It’s none other than the late, great Redd Foxx! Told you to hold onto to your chair for this…LOL. Malcolm X and Redd Foxx were the best of buddies back when Malcolm X’s nickname was “Detroit Red” and Redd Foxx’s was “Chicago Red.” Ain’t that something? Redd used to curse up a storm (LOL) and Malcolm X was one of the most disciplined leaders in our history – no drinking, no cursing, no nothing…at least not after he changed his ways and became the great legend we all know him to be. So from a distance they look like The Odd Couple…

But least see what Redd and Malcom X explained about their friendship because it turns out they had a WHOLE LOT in common back in the day.

Redd Foxx on being friends with Malcolm X: (via Ebony Magazine)
[quote_box_center]

Back in the day in the early 40’s, a red-haired, St. Louis-born, teenager named John Elroy Sanford (later known as Redd Foxx) had just come back to New York from Philly where he’d been working as a shipping clerk. His parents moved to Chicago when he was 13 but the youngster, eager for a chance in show business and finding nothing around Chicago, hopped a freight to N.Y. in 1939 with three members of a washtub band. While hanging around a poolroom one day, he ran into a thin Detroiter named Malcolm Little whose hair looked a lot like John’s (Redd Foxx’s). The two struck up a friendship.

Their red hair and mariney complexions started making friends call John “Chicago Red” and Malcolm “Detroit Red.” Time and a separate path each man took eventually erased their nicknames, but not the memories of those lean years when both were struggling for a buck. “Chicago Red” later caught on big with the comic nickname Redd Foxx. “Detroit Red’s” name became emblazoned across the world’s headlines as Malcolm X.

Red on Malcolm X:
“He wasn’t talking any of that stuff then,” recalls Redd, referring to Malcolm’s pre-Muslim years. The two Reds knew…

[/quote_box_center]