"Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention": Manning Marable’s Exhaustive Biography of
the Civil Rights Leader
by Author Interviews, democracynow.org
May 19th 2011
Events are being held today across the country to mark what would have been
Malcolm X’s 86th birthday. Earlier this year a major new biography, "Malcolm X:
A Life of Reinvention" was published. The book’s author, Columbia University
Professor Dr. Manning Marable, died at the age of 60 just days before its
publication. Two decades in the making, the nearly 600-page biography is
described as a re-evaluation of Malcolm X’s life, providing new insights into
the circumstances of his assassination, as well as raising questions about
Malcolm X’s own autobiography. We speak with Zaheer Ali, one of the researchers
who worked with Dr. Marable on the biography. "In a sense, this book is a kind
of iconoclasm in that way, in that it takes Malcolm off of the pedestal to
examine him as a human being struggling through these political and religious
currents that he was in," says Zaheer. [includes rush transcript]
JUAN GONZALEZ: Events are being held today across the country to mark what
would have been the 86th birthday of Malcolm X. He was born Malcolm Little in
Omaha, Nebraska, on May 19th, 1925. His mother, Louise Norton Little, raised
the family’s eight children. His father, Earl Little, was an outspoken Baptist
minister and avid supporter of black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.
In an interview in the 1960s, Malcolm briefly spoke about his childhood.
JIM HURLBUT: You were born in Omaha, is that right?
MALCOLM X: Yes, sir.
JIM HURLBUT: And you left—your family left Omaha when you were about one year
old?
MALCOLM X: I imagine about a year old.
JIM HURLBUT: And why did they leave Omaha?
MALCOLM X: Well, to my understanding, the Ku Klux Klan burned down one of their
homes in Omaha. They had a lot of Ku Klux Klan—
JIM HURLBUT: This made your family feel very unhappy, I’m sure.
MALCOLM X: Well, insecure, if not unhappy.
JIM HURLBUT: So you must have a somewhat prejudiced point of view, a personally
prejudiced point of view. In other words, you cannot look at this in a broad,
academic sort of way, really, can you?
MALCOLM X: I think that’s incorrect, because despite the fact that that
happened in Omaha, and then when we moved to Lansing, Michigan, our family home
was burned down again—in fact, my father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan—and
despite all of that, no one was more thoroughly integrated with whites than I.
No one has lived more so in the society of whites than I.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Malcolm excelled in school but eventually dropped out and became
a drug dealer, a pimp and a thief. While serving time in prison, he joined the
Nation of Islam, a move that transformed his life. He would rise to become the
organization’s national spokesperson and one of the most prominent black
leaders in the country. He eventually split from the Nation of Islam and
founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
Malcolm X was shot to death on February 21st, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom. He
was only 39 years old. Details of his assassination remain disputed to this day.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this year a major new biography of Malcolm was published,
entitled Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. The book’s author, Columbia
University Professor Manning Marable, died at the age of 60 just days before
its publication. Two decades in the making, the nearly 600-page biography is
described as a re-evaluation of Malcolm X’s life, providing new insights into
the circumstances of his assassination, as well as raising questions about
Malcolm X’s own autobiography.
Manning Marable appeared on Democracy Now! a number of times to talk about the
life of Malcolm X.
MANNING MARABLE: I think that Malcolm X was the most remarkable historical
figure produced by Black America in the 20th century. That’s a heavy statement,
but I think that in his 39 short years of life, Malcolm came to symbolize black
urban America, its culture, its politics, its militancy, its outrage against
structural racism, and at the end of his life, a broad internationalist vision
of emancipatory power far better than any other single individual, that he
shared with DuBois and Paul Robeson a pan-Africanist internationalist
perspective. He shared with Marcus Garvey a commitment to building strong black
institutions. He shared with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a commitment to peace
and the freedom of racialized minorities. He was the first prominent American
to attack and to criticize the U.S. role in Southeast Asia, and he came out
four-square against the Vietnam War in 1964, long before the vast majority of
Americans did. So that Malcolm X represents the cutting edge of a kind of
critique of globalization in the 21st century. And in fact, Malcolm, if
anything, was far ahead of the curve in so many ways.
AMY GOODMAN: The late Manning Marable.
Joining us now is Zaheer Ali, one of Manning Marable’s doctoral students and a
key researcher for his biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Zaheer Ali
also served as associate director and senior researcher of Columbia
University’s Malcolm X Project, a program that focuses on the life and legacy
of the civil rights activist.
Thank you so much for being with us, and our condolences on the death of your
mentor and friend and colleague. Manning Marable spent two decades of his life
working on this book. Talk about what you feel is most central, what Professor
Marable felt was the most important aspect of what he discovered.
ZAHEER ALI: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be
here to speak on Dr. Marable’s work. This was a two-decade labor of love, with
a 10-year concentrated focus on the specific project of the biography of
Malcolm. But for Professor Marable, when he first approached the life of
Malcolm, he told me when I started working with him that he envisioned a
political biography, because one of the things he felt in reading The
Autobiography of Malcolm X is that it was a powerful literary story of
transformation. But what was missing was the larger historical context that
Malcolm functioned in, as well as the political vision that Malcolm was moving
towards. And so, he initially set out to do a political biography of Malcolm,
very early on. And as he did more research and as the Malcolm X Project was
able to access more materials, what emerges is a complex, complicated,
multidimensional portrait of Malcolm in his humanity. And I think—so one of the
first things that I think Professor Marable wanted to do was present a
humanized portrait of Malcolm. And so, in a sense, this book is a kind of
iconoclasm in that way, in that it takes Malcolm off of the pedestal to examine
him as a human being struggling through these political and religious currents
that he was in.
The other ideas and, I think, themes that are really important to highlight in
terms of Professor Marable’s work is Malcolm’s political evolution. And the
clip that you played gives a sense of what Professor Marable felt that
evolution was moving towards. What’s interesting is that this political
evolution begins far earlier than I think most people recognize. As early as
1955, Malcolm is trying to connect what’s going on with Bandung Conference, and
he calls for a Bandung in Harlem. So he was inspired by this meeting of African
and Asian heads of state to call for a meeting of the different organizations
in Harlem. And so, he was already, as early as the mid-’50s, connecting what
was going on abroad with what was going on domestically.
The third main, I think, theme that comes across in this is Malcolm’s deepening
sense of faith as a Muslim. And this is something, I think that has been hardly
discussed in much of the scholarship on Malcolm. And I think it’s especially
critical today. We have President Obama about to give a second, what is being
called, major speech to the, quote-unquote, "Muslim world." And what Malcolm’s
story, I think, does, as Professor Marable presents it here, is it reasserts
the importance of the African-American Muslim experience and how that
experience is at the intersection of the traditions of Islam that came up in
the United States, as well as the global tradition of Islam that Malcolm
connected with when he traveled.
And finally, I think one of the other major themes, of course, is the—or are
the unanswered questions surrounding Malcolm’s assassination. And towards the
end, I think Dr. Marable draws on some of the previous scholarship done, in
addition to engaging some new materials that he had access to, to highlight
unanswered questions about the assassination, irregularities with how the case
was handled, and he really desired, as he was moving towards the end of this
project, that the case be reopened.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But now, in terms of the—much has been made of the new material
that Manning Marable had access to, not only the missing chapters of the
original Alex Haley—his autobiography with Alex Haley, but also access to
speeches that Malcolm had made at the Nation of Islam made available. Could you
talk about the importance of some of this new material, in terms of fleshing
out the story of Malcolm’s life?
ZAHEER ALI: Yeah. This book, I think, is—Dr. Marable is one of the first
scholars to engage material that was only recently made available in the last
five to 10 years. In addition to the materials you highlighted, he also is the
first scholar, I think, to engage Malcolm’s diaries, that were made available
through the Schomburg Library archive of Malcolm X’s papers. And what emerges,
for example, with the access to the speeches that Malcolm gave while he was in
the Nation of Islam, we get a sense of the kind of inner life of the Nation of
Islam, which is, again, something that’s neglected in the scholarship on
Malcolm, because for 12 years Malcolm functioned within the organizational
apparatus of the Nation of Islam.
AMY GOODMAN: Manning Marable named who he said was the killer of Malcolm X. Who
does he say is the killer, and what evidence does he have for that?
ZAHEER ALI: He draws on—well, there were three people who were convicted for
Malcolm’s assassination: Talmadge Hayer, Thomas Johnson and Norman Butler.
According to—and not just Manning Marable, I think there were several other
scholars or people who investigated Malcolm’s assassination. Much of the
evidence suggests that Talmadge Hayer, who was the only person caught at the
scene of the crime and the only person to admit, openly admit guilt, that he
was in fact guilty, but that the other two, Thomas Johnson and Norman Butler,
the evidence suggested they were in fact innocent. And so, late—I think in the
late '70s, Talmadge Hayer, in an affidavit, sworn affidavit with attorney
William Kunstler, named his co-conspirators that he said were involved in
Malcolm's—the plotting and execution of Malcolm’s assassination. And of the
people that he names, Professor Marable tried to track down where those people
are now. And he does do that in the book and identify someone who he says
corresponds with that list of names that Talmadge Hayer listed.
AMY GOODMAN: And who was that?
ZAHEER ALI: That is a gentleman in Newark, New Jersey.
AMY GOODMAN: Named?
ZAHEER ALI: His name is—Professor Marable says his name in the book. And so, I
think he does that by correlating public records, as well as some oral history
interviews that he did do.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And of the—the role of the government, in the book he does talk
about what the police department did and didn’t do on that particular day and
the concerns that Malcolm always had that the government was targeting him for
possible assassination.
ZAHEER ALI: Yeah, you know, one of the things, of course, when Malcolm was
doing his autobiography, there were things that he would not have known,
obviously, that was happening around him in terms of the level of surveillance.
Now, he had an idea of the kind of surveillance that he was under, but what he
did not know, for example, is that as early as 1950, when Malcolm is in prison
and he writes a letter protesting the Korean War, that actually is the first
page in his FBI file. So, as early—this is before he’s Malcolm X, the FBI has
begun watching him.
And when he began working with the Nation of Islam, in 1954, as he was
organizing temples around the country, he goes to Boston to establish the
Temple No. 11 there, and he has a small meeting in a family home. And one of
those, I think, 12 or 15 people was an FBI informant. So that is how deeply
embedded the state apparatus was in terms of their agencies in surveiling
Malcolm and the Nation of Islam.
Moving forward, we find, in terms of—closer to Malcolm’s assassination, we find
several inconsistencies. We know that Gene Roberts, who was one of his security
officers at the Muslim Mosque, Inc., we know that he turned out to be an agent
of the Bureau of Special Services. And in this, Dr. Marable highlights
questions about some of the other people who worked with Malcolm that may have
had or served as informants to the police and federal agencies.
There were several, you know, irregularities on the day that Malcolm was
assassinated, on February 21st, 1965. Typically there would be over two dozen
police officers stationed at the Audubon Ballroom where he held his rallies. On
this particular day, there were two uniformed officers seen. So, the question
is, you know, why was there such a drastic reduction in security just one week
after his home was fire-bombed? So these are some of the questions that he
raises, I think, in this.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Speaking of questions, what about the criticism from some
quarters that in this effort to humanize Malcolm, that Manning Marable stepped
over the bounds, raising issues in the book about his personal life that even
he could not confirm, and in essence, to some degree or other, sullied Malcolm?
ZAHEER ALI: Well, I think that what Professor Marable tried to do was get as a
comprehensive a view of Malcolm as possible, drawing on all the existing
materials that he had access to. And I think that there is room for discussion.
You know, people are always trying to figure out where’s the public and private
boundaries in looking at these historic figures. And in this book, Professor
Marable makes his own determination. But I think the overwhelming ideas of this
book are not about personal reputation, but what comes through this is a deeply
sympathetic, but critical, compelling image of Malcolm. And I want to say that
Dr. Marable, you know, when we worked with him as his researchers, he would
discuss and debate these issues with us. And he really grappled with how he
should handle it. And so, I don’t think that he approached this task lightly at
all.
AMY GOODMAN: Zaheer Ali, we want to thank you very much for being with us, one
of Manning Marable’s doctoral students, key researcher for the biography
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Zaheer Ali also served as associate director
and senior researcher at Columbia University’s Malcolm X Project, a program
that focuses on the life and legacy of Malcolm X. This is Democracy Now! When
we come back, a roundtable discussion with Michael Eric Dyson, Herb Boyd and
Amiri Baraka. Stay with us.
Original Page:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/19/malcolm_x_a_life_of_reinvention
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