Session 5 of 16 at Orphans 2022: Counter-Archives was entitled “Black is . . . ?”
Here’s a video recording of the second of three presentations on this panel. Recorded at the de Sève Cinema, Concordia University, June 16, 2022. The full symposium program listing is here.
Mark Quigley (UCLA Film and Television Archive) Social Justice Activism and Surveillance Television
Screening: [Malcolm X press conference on deadly police raid in Los Angeles] (1962) 10 min. excerpt
Presentation contains sensitives images. Footage includes racial epithets.
Click to enlarge, or stream at vimeo.com/732572655.
On April 27, 1962, a confrontation initiated by Los Angeles Police Department officers against members of the Nation of Islam (NOI) at their Mosque No. 27 (located near downtown Los Angeles) turned deadly. What began as police harassment of two NOI members (falsely suspected of selling stolen clothing) ended with an L.A.P.D. riot that left NOI member Ronald Stokes dead and six other mosque members wounded. On May 4, 1962, Malcom X held a press conference at the Los Angeles Statler-Hilton Hotel to bring international attention to the deadly LAPD actions and the gross mischaracterizations of events in the press by LAPD Chief William H. Parker.
In 2020, UCLA partnered with the Los Angeles City Archive to digitally preserve rare, unedited footage of Malcom X’s Statler-Hilton press conference. This 16mm footage, held unseen in the City Archives for decades, was likely shot by the news division of a Los Angeles local TV station—presumably originally obtained by the LAPD. The 16mm composite reel includes additional footage of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad speaking at an unrelated press conference in Los Angeles in 1961 as well as extended, surveillance-style footage of members of the Black press attending one or both of the press events. This presentation will contextualize this 16mm reel as powerful documentary footage of one of the most important human rights activists of the 20th century and as an archival object originally acquired for surveillance counter-intelligence purposes by law enforcement.
The footage of Malcolm X was originally gathered/acquired by the Los Angeles Police Department for surveillance and counter-intelligence purposes — as the struggle of African Americans for equality was deemed a threat to the status quo of white supremacy by law enforcement. Over decades, the footage eventually moved from L.A.P.D. custody to the charge of another official entity in the city, the L.A. City Archives. In this context the footage was liberated from law enforcement purposes to become a historical artifact to be protected. While originally collected by the L.A.P.D. for the purposes of assisting to undermine civil rights, the oppressive police forces inadvertently created a counter-archive of rare footage that documents both the misdeeds of the L.A.P.D. and one of the most important human rights leaders of the 20th century.
Most of this footage was (to our knowledge) never published. The footage remained unseen from 1962 until the year 2020, when UCLA and the L.A. City Archive partnered to preserve the footage and make it publicly accessible.
Bio
Mark Quigley serves as John H. Mitchell Television Curator for the UCLA Film & Television Archive. He previously worked asan access and research archivist at UCLA for over 17 years. Interests include anthology television, social justice and social issue programming, and TV produced on videotape.
A longer excerpt (25:51) of Malcolm X press conference on deadly police raid in Los Angeles is available on the UCLA Film & Television Archive YouTube channel.
Footage courtesy of Los Angeles City Archives. Address licensing queries to L.A. City Archivist Michael Holland <michael.holland@lacity.org>.
City Archives and Record Center website
https://clerk.lacity.org/clerk-services/rmd/city-archives-and-records-center
Mark Quigley’s post on the UCLA FATA Archive Blog adds: for “context on the tragic events of April 27, 1962 in Los Angeles, see this New York Times excerpt [April 1, 2011] of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention 2011 by Manning Marable.”