It won’t be the only statement condemning anti-Semitism by the council in the past year. In October, Schewel issued a statement after the Tree of Life synagogue mass murder. Schewel said Monday that anti-Semitism is definitely on the rise in the U.S.

This story was originally published May 7, 2019 at 4:13 PM.