Local activists Edmund Rushton and Krystal Davis-Dunn are pushing to make Sept. 28 a holiday to commemorate the death of Malcolm X’s father, Earl Little. Davis-Dunn said the intention of the holiday is to provide racial reconciliation by acknowledging the Lansing community’s racist past.
“If we let this go until September, then we’ve let the death of Earl Little go 90 years unrecognized,” Rushton said.
Earl Little died in 1931 at East Michigan Avenue and Detroit Street. He was run over by a streetcar. Earl and his wife, Louise Little, were activists in their own right -- both were members of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Earl Little's death was officially ruled an accident by police. However, Malcolm X and historians believe he was murdered by a white supremacist group called the Black Legion according to a May 25, 1936 Lansing State Journal report.
Davis-Dunn, a graduate student at Michigan State University and a member of East Lansing’s Human Rights Commission, met Rushton in February 2020 because they were both interested in cases of racial insensitivity at MSU and a police brutality case in East Lansing.
Together, Davis-Dunn and Rushton have been working on a resolution to bring to the Human Rights Commission asking to make Sept. 28 a holiday in East Lansing. Once it goes through the commission, they plan to take it to City Council.
Davis-Dunn said it’s important to commemorate Earl Little’s death because often history is whitewashed into “the version of history that is more fitting to the American Dream.”
Davis-Dunn said that while East Lansing and Lansing never had Jim Crow laws in the books, there were, and still are, Jim Crow practices embedded in policies. She said these policies still have an impact on East Lansing and Lansing today, creating inequities for the Black population.
"The Little Resolution is a communal reconciliation of the white supremacy origins of the greater Lansing community," Davis-Dunn said.
Rushton said that a holiday would provide the community with a time of reflection.
“I really think we should have a day where, instead of just coming up with a blanket recognition of Black political thought, we need a day to recognize what the white response has always been to Black radical thought,” Rushton said. “Which is almost always violent.”
Davis-Dunn said they plan to take their resolution to the Human Rights Commission in March, where commission and community members will have an opportunity to weigh in on it before they take it to City Council.
Rushton, who addressed the East Lansing City Council about their resolution on Jan. 12, said he is confident the council supports their efforts. He said he does have some worries about how community members will take the holiday.
“What I worry about going into it, is that some people will take this personally as we’re trying to take shots at them and their community and how they run their institutions,” Rushton said. “We’re not, this is a 90-year-old crime.”
One aspect of their efforts is to put a marker where Earl Little died. The marker would need to be approved by both East Lansing and the Lansing Township Board.
Lansing Township Supervisor Dion’trae Hayes said that while a project like this has never been brought to the board, the township understands its importance.
“He was fighting well ahead of his time for people like me to have the position that I have now. So I owe a great deal of gratitude to our ancestors and our forefathers who paved the way for us,” said Hayes, Lansing Township’s first Black supervisor.
She said that after the past four years of division, the community should rally around opportunities to connect around something positive.
“We've had four years of division, and now it's time to heal and I think this could be great on that path towards healing, for us all.”
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
