Malcolm Boyd - Activism

Activism

Boyd went on to become a prominent white clergyman in the American Civil Rights Movement. He participated as one of the Freedom riders in 1961. Later that year, he became the Episcopal Chaplain at Wayne State University in Detroit. It was while he was here that he attended an interfaith conference for racial integration in Chicago. His presence at the event is mentioned by Malcolm X in his 1963 speech "The Old Negro and the New Negro." Malcolm X references Boyd's criticism of the speakers chosen for the conference. As Malcolm says, "Rev. Boyd believes that the conference might have accomplished much good if the speakers had included a white supremacist and a Negro race leader, preferably a top man in the American Black Muslim movement." He quotes Boyd:

A debate between them (meaning this white racist and a Black Muslim) would undoubtedly be bitter, but it would accomplish one thing: it would get some of the real issues out into the open. In this conference we have not done that. The money spent to bring these people here has been wasted. We have done nothing to solve the race problem either in our churches or in our communities.

Boyd was also active in the anti-Vietnam War movement, marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.