Most retellings of the murder of Malcolm X have listed as co-conspirators two men named
. Yesterday while reading a manuscript about the history of the NOI in St. Louis, I came across men named Theodore 2X and Gerald 2X. I'm curious about the purpose and history behind the "(n)X" naming convention both within the NOI and elsewhere.
Also looking for information about the use of the surname stand-in "X" in general. I get that in the most general sense it's portrayed as being a rejection of one's "slave name" as passed down from one's recent ancestors, as well as an attempt to embrace the unknown nature of one's true ancestral surname, but...
How common was it, before/during/after Malcolm X's prominence (the previous generation of NOI didn't seem to fancy it, and many of his contemporaries such as
Farrakhan used it only briefly if at all)? Who was the first to use it? Was there some sort of qualifications that needed to be met before it could be used in something like an "official capacity" within the organization? Is it ever used now? Was it used outside of the NOI? What about the "(n)X" cognates listed above?
In short, I feel like most of us know a lot about what the "X" came to mean to the rest of America, I'm interested in knowing what the X meant to the NOI, in terms of its own internal institutional culture. Thanks.
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Essentially, the X represents the unknown African surname that the convert has lost; when there are multiple people with the same first name in a temple, they get assigned numbers in front of the X to distinguish them. "Some temples have gone as high as X to the '17th power'" according to the link above.
posted by goingonit at 9:04 AM on September 3