"We want freedom by any means necessary," Malcolm X, having lately freed himself from the Nation of Islam, exhorted his followers in 1964. "We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary." In the four decades since, America has changed almost beyond recognition. Yet not even in his wildest dreams could the fervent black nationalist have envisioned that his words would someday serve as the mantra for a hit documentary TV series. But that's exactly the case with BET's American Gangster.
On one level, "by any means necessary" is an inside joke, spoken at least once in every episode much as Academy Award-winning actor Karl Malden worked his real name, Mladen Sekulovich, into many movies and TV shows. For instance, playing General Bradley in Patton, he orders a soldier named Sekulovich to fetch him a helmet. As SFPD detective Mike Stone in The Streets of San Francisco, his gopher is called Sekulovich. For those who are in on the joke, this can be fun, like watching the first few minutes of an Alfred Hitchcock film to spot the director's walk-by.
But on another level, American Gangster is dead serious about "by any means necessary," as shown in the series' third episode (first aired in December 2006), glamorizing Harlem heroin kingpin Leroy "Nicky" Barnes. In a vintage black-and-white film clip, American Gangster gives us Malcolm X himself assuring a Harlem street-corner crowd, "The white man brings it [heroin] to Harlem. The white man makes you a drug addict." Of course, that was in the early '60s. By the 1970s, black carnivores such as slick Nicky Barnes were bringing heroin to Harlem minus white middlemen. As American Gangster tells the story, this made him a hero. "He personified the strong independent black entrepreneur," says narrator Ving Rhames, "by outsmarting law enforcement while peddling death to his community."
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