Harry Truman was not popular when he left office, I gather because of Korea. Nowadays people tend not to focus on that so much, and look at his career as a whole. I think that’s one advantage time provides.
Malcolm X went through a kind of weird rehabilitation when the movie about him came out. When he was alive he was apparently seen as a scary racist who advocated violence, but the new consensus seems to be that he was vilified for being a strong black leader. I wasn’t around when he was alive, but I didn’t like the rehab job either–people talking and writing about him in the media mostly glossed over the scary and repellent things that he did say. I think he was an interesting figure worth looking at, but we should be honest about it.
Malcom X was not actually rehabilitated so much as that a wider audience was given a view (however hagiographic) that they had never seen before. He did, indeed, go through a “hate whitey” phase and he was definitely still “scary” at the time of his death. However, before he was assassinated he had already begun to realize that demonizing any group was counterproductive and many of us (who actually noted what he was saying) were hoping that he would come out of NY and join in the national discussions regarding race relations.
The majority of whites clearly did not see the changes in his thinking over the last 3 - 5 years of his life, (and had they seen the changes, he would still have been scary to most of us), but he was not, at the time of his death, in any way a hate monger.
Actually, I thought a few months before he died, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and while there, had a change of heart, and started advocating less violent methods, and THAT was why he was shot?
I am aware that Malcolm X changed, as I have read his autobiography and several other books about him. Although as I understand it it was in the last year of his life, rather than the last 3-5, that the change occurred.
Actually, I wasn’t commenting so much on the movie (which I haven’t seen) as the flurry of press that surrounded the movie. There seemed to be an attitude emerging that there was never really a reason to be afraid of Malcolm X and the negative press was due to white racism, which I think is only partly true. After all, people at the time didn’t know he was going to change, and when he did change they didn’t know what he was going to turn into. (In fact, I would say we still don’t know.)
Also, I must admit I have a personal beef with the guy’s attitude towards women, and it really bothered me to hear other women try to deny or discount it.
I’ve always been under the impression that Elijah Muhammad thought that Malcolm was becoming too powerful and drawing attention away from the NOI. Malcom tried to ditch that first by constantly mentioning Elijah. When that wasn’t enough, he left and founded Muslim Mosque Incorporated. He continued to draw attention that Elijah felt the NOI should be getting. So, Muhammad started trying to convince a few of his followers to kill Malcolm. The first few warned X instead, but he was eventually killed by gunmen.
Jerry Lee Lewis started out with the image of an aggressive, loudmouthed cracker. (Which he was, and is, from what I’ve heard.) His marrying his cousin might have crippled his career anyway, no matter how he had handled it, but since he continued to act the aggressive, loudmouthed cracker to the press, he never fully recovered.
Decades later, Hugh Grant started out with the image of the blushing, stammering choirboy. His arrest might have similarly crippled his career, but since he continued to play the blushing, stammering choirboy, he bounced back. Of course, one has to take into account the fact that people have lower standards and shorter memories these days, but he did act as honorably as anyone could under the circumstances: no excuses, no rising to the bait.
Most public figures are mixtures of good and bad. Why is it surprising that re-evaluations of their characters might emphasize good elements or bad elements that haven’t been brought out before? Whenever there’s a public re-evaluation of a historic figure to bring out good characteristics of someone previously thought of as bad or to bring out bad characteristics of someone previously thought of as good, the proper response should not be “How dare you show there are good things about this bad person?” or “How dare you show there are bad things things about this good person?”. The proper response is “Yes, this person was a mixture of good and bad things. The good and bad things do not cancel each other out. They remain as part of this person’s life.”
The problem is not in the re-evaluations. The problem is with people who can’t stand to know that some historic figures are not all good or bad. They want everyone stamped with GOOD or BAD. Well, tough, life doesn’t work that way.