Michael X
(1933-1975), Black activistMichael X (Michael Abdul Malik, né Michael DeFreitas)
Sitter in 2 portraits
Black activist. Michael de Freitas was born in Trinidad, the son of a Portuguese shopkeeper and a Barbadian-born mother. In the 1960s as Michael X, he was the founder of the Black Power Movement in the UK, fighting for the rights of black people, with support from celebrities including John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Brought up as a Roman Catholic, he changed his name to Michael Abdul Malik when he converted to Islam. Despite his ignominous end Michael X played an important part in racial politics in Britain throughout the 1960s.
Jabir Herbert Muhammad; Muhammad Ali; Michael X
by Graham Keen
modern bromide print from original negative, 13 May 1966
NPG x199759
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Jo Tulloch
05 June 2022, 21:09
Michael was a charismatic but deeply flawed man who sought redemption by becoming a sincere advocate for black equality. He was the first person to use mass media to highlight racism towards black people in this country, and for a short while it appeared he might become a serious leader. In my experience his message of equality appealed to many oppressed black people who had arrived in the post-war wave of Caribbean immigration. Michael's personal weaknesses contributed to his downfall; but it was an unjust prison sentence under the new Race Relations Act 1965, the first in the UK to penalise racial discrimination, that embittered him and led ultimately to his descent into simple fraud. (Ironically, Michael - a black man - was the first person to be convicted under this law.) After his release he appeared to abandon any real political position and, faced with another criminal case, fled to Trinidad, where he founded a commune in which two people were murdered. Michael was convicted of the murder of his cousin, a barber, and hanged in Trinidad in 1975. (No-one was convicted of the murder of Gale Benson, the daughter of a British MP, who had travelled there with her boyfriend, an American known as Hakim Jamal, who had fled to the US after the murders.