Ekow Eshun, Colin Grant, Bonnie Greer, Vanessa Kisuule, Tony Njoku

On the centenary of Malcolm X’s birth, WritersMosaic, in collaboration with the British Library Eccles Institute, brings together writers and performers to explore his global legacy as a resistance leader, with music from Tony Njoku.

“If you’re black you were born in jail,” said Malcolm X, the Black nationalist spokesman for the Nation of Islam, who was reviled by white America during the Civil Rights era. He argued there’d be no peace for “blue-eyed devils” (white people) without a reckoning for the sins of the past. And after his assassination in 1965, many African Americans viewed him as a prophetic revolutionary whose fierce strategy of opposition “by any means necessary” was adopted by the Black Panthers. Malcolm X’s spirit of resistance increasingly speaks to people worldwide emerging from the oppression of colonialism and dictatorships.