The Hate That Hate Produced

This is a 1959 documentary by Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax (the latter was a well-known Black journalist who died in 1970) regarding the rise of Black Nationalist groups such as the Nation of Islam and the African Liberation Movement.

This documentary is famous for introducing Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and a young Louis Farrakhan to mainstream America.

Much of what I've read about this suggested that it was a sensationalized "hatchet job" by Wallace and Lomax, portraying the Nation of Islam and other such groups as wild eyed fanatics and hatemongers. After seeing an admittedly poor-quality print of this last night, I'd have to disagree. The point is made that the anti-white feelings of the above individuals was a direct result of what African-Americans experienced at the time (Jim Crow, lynching, etc) and this kind of thing was inevitable under the circumstances, so I would say that as a whole, this phenomenon is placed into context.

The searing comments by Malcolm, Farrakhan, and some now-obscure Harlem street preachers would not shock anyone today who is familiar with the strident Black Nationalist rhetoric of the 60s that had a brief resurgence in the 1990s. In fact, it's quite mild in comparison to what H. Rap Brown and Khallid Muhammad would pontificate on on in these later eras. So in a sense, it is an important historical document that shows the flipside of Martin Luther King's nonviolent movement and a look at things that were to come in the 1960s (and to a lesser extent in the 1990s).