May 22, 2025: Malcolm X’s 100th: A Cameo in Selma

[May 19^th marks the 100^th birthday of Malcolm Little, better known as Malcolm X. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of cultural representations of Malcolm, leading up to a special weekend post on what we can learn from Malcolm here in 2025!]

On two ways to analyze Malcolm’s brief appearance in Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014).

Just over ten years ago, I wrote a piece about Selma and its representations of history for my Talking Points Memo column. While I didn’t address the film’s depiction of Malcolm X in that column, I’m certainly continuing to consider those overarching questions in this post, so in lieu of a first paragraph would ask you to check out that prior column and then come on back for those further thoughts.

Welcome back! I know that my use of “distort” in that column’s title and main idea is a controversial one, but I stand by my meaning: that our dominant narratives of the Civil Rights Movement, in cultural works as in every other layer of collective memory, have been those of white perspectives, and thus that we were and remain long overdue for narratives shaped by Black perspectives instead (even if, per the example on which I focused there, Lyndon Johnson comes off looking worse as a result). The film’s depiction of Malcolm X is shaped in a parallel but slightly different way: Selma’s central shaping perspectives are those of Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King; so when Malcolm X enters the story (played by Nigel Thatch, who has reprised the role in the recent TV series Godfather of Harlem), it’s through their eyes that we see him, especially in the scene when Coretta convinces Malcolm to support her husband despite their differences. That makes Malcolm’s role in the story the equivalent of what literary critics would call a foil—a supporting character (or other element of a text) who exists to shed light on the main character through comparisons and contrasts.

That’s unquestionably the case for Malcolm’s role in Selma, but I would also add this: Malcolm and Coretta’s conversation is one of many scenes in the film where multiple African American characters discuss strategy, usually without any white characters present; indeed, I would argue that the majority of the movie’s scenes feature such conversations. (Including the best scene by far and one of my favorites in 21^st century cinema to date, between King and the young John Lewis; it doesn’t seem to be online at the moment, but is well worth seeking out.) This might seem like a given in a film about one of the key collective actions of the Civil Rights Movement, but I’m pointing it out because I believe it was truly groundbreaking in 2014, and is still a rarity (although other recent films such as Rustin [2023] have extended the tradition). Even the subject of yesterday’s post, Spike Lee’s Malcolm X biopic, due to its epic scope and multiple throughlines doesn’t make such conversations a central element. Which means that even though Malcolm’s appearance in Selma is a brief one, it’s also groundbreaking in its cinematic depiction of his strategic thinking within the movement and in conversation with other movement leaders—making this a meaningful cameo to be sure.

Last MalcolmStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Representations or other sides of Malcolm X you’d highlight?