by Les Payne
First published 2020
Malcolm X emerges from this exhaustive biography as a man shaped by profound transformation. Les Payne, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, spent nearly three decades hunting down every person who crossed paths with Malcolm X. He interviewed over a hundred sources: family members, classmates, street companions, fellow prisoners, Nation of Islam leaders, FBI informants, police officers, and international political figures. Payne traces Malcolm's journey from his 1925 Nebraska birth to his 1965 assassination in Harlem. The book reveals his Depression era childhood under Garveyite parents Earl and Louise Little, his father's 1929 death under a Lansing streetcar, his mother's continued teachings of black pride, his years as a Boston and Harlem criminal, and his religious conversion while imprisoned in Massachusetts. Payne corrects historical inaccuracies and uncovers startling new information, including the true identity of Nation of Islam founder Fard Muhammad and a detailed account of Malcolm's secret 1961 KKK meeting with Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz. The biography concludes with a minute by minute reconstruction of the Audubon Ballroom murder. After Les Payne's death, his daughter Tamara Payne completed the work using his research.
Genres: biography, history, historical-fiction, 20th-century, african-american, biography-memoir, african-american-historical-fiction, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family
Setting: Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, Lansing, Massachusetts, Nebraska
Period: 1925, 1929, 1961, 1965, Great Depression
612 pages · Hardcover · Liveright Publishing Corporation/W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.