Abbey Lincoln played the female lead in Malcolm X’s favorite film Nothing But a Man (1964). She and Malcolm were both raised in Michigan, though under very different circumstances, and they both had periods of living off the land. As with Abbey’s father in the film, Malcolm’s dad was a preacher. He was a Garveryite who instead of passing around a hat for alms passed around a hat full of photos of Garvey regalia during his Sunday sermons. It’s not surprising Malcolm’s father was killed by the local Klu Klux Klan, or that the calamity sent their large family spiraling. The mother became a Seventh Day Adventist and didn’t want to feed her children pork or coney. The local authorities framed this as neglect since food was scarce in the household. Slowly, her mind slipped away and her children were distributed amongst local families while she was kept in an infirmary.
Malcolm’s affinity to the film and to Abbey makes sense; Abbey Lincoln makes sense in the role of a sheltered and relatively privileged and educated woman who falls in love and marries a laborer and suffers unforeseen consequences— domestic violence when he loses his job and takes it out on her, abandonment, triumphant return. The demographics of Malcolm’s parents were similar, only the father was killed before he could return. There’s even a scene in Nothing But a Man in which one of the laborers kills a rabbit and they cook and eat it together. The last time Malcolm saw his father his parents had been arguing because his mother didn’t want to cook the meat of just shot rabbit. Malcolm’s inner child lives in the territory nothing but a man and I’m grateful he got to see the film and encounter scenes that might have offered divine recognition, images that were scarce or forbidden elsewhere.