proclaimed that the end of the world and judgment day would occur if people did not repent for racism, a continuation of hunger, torture for masses of people, environmental collapse, and the division of people into warring tribes.
Thus the rider of the White Horse seems to appropriately represent Malcolm in at least three aspects: his gay identity, celebrity, and shocking language. The symbol of the White Knight is crucial to begin reflection on Malcolm’s life.
Red Horse
In my third chapter, Malcolm is also the apocalyptic rider of war. The red color of his horse represents blood spilled on the battlefield. He carries a powerful sword that represents battle. Malcolm is also this red rider of war because of his courage to fight against racism and war, conformity and indifference, the misuse of religion, and a flagrant worship of false gods.
I am happy that Malcolm approved the first part of the title of this book, “Black Battle.” In so doing, he has allowed this creative biography in which my name is also a part of the book. Malcolm’s keen mind was always aware of the pun of my name as he writes:
Dear Michael: I’m at the Cathedral Center and the coming storm is ominous, hovering around stone towers, threatening all peace and security. Armageddon. The Final Battle (oops! Don’t take that personally) looms. Where shall I hide? Actually I won’t, I think I’ll just go home and wait out the whole bloody thing. I can already hear the Final Rain start beating on the roof.
Well, however, we have a meeting tomorrow. (The Final Battle will have to wait, won’t it?) Apparently I will await you at home around 1 PM. This is an important one in our mutual progress. Don’t forget to park on Tracy where there are no meters. All best—Malcolm10
The genre of this biography is unusual because of my spiritual direction with Malcolm. More importantly, my voice is here. This proves to be unusual but helpful. This is unusual because I am a younger, black, heterosexual writer describing the converse of myself. And this is helpful because Malcolm’s life witness can be made more available to those populations more like my own who have not been privy to Malcolm’s genius and divine words. But Malcolm’s battle is more than engagement with me. Like theologian William Stringfellow, Malcolm went to war against the powers and principalities. “And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword” (Rev 6:4, KJV).
As I have researched Malcolm’s life, many see him as civil war incarnate and internal strife—even the Antichrist. A letter to Malcolm read, “You should never use the word gay with the same breath with the Lord. He hates gay.” And another: “The Jesus in me loves you. But as I watched you on the TV set, I wept openly that the sweet and tender Jesus that I love so much would be distorted and misrepresented.”11 All of this is complicated by Malcolm’s own inner strife. For many years, Malcolm saw himself this way. “I repressed my own feelings for a long, long time, thinking God viewed homosexuality as ugly, demonic, and sinful. Now I know it’s beautiful and God loves it.”12
In this biography, one of the identities of Malcolm as the purveyor of war comes from his days as a civil rights activist. Malcolm asked me to recognize—and pinpoint—the role of the white volunteers and followers in the Civil Rights Movement. In Malcolm’s case, a key highlight came in 1961 when he was a Freedom Rider.13 Malcolm narrates how he and several others moved from the Freedom Ride itself to a subsequent visit to the University of the South (Sewanee).
The staunchly traditional undergraduate student body remained all white. Encouraged by the interracialism of the nearby Highlander Folk School, local seminarians had been pressing for a full desegregation of the campus for several years, but university and church officials had refused to confront the issue, including a strict color bar at a popular on—campus restaurant leased to a local segregationist. As soon as Boyd and the other pilgrims arrived on campus and discovered that the restaurant remained segregated, he announced plans for a sit—in and a hunger strike. By Friday morning, however, Boyd had received assurances from church and campus officials that all of the university’s facilities would be desegregated in the near future. After the Presiding Episcopal Bishop of the United States, the Right Reverend Arthur C. Lichtenberger, issued a strong public statement endorsing the prayer pilgrimage and condemning racial discrimination, Boyd and his colleagues canceled the planned protests and departed for the (General) Convention in Detroit.14
Malcolm writes me and comments on this historical account during the civil rights period. He laments that very little apology has taken place in institutional structures regarding racism. Malcolm writes me:
It does seem to me that Sewanee has decided and tried to “bury” this and not include it in its public “history.” Remember the woman from Sewanee attending a conference in LA, and with whom I lunched one day, who had “never heard of ” any of this? You’d think that I might have been invited at some time since 1961 to “visit ” Sewanee as an “honored guest” to participate in a discussion of racial issues and seek together to find new ways of “coming together and healing.” I feel as if the entire Sewanee incident had never happened or taken place!15
However, this biography does not so much seek to provide a detailed description of such events as to display an authentic white, gay, and Christian identity known as Malcolm Boyd that emerged over many years. I am especially grateful to Malcolm for offering the reader the archives of history that document a deeper vision of his life, especially the early events in his life that set the trajectory for his courageous witness against American injustices. What we discover here is encouraging to many of us who discover that Malcolm is extraordinary in his ordinariness.
Black Horse
In my fourth chapter, Malcolm rides the third horse, the black horse called Famine. The black color of the third horse represents the grim circumstances of malnutrition. “And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, ‘Come and see.’ And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine” (Rev 6:5 –6, KJV). Malcolm is the black rider of famine because of his constant theme that the institutional church could no longer feed people.
An example of such a famished church was in how the institutional church lacked sufficient sustenance to remain intact over issues like slavery. Many Christian denominations resulted because of the split over slavery (e.g., Presbyterians of America, Presbyterians USA, Southern Baptists, National Baptists, the African American Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Church [ECUSA] etc). A church with a strong body would not easily split over whether or not a black person should be a slave or free. A strong, well fed church would not split during the Civil Rights Movement. Such splits would not occur if the church body were secure in its primary identity revealed in Jesus. When baptized in Jesus, primary identity is revealed as the corporate identity of Jesus who organizes all of our other particular identities (e.g., male, female, black, white, slave, free, etc.). The problem, however, is that the church often fails to demonstrate primary Christian identity—instead revealing a weak and divided body of people in conflict.
This famine aspect of Malcolm can be seen in Malcolm’s role as an Episcopal priest. Malcolm wrote me, “I was on the Freedom Ride as a priest (it was called a ‘Prayer Pilgrimage’). Through the 1960s I was as deeply involved in civil rights as any human being could be.”16 As we met weekly, I explored Malcolm’s times and places as a priest, especially in the unusual circumstances of Malcolm serving with Martin Luther King Jr. Then, continuing to follow MLK, Malcolm’s involvement against the
