ABSTRACT
Professor Wilson Jeremiah Moses sees Malcolm X and Martin Luther King as both "part of a general movement of the Black church towards a reclamation of its messianic political heritage". Woman becomes the repository of male-reality, and women's issues and concerns are sublimated to the primary struggle of the African American man for economic and political empowerment. African American women have inherited historical labels as emasculating matriarchs, tyrannizing the Black male and depriving him of opportunities to flourish and grow into healthy manhood. However, the patriarchal nature of the Black Muslim narrative of liberation imposed the "male signifier" as the point of departure for any dialogic redress of African American grievances against institutionalized racism in the United States. However, like nationalistic movements in general, that of the Black Muslims, of which Malcolm X was a part, is patriarchal in its intent and design.
