BOOKS / Rick Ayers : Marable's Malcolm Bio Hits and Misses

Malcolm X in 1964. Photo by Marion S. Trikosko for U.S. News & World Report / Wikimedia Commons.
Malcolm X and the right of resistance:
Dr. Marable's book fills in gaps
but misses on Malcolm's core vision

By Rick Ayers / The Rag Blog / July 18, 2011

Malcolm X was a towering figure of the 20th century, connecting the wave of Third World revolutions sweeping the globe with the Black Liberation Movement inside the U.S. While the powerful seek to domesticate the man and tame his legacy -- a narrow self-help guide or high school lesson on pulling oneself up by the bootstraps -- his deeper contribution to the central liberating struggles of our time continues to resonate.

Malcolm X’s life and work was forged in the furnace of a specific historic moment: the old-style colonies were breaking up after the two devastating world wars; India won its independence; China overthrew a pro-western regime; revolutionary battles threw the French out of Algeria and Vietnam; Cuban guerrillas evicted the U.S.-supported dictator Batista.

Vijay Prashad’s powerful analysis of the period, The Darker Nations, documents the rise of the Non-Aligned Nations movement and the creation of the term “Third World” to describe the former colonial and neocolonial regions which wanted to be in neither the Soviet nor the U.S. camps -- they wanted independence, freedom from nuclear threat, democratization of the United Nations, and their own locally-grown participatory democracies.

During this same time, the long struggle of African Americans against white supremacy and for basic Constitutional rights and fundamental recognition of their humanity was taking a more militant turn. Malcolm X, first from within the Nation of Islam and later from his own organization, pushed to redefine the terms of the movement -- from a petition seeking a way into the U.S. mainstream to a liberation struggle demanding independent power and transformation of the political economy.

Today we forget how far ahead of the wave Malcolm X was, how he created the wave. This is what made him so dangerous to those in power, what drew the attention of the FBI as well as the CIA and various military intelligence agencies.

So many touchstone principles that would soon propel the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and dozens of other organizations and movements, were first given clear articulation in the early 60’s by Malcolm X. These included:

• Black pride and “Black is beautiful.”
• The move from a petition for rights to a demand for power.
• The change from seeing African Americans as a minority to recognizing them as part of a majority, the Third World majority, on a global scale.
• The identification of the conditions of African Americans as one of domestic colonialism as well as racial and ethnic discrimination.
• The questioning of the use of nonviolence as the primary tactic for black liberation, encapsulated in the phrases “The ballot or the bullet” and “By any means necessary.”
• The recognition that white people could be and often were a hindrance to the fullest development of Black leadership and the African-American struggle in the South.
• The demand that white people work against racism in their own communities and build solidarity with the Black Liberation Struggle.
• The critique of the Black petty bourgeoisie, which seemed to be making it in America and leaving behind poor and working class African-American communities.

The list goes on and on. While he did not invent or own each of these principles, Malcolm X was the most clear, consistent, and successful popularizer of these views. African-American insights, critique, and inventions have always been major drivers in politics and culture in the U.S. -- whether it has been in music, theater, comedy, and literature, or in a the political struggles to enact democracy through elections, economic structures, or education.

The reverberations of Malcolm X’s leadership were felt everywhere, even penetrating the consciousness of this white liberal college student first getting involved and trying hard to understand the world.

I remember being in New York in the summer of 1966, a year after the assassination of Malcolm X. I lived with Charles, an old friend from prep school. We were exploring the city, taking classes, marveling at the explosion of arts, and following the various vibrant political battles everywhere.

In mid-June the front page of The New York Times featured a story on the “March against Fear” in Mississippi which SNCC had mobilized after James Meredith was shot at the beginning of his solo protest against the segregated university. Stokely Carmichael and Willie Ricks dropped a bombshell on the first evening rally, calling for something new to the Civil Rights Movement: Black Power! The marchers had responded with enthusiasm and Black Power became the chant punctuating the march and the Movement itself in that fateful summer.

Black Power had a resonance and meaning that was unmistakable, and it was not about “personal empowerment” or psychological states. It was an enunciation of the anti-colonial struggle of African Americans, a call for political power -- by any means necessary. Everything Black activists said afterwards to elaborate and explain the idea was important but the phrase was clear and people knew what it meant. It was Malcolm X’s vision, come to life in the battles of the deep South.

My friend Charles and I diverged right then. He thought the Black Power turn was a disaster: it was reverse racism; it was going to isolate the movement. But I had already been drawn to Che and the Cuban revolution, to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, and to the Freedom Democratic Party and Fannie Lou Hamer’s articulation of the struggle in 1964.

Many white activists agonized about what it would mean; some who risked their lives for the struggle for justice were hurt when they were asked to leave the South and organize against racism in their own communities. But most got it, had even seen the truth of this analysis in the streets and the meetings. They were pleased, delighted, inspired by the powerful turn that the movement was taking.

Of course, the involvement of us white college kids was a matter of choice but also of privilege. It mainly consisted of reading and discussing. The challenge of the mid-1960’s however plunged us into action. We were no longer just watching a movement; we started building a movement. We were pushed to drop our beneficent and patronizing charity ideas, to think in terms of solidarity.

We began to fight as part of a strategy that recognized the leadership of the Black Liberation Movement and Vietnamese resistance, and the profound transformation of relationships around the world. Did the revolution of the late 60’s and 70’s win? No it did not. But the world would be a much better place if it had.

Dr. Manning Marable’s new biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, does much to fill in and correct the historical record. Most agree that Malcolm X’s autobiography, written with Alex Haley, is a powerful organizing document but leaves much out.

Marable offers many beautiful and satisfying moments: the background on Malcolm X’s family and upbringing, the story of the Garvey movement (the United Negro Improvement Association -- UNIA) and its strength throughout the U.S. in the teens and 20’s, the descriptions of Malcolm X’s trips to Africa and the Middle East which are much more detailed and impressive than earlier accounts, and the explication of the Muslim Mosque Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

But on the fundamental significance of Malcolm X, on his core vision and contribution, Dr. Marable gets it wrong. In the midst of his detailed research, he swipes at the philosophy of Black Nationalism and anti-colonial internationalism. In describing Malcolm X’s historic 1960 debate with civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, he asserts that Rustin won hands down because he proved the “practical impossibility” of setting up a Black state, exposing the “essential weakness” of the nationalist line.

It is one thing to be opposed to Black Nationalism, but to suggest that it is simply an illusory idea with no possible way of being pursued is to mislead. The long history of the struggle for Black Power goes back to Martin Delaney before the Civil War, through the UNIA of Marcus Garvey; it is seen in the work of W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson in education; and even in the position of the Communist Party in the 20’s and 30’s which defined a Black nation in the South; the Négritude movement from the Caribbean and Harlem was part of this movement; and it includes many organizations in the 60’s and later, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) after they embraced Black Power, the Revolutionary Action Movement, the All African Peoples Revolutionary Party, the African People’s Socialist Party, the Republic of New Afrika, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Black Panther Party, DRUM, The Deacons for Defense and Justice, the Black Arts Movement, and the explosion of Black Student Unions.

These movements had all kinds of proposals: some for territorial zones inside the U.S., some for reuniting with Africa, and some for independent political identity within an extended presence throughout the U.S. Malcolm X was neither confused nor stumped when confronted with anti-nationalist arguments. His was an internationalist, anti-colonial vision and politics. There is no one else in the U.S. during this historical period who articulated and advanced this insight so powerfully.

Professor Marable argues that reform was possible in the U.S. and that this fact undermined Malcolm X’s position, suggesting that “perhaps blacks could some day become empowered within the existing system.” In order to show that change can come without overthrowing the system, he cites Nixon’s introduction of affirmative action laws.

A look at the condition of African-American people today in relation to educational opportunities and meaningful schools suggests that Malcolm X’s side of the argument was closer to the truth. Marable rejects Malcolm X’s criticism of middle class Black leaders who had supported the election of Lyndon B. Johnson for president. “It apparently did not occur to (Malcolm X),” he asserts, “that great social change usually occurs through small transformations in individual behavior.”

I’m sure it occurred to him but he was part of a much more radical critique, a more far-reaching call for transformation of social relations.

Dr. Marable declares that “‘black nationalism’ was highly problematic in a global context, because it excluded too many ‘true revolutionaries.’” But it’s not problematic at all, any more than Cuban nationalism, Latin American solidarity, Pan-Africanism, Vietnamese nationalism, or anything else that was shaking the world precluded relations between Third World movements.

As in all anti-colonial struggles, Malcolm X asserted the right of resistance and even the importance of African Americans arming themselves. Marable declares that such comments “alienated white and black alike.” But in reality, this is part of what made him so wildly popular.

When Malcolm X says that African Americans should vote but not for Republicans and Democrats, Dr. Marable claims that he “was promoting electoralism but in practical terms gave blacks no effective means to exercise their power. Who were they supposed to vote for if no one on the ballot could bring any real relief?”

The answer is clear: Malcolm X advocated independent political action. That was the only place he believed African Americans could get relief.

The art of writing a political biography is tricky. Two examples that stand out as excellent are Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, and Henry Mayer’s All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery.

Each of these does something very important: they situate the focal lives within the movements that produced them and the movements they built. They explicate the positions of the protagonists and appreciate the evolution of their positions -- including the debates, experiences, and commitments that made them. And they don’t put themselves in the position of debating with the person they are profiling.

While Manning Marable has made a great contribution with this biography, in some respects he misses the central significance of Malcolm X. The speeches of Malcolm X are available everywhere and should accompany this book, for they animate, explain and consolidate so many experiences and feelings that were boiling beneath the surface at the time.

Malcolm X understood and pursued the implications of the earth-shaking revolutions going on and his words continue to capture the radical imagination of freedom lovers around the world today precisely because he stood for international solidarity and a restructuring of power. It is a vision that still inspires.

[Rick Ayers was co-founder of and lead teacher at the Communication Arts and Sciences small school at Berkeley High School, and is currently Adjunct Professor in Teacher Education at the University of San Francisco. He is author, with his brother William Ayers, of Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom, published by Teachers College Press. He can be reached at rayers@berkeley.edu. He blogs at Rick Ayers, where this article was also posted. Read more articles by Rick Ayers on The Rag Blog and listen to Thorne Dreyer's Interview with Rick Ayers and Bill Ayers on Rag Radio.]

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BOOKS / Harry Targ : Remembering Malcolm and Manning

Image of Malcolm X, above, from The Daily Grind. Manning Marable from NewsOne.
Remembering Malcolm and Manning

Telling Malcolm X’s story was Marable’s way of advocating for fundamental social change in a deeply troubled world.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / July 18, 2011

And finally, I am deeply grateful to the real Malcolm X, the man behind the myth, who courageously challenged and transformed himself, seeking to achieve a vision of a world without racism. Without erasing his mistakes and contradictions, Malcolm embodies a definitive yardstick by which all other Americans who aspire to a mantle of leadership should be measured. -- Manning Marable, Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention, 2011, 493

Professor Manning Marable was a member of the Political Science and Sociology Departments at Purdue University during the 1986-87 academic year. His scholarship, activism, and ground-breaking books and articles inspired faculty and students even though his stay at our university was brief. His classic theoretical work, "How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America," along with over 20 books and hundreds of articles, inspired social science scholarship on class, race, and gender.

His weekly essays, "Along the Color Line," were published in over 250 community newspapers and magazines for years. He once told me that writing for concerned citizens about public issues was the most rewarding work he ever did. He was a role model for all young, concerned and committed scholar/activists. -- Harry Targ, Purdue University Black Cultural Center Newsletter, April, 2011

I just finished reading the powerful biography of Malcolm X authored by Manning Marable. My encounter with this book was as fixating and transforming as I remember was my reading of Malcolm’s autobiography in the 1960s.

While I lack the deep sense of Malcolm X’s impact on African American politics and cultural identity that others have, I feel compelled to write something about this reading experience. (Bill Fletcher’s review and analysis of the Marable biography provides much expertise on the subject. “Manning Marable and the Malcolm X Biography Controversy: A Response to Critics," from The Black Commentator, July 7, 2011.)

During my first year at Purdue University in north central Indiana in 1968, I requested to teach a course called “Contemporary Political Problems.” Since I was on the cusp of becoming a political activist in belated response to the civil rights and anti-war movements, I thought I could use this course to have an extended conversation with students about where we needed to be going intellectually and politically.

My plan was to assign a series of books that reflected different left currents, politically and culturally, and get us all to reflect on their value for understanding 1968 America and what to do about it. We read Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey, Herbert Marcuse, the Port Huron and Weatherman statements, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

While my students and I embraced, endorsed, or rejected various of these authors, we were profoundly impacted by the power of Malcolm X’s personal biography and transformations from the streets to the international arena. As the word got out about the course, and largely because of Malcolm X, sectors of the Purdue campus got the word that there was a new “radical” in the political science department. Therefore, I owe my growing enrollments to Malcolm X.

More important, during the second semester in which I taught the course, I had a very quiet and respectful African American student in the class. He was a member of Purdue’s track team. One day, after he showed up at the local airport sporting a very thin, almost invisible, mustache the track coach ordered him off the plane. Why? Because he had unauthorized facial hair. His modest symbolic act, growing the mustache, set off extended protest activities over several weeks.

Shortly before this incident, we had spent a couple of weeks in class discussing Malcolm X’s autobiography. During one class period this very quiet person announced to the rest of us that we should consider ourselves lucky that he chose to participate in this class.

I saw him 40 years later for a fleeting moment. He remembered me and said that he had read Malcolm X’s autobiography for the first time in my class. The student’s emerging boldness and his articulated sense of pride must have had something to do with his reading of Malcolm X.

Reflecting on the Marable biography, I was struck by the capacity of people to change their ways of thinking, their ideologies, and their practice. Marable attributes some of Malcolm X’s development to his conscious desire to reinvent himself and to do so as he told his life story to Alex Haley, his autobiographical collaborator.

Despite the world of racism, repression, and theological rigidity Malcolm experienced, Marable records how Malcolm X’s experience and practical political work were in fact transforming.

Different people gleaned different things from reading Malcolm X’s autobiography, and the same is true of a reading of Manning Marable’s stirring and frank biography. While those of us on the left were most inspired by the last two years of Malcolm X’s life, my student was probably impacted as much by Malcolm’s developing sense of pride and self-worth in a society that demeaned and ridiculed people of color

Reading Malcolm and Marable reminds us that, while we bring change through our organizational affiliations, each individual can have a role to play in achieving that change. Not all of us can be Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Dolores Huerta, or Mother Jones. But we can make a difference.

In addition, Manning Marable makes a particularly strong case for Malcolm X as an internationalist. The United Nations had adopted a Declaration on Human Rights in 1948 but human rights discourse was not part of the language of international relations until Malcolm X demanded the international community address the issue.

For Malcolm X, United States racism, while violating the civil rights of its Black and Brown citizens, was also violating the fundamental human rights of peoples at home and abroad. At the time of his assassination, Malcolm X was working to build a coalition of largely former colonial states to demand that each and every country, and particularly the United States, respect the human rights of all peoples. Multiple problems including racism, poverty, disease, hunger, political repression, and sexual abuse were problems at the root of twentieth century human circumstance AND the United States was a major violator of human rights.

Marable describes in great detail Malcolm X’s frenetic travels through Africa and the Middle East to build a coalition of Black and Brown peoples to demand in the United Nations and every other political forum the establishment of human rights. Bombing Vietnamese people and killing Black children in Birmingham were part of the same problem.

And, this campaign was being launched at the very same time that the countries of the Global South were struggling to construct a non-aligned movement to retake the resources, wealth, and human dignity that had been stripped from peoples by colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism. This was the position that Dr. Martin Luther King came to in 1967, as articulated in his famous speech at Riverside Church in New York. Malcolm X was introducing this global human rights project in 1964.

Marable’s Malcolm X therefore transformed himself from a minor street hustler, to a Black Muslim, to a visible world leader advocating a global human rights agenda. This is the Malcolm X that has meant so much to us over the years, along with his insistence that Black and Brown people be accorded respect everywhere and that they should honor and respect themselves.

But, Marable carefully documents Malcolm X’s flaws as well as his strengths. He was anti-Semitic, misogynistic, not unsympathetic to violence, and a man engaged in intense, some times petty, political struggles with his organizational colleagues.

Manning Marable humanizes Malcolm X. Humanizing our heroes makes our efforts to pass the messages and symbols of the past to newer generations of activists more convincing. Young people do not need to see progressive heroes as untainted by their own humanity. And when we present those who make a contribution to building a better world to new generations, the examples of their flaws make it clear that no one is beyond personal and political redemption.

Finally, the biographer, Manning Marable, as my statement at the outset suggests, was a profoundly important scholar/activist. Marable used his historical knowledge, social scientific analytical skills, and political values to craft a career of writing and activism that impacted his students, his academic colleagues, and his fellow socialists in the struggle for a better world.

Telling Malcolm X’s story was Marable’s way of advocating for fundamental social change in a deeply troubled world.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

Also see:

• BOOKS / Tony Bouza: Manning Marable's 'Malcolm X' / The Rag Blog / July 11, 2011

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BOOKS / Tony Bouza : Manning Marable's 'Malcolm X'

Manning Marable's
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

The Malcolm he depicts is unquestionably, accurately, and thoroughly the Malcolm I knew.

By Tony Bouza / The Rag Blog / July 11, 2011

[Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (Viking, 2011). Hardcover, 608 pp., $30.]

Any reviewer owes the reader an accounting of possible biases, personal knowledge or connection, or any information helpful in assessing the worth of the analysis.

I was a detective in BOSSI (Bureau of Special Services and Investigations—NYPD) from July 1957 to December 1965 with one brief interruption in 1958. I rose to sergeant and lieutenant there and wound up writing a master’s thesis that became a book, Police Intelligence (an oxymoron?). It should never have been published because it wasn’t a book but a dessicated account of the unit’s operations. It contained a section on The Nation of Islam (NOI) and Malcolm X. The book’s turgid, soporific prose proved an unexpected boon to insomniacs.

I knew Malcolm X through my dealings with him over demonstrations, and I attended many, many street meetings at which he spoke -- on Saturday afternoons at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. The heart of Harlem.

There was another level of operation at BOSSI -- undercover infiltrations (American Nazi Party; Nation of Islam; many other groups) -- in which I was only tangentially and periodically involved. I attributed this to an unspoken suspicion of my politics, but it was never expressed and never led to my deliberate exclusion. There was, of course, the additional factor that in a world of daily communicants who routinely referred to the cardinal’s residence as “One Powerhouse,” I was neither Catholic nor Irish enough. So I was episodically involved but never a central figure in the operations.

When I learned of Marable’s book my interest was piqued. I’ve always felt Malcolm X was a little understood -- or even knowledgeably discussed -- figure, although Spike Lee’s film was a real attempt at grappling with the central question of who murdered him and why. So I was a bit of a fly on the wall, but deeply interested and as involved as those who were controlling events allowed.

The book’s title is a good one because I’ve come to think of Malcolm as having lived three lives -- a street thug, a NOI minister, and an integrationist, for wont of a more satisfying word.

Malcolm X must be understood within the context of the two major strains flowing through the black experience -- integrationist and separatist. Thus, you have Booker T. Washington versus W. E. B. DuBois; A. Philip Randolph and Marcus Garvey; Frederick Douglass and Nat Turner; Elijah Muhammad and Martin Luther King, Jr.; Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Malcolm X straddled both camps as a separatist (NOI, which demanded five states for its own nation, and the inclusive Organization of Afro-American Unity).

My final personal revelation is that I performed what I considered the very unprofessional act of attending Malcolm X’s funeral and passed by his open casket.


The book

Marable is appropriately dismissive of what is actually Alex Haley’s “Autobiography” of Malcolm X. No one I know seriously considered it the putative author’s true views and feelings. It was mostly seen as a very creative and skillful example of Haley’s take.

Marable’s clear desire is to demonize the police. He cites the FBI, but they were peripheral. The real monitor of Malcolm X’s behavior was BOSSI. His analysis is naïve, superficial, reflexive, and predictable. The reality may prove more nuanced and, perhaps, even more reprehensible, but history is a demanding taskmaster.

The author’s descriptions of Malcolm’s early life reflect careful research, objectivity, and a historian’s effort to avoid hagiography. The descriptions of Malcolm’s likely involvement in some homosexual adventurism can only be described as intrepid and commendable.

Marable’s description of Malcolm’s conversion to NOI is a triumph of research and smooth writing. Its objectivity is clear in the fair treatment accorded Elijah Muhammad’s early involvement in the NOI, especially given his later treatment of the hero.

The author’s willingness to describe Malcolm’s early forays into anti-semitism -- a virulent stream in the black community sometimes surfacing as in Jesse Jackson’s reference to NYC as “Hymie-town” -- is another reflection of his devotion to authenticity. I personally heard, in the Sixties, Malcolm refer to “Goldberg” in his withering tirades on Harlem’s corners.

Given the involvement of Jews in every facet of the civil rights struggle, this prejudice seems both unwise and perverse. It was, for example, two Jews (Goodman and Schwerner) who were killed with Cheney.

The author holds that the police (BOSSI/FBI, etc.) misjudged the threat posed by the NOI, describing it as “conservative, capitalistic and not really dangerous.” This ignores the profoundly subversive nature of a sect that professed and practiced separatism and hatred of whites, and also demanded its own nation. The NOI was and -- though diminished -- remains alienated and hostile. Louis Farrakhan, in 2011, praised Libya’s Muamar Qadaffi, who’d made a large contribution to the NOI.

In September 1960 Fidel Castro visited the United Nations and stayed at the Shelburne Hotel in midtown. Miffed at being denied an exclusive interview, New York Daily News reporter William Federici published a sensational account of “chicken pluckings” in the room by the Cuban entourage. This dramatic depiction served the cartoonish interests of an increasingly hostile readership and received international circulation. The Cubans did cook in the rooms but did no chicken plucking.

Incensed, the entire delegation moved to the Hotel Theresa in central Harlem, where Fidel was visited by the USSR’s Nikita Krushchev. Castro added to his move’s appeal to Harlemites by flying in his black army commander, Huber Matos, for very quick public appearances. Author Marable makes no reference to this source of Castro’s pique -- a significant error. I was a part of the security detail there and had even engaged Fidel in vigorous conversations since his father and I had been born a few miles apart in Northern Spain.

Castro was irresistibly charismatic and winning.

Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Photo by Eve Arnold / Magnum Photos.
Much is made of BOSSI’s intense focus on the NOI, but the author apparently didn’t know that equal attention was being paid to its counterpart -- the racist, separatist American Nazi party. In a fatally ironic denouement, the men figuratively standing next to both Malcolm X and George Lincoln Rockwell (the Nazi leader) when they were murdered were both BOSSI operatives.

Would Marable’s ultra bleak view have been tempered knowing that BOSSI was an equal opportunity infiltrator? Perhaps not.

The author repeatedly reveals what I believe to be an over-reliance on NOI documents and, particularly, the probably unprecedented access granted by Louis Farrakhan, too central a figure in this controversy to be relied upon.

In An American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish sociologist, described our nation’s number one issue as the “Negro Problem.” In reality, over 70 years later, it still is, only now embodying issues of class as well as race. Despite undeniable and admirable progress since the watershed Civil Rights Act of 1965, black Americans continue to constitute the bulk of the underclass. After two and a half centuries of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow we now address the problem with prisons.

Blacks naturally, resented and resisted this subjugation and expressed their anguish in crime, protests, separatist movements, and demands to be fully integrated. Marable echoes Myrdal’s views perfectly as he speeds to the crisis of Malcolm’s life and its end on Feb. 21, 1965.

But a clear understanding of that still mysterious assassination is absolutely central to any evaluation of this seminal work.

In the early ’60s Malcolm X’s position, nationally, was awkward. Whites largely saw him as representing the extremes of black disaffection, which helped them understand the more nuanced views of integrationist blacks.

His effectiveness as a speaker was remarkable. He related to, communicated with and responded to his audiences in what could be likened to a masterful composer’s interaction with a talented orchestra. I’d seen him sway, move, guide and undulate with street groups in a spirit of perfect symbiosis. He was indisputably Harlem’s greatest street orator, in an area and an era where I’d heard some memorable dithyrambs.

Malcolm’s break with the NOI is central to any understanding of its aftermath. To his last day in the NOI he was slavishly devoted to Elijah Muhammad and consistently extolled his master. Not one deviant or disloyal act could be cited. The author documents this persuasively.

Malcolm had been uttering incendiary indictments of White America in all its iterations, without inhibitions. His casual reference to Kennedy’s assassination on Dec. 1, 1963, only a few days after the event, was seen as being of a piece with every other of his utterances and unremarkable. The “chickens coming home to roost” was a pretty tame commentary by his standards.

Malcolm’s prominence, growth, and frequent referrals as “number two” had created inevitable rivals among a numerous Chicago coeterie anxious to succeed the prophet. Malcolm was suspended for 90 days. He accepted his punishment without question or criticism.

Those of us in the police world, watching NOI grow into a menacing separatist and, yes, subversive organization, were delighted by the split.

Pure serendipity that the NOI would throw away its greatest asset in a tawdry battle of succession among the Chicago clique that would, in a supremely ironic twist, be won by an outsider -- Louis Farrakhan. He inherited and presided over -- for decades -- a diminished empire.

Malcolm accepted his fate with a clear hope of restoration. The hope soon faded. Clearly there was more to his suspension than a fairly tepid quip. What seems clear -- from this book and our own assessments at the time -- was that Malcolm was expelled to remove an obvious rival to power by those around Elijah Muhammad.

Marable makes clear that in early 1964 Malcolm and the NOI had stumbled and staggered to a separation inevitably turning permanent. This led Malcolm into a desparate search for a role in a play in which he was a star without a script, a national figure without platform or income.

The author states that despite threats, a history of some violence and actual references to a plot, the police did not believe he was in imminent danger. I can verify this since we were watching developments carefully and assessing the risks. We had agents in NOI and with Malcolm.

Malcolm’s life of a predictable slide into crime and drugs -- made inevitable by a racist society in which the overclass denied its involvement in his fate -- was, to coin a phrase, arrested by his NOI epiphany. This armed him with the intellectual and oratorical weapons that would launch him into national leadership.

His 1964 hajj to Mecca served, albeit however briefly, to greatly broaden his understanding, message, and influence. The NOI was an indefensible intellectual cul de sac from which he had to emerge to gain the relevance necessary to catapult him beyond the pigeon hole of racist freak.

Breaking with the NOI was one thing, denouncing Elijah Muhammad’s serial siring of children by NOI secretaries was another. This struck at the very core of NOI’s integrity and legitimacy. It could not and would not be brooked. The leader’s virtues could not be assailed. The Rubicon had been crossed.

Knowing this, we in BOSSI were perplexed. Assigning platoons of cops to cover Malcolm’s events was easy enough and routine but spasmodic and ineffective.

Assigning detective body guards 24/7 would be prohibitively expensive. I thought Malcolm would scorn a police offer of security but suggested we do so. Besides, we had an undercover agent -- Gene Roberts -- with Malcolm and this should help with Malcolm’s safety. Coverage was offered and promptly rejected by Malcolm. There is, in all likelihood, a record of this in BOSSI files.

The NYPD would never purposely endanger one of its agents, but the risk of Robert’s safety was weighed and accepted. It was an enormous piece of luck that he escaped injury on Feb. 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom.

But now, with Muhammad’s denouncement as a matter of record, we all, Malcolm included, knew he was in mortal danger. Marable writes that Louis X (Farrakhan) wrote on Dec. 4, 1964, in Muhammad Speaks, “Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death.”

Yet Marable, obviously grateful at being flattered by Farrakhan’s help and attention when it came to this book, and 45 or so years later, quotes Farrakhan’s “love for Malcolm,” describing him as “my brother.” Crocodiles are described as shedding tears as they consume their prey.

The NOI, with its discipline, its cadre of men accustomed to the uses of violence, and its own internal culture of brutal methods of correcting the behaviors of its targets, was a perfectly natural weapon to employ in carrying out organizational objectives. The period of late 1964 to early ’65 saw repeated incidents of bloodshed and even deaths surrounding the clashes inspired by Malcolm’s break/expulsion from the NOI.

The loss of Malcolm was a huge organizational disaster for the NOI, but the hubris at the top blinded them to its consequences. Marable describes the issues cogently.

He makes a really serious mistake when he cites BOSSI Detective Gerry Fulcher as saying the police brass “had the mentality of wanting an assassination.” This is an outrageous falsehood and undermines an otherwise impressive effort. I knew Fulcher and considered him a flake. My recollection, though dim, was that he was an ex-seminarian and so unreliable that we transferred him out. The notion of his serving as any kind of source is laughable.

We certainly viewed Muhammad and the NOI as the enemy but not Malcolm. We were delighted by his separation from NOI and certainly didn’t welcome the prospect -- regarded as very real by us after he denounced Muhammad’s promiscuities -- of his murder. And his move to a more conciliatory and cooperative posture certainly heartened those of us observing him closely.

Malcolm’s charisma, intelligence, courage and effectiveness were qualities we all could admire. My attending his funeral was really a mark of the genuine regard I had for him and my views were shared by my colleagues.

Malcolm’s assassination on Feb. 21, 1965, in a packed ballroom of the Audubon Auditorium, resulted in a thoroughly confused police investigation that netted three killers from the scene and little else. The truly guilty -- not the shooters but those who sent them -- escaped all accountability.

The investigation was botched.

With the benefit of hindsight and acknowledging the reality that there’s never been a police mistake I haven’t or couldn’t have made, what would a real inquiry look like?

A task force of about 10 investigators should have been created, composed of BOSSI detectives, homicide sleuths (traditionally the best), and fire marshals. The focus would be on the firebombing of Malcolm’s house days before his murder and the murder itself.

The firebombing may well have rendered clues like fingerprints on the molotov cocktails and such. Then the murder itself and trying to leverage the possibility of long sentences into cooperation from the shooters. There needed to be a more thorough search for the actual perps and then an inquiry into their backgrounds.

The central aim of it all would be to really establish the roles of Captain Joseph X Gravitt, Minister Louis X Farrakhan, and the prophet himself, Elijah Muhammad.

The utter failure of the NYPD created a dismal history and the principal losers have been the black community itself. A parallel tragedy lies in the NYPD’s obvious stonewalling of any release of records likely to help our understanding. I need to add that I cooperated with the press, always, in its attempts to inform the people.

The chaotic scene and the determined silence of those accused didn’t help.

The historical and traditional view of the causes of black martyrdom center on the metaphor of a lynching -- whites killing blacks. Malcolm’s murder was different and created a dilemma not confronted by his community even almost half a century after his death. He was killed by blacks.

Marable cites Farrakhan as the principal beneficiary and as Betty Shabazz’s prime suspect, even years later. But the principal focus must center on Elijah Muhammad, and the motive -- we all thought then and I do now -- was Malcolm’s references to Muhammad’s having fathered six or seven children by his secretaries.

The author’s masterful, scholarly, writerly book is unnecessarily weakened by reliance on a source like Fulcher -- and the absence of more authoritative possible sources within BOSSI such as its commander or Detective Roberts or his handlers. The lack of really valuable sources forces the author into the arms of unreliable or mendacious alternates.

It is, withal, a must read.

The Malcolm he depicts is unquestionably, accurately, and thoroughly the Malcolm I knew. It is a wonderfully useful evocation of the man and a sure and certain guide to understanding the icon that was Malcolm X.

But it ain’t the final word.

[Anthony V. (Tony) Bouza was born on April 10, 1928 in El Ferrol, Spain. A 40-year veteran of municipal police including an extended stint as a New York detective, Bouza served as Minneapolis police chief from 1980 to 1989. He is the author of six books. This article was originally published at Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly. Southside Pride editor Ed Felien is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.]

• Also see "John McMillian : For Manning Marable" / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011

The Rag Blog

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John McMillian : For Manning Marable

Manning Marable. Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images.

Renowned African-American scholar, Dr. Manning Marable, 60, died April 1 of complications from pneumonia, three days before the publication of his long-awaited biography of Malcolm X, a book he had been working on for the last 15 years.

Marable was founding director of the Department of African American Studies at Columbia University. Since 2002 he had directed Columbia’s Center for Contemporary Black History.

According to National Public Radio, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, “introduces new information that could reshape the widely accepted narrative" of Malcolm's life.

For Manning Marable

By John McMillian / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011

In hindsight, this is embarrassing to admit, but here goes. When I first met Manning Marable in 1996, at age 26, I was nervous. Partly I was on edge because I was trying to make a big decision: Should I pursue a Ph.D. in African-American history at either Rutgers or Michigan, where I’d been offered full funding? Or, should I go to Columbia (my first choice), with no money upfront, but with some vague possibility of securing a teaching fellowship down the line?

Months before, Manning had already written me to say that if I were admitted to Columbia, he’d be keen to take me on as one of his graduate students. (That was a thrill unto itself!) Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but wonder (and this is the embarrassing part): did he know I was white? And if so, would he have any doubts about my commitment to Black Studies, or my intellectual authority to work in the field?

Keep in mind, by then I’d read virtually all of Manning’s major works, including the earlier, more polemical stuff, like How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, where he declared, “Progressive white Americans must succeed in overturning their own racism.”

No problem there, I chuckled. I’d long made a point of challenging racism in others, and I’ve always tried (to the best of my ability) never to tolerate it in myself. But then, he added this:

“Nothing short of a commitment to racial equality and Black freedom such as that exhibited by the militant white abolitionist John Brown will be sufficient.”

Oh.

There was only one way to gauge Manning’s attitude, and that was to show up at his office. I made the haul all the way from mid-Michigan to New York City in my Chevy pickup truck. At that point in my life, I’d never been anywhere near an Ivy League campus. My first memory of the area around Columbia comes from driving up and down Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue, and perhaps a dozen cross streets in-between, again and again, trying to find a parking space.

As soon as I met Manning, though, all of my anxiety melted away. As anyone who knew him would agree, one of his most striking qualities was his affability. And although I probably would not have said this in print while he was still alive, the plain fact is, he really did look a lot like a teddy bear.

One thing I remember from that day is how vigorously he stressed the fact that he saw himself as both a scholar, and an activist. For him, the two vocations were inseparable. What’s more, he wanted me to know that when he became the founding director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) a few years earlier, he’d envisioned it as fundamentally a community resource.

And by “community,” he pointed out, “I don’t mean just Columbia, or even Morningside Heights.” He gestured toward the window of his sixth floor office, which afforded views to the north and the east. “We’re not in Morningside Heights. We’re in Harlem!”

To this end, he had a remarkable capacity for making time for virtually anyone who wanted something from him, even including the conspiratorial-minded guy with the rusty stains on his shirt (or was it blood?) who would occasionally show up unannounced at Manning’s door, asking to bend his ear.

Then there was this other fellow: he was never around, except for on the periodic occasions when the Institute would lay out a very nice buffet in honor of some distinguished guest speaker, in which case he would always be there, first in line, testing the capacity of his Styrofoam plates with enormous mounds of chicken wings, mini-quiches, cocktail shrimp, and whatever else. (Okay, I’ll confess: I once watched as Manning observed this guy from the corner of the room in silent disbelief, before finally sighing and rolling his eyes.)

Manning also seemed like one of the hardest workers in all of academia. In the mid-to-late 1990s, you might recall, a contingent of “black public intellectuals” was suddenly gaining more exposure than they’d probably ever dreamed of. After a long period during which black scholars were more likely to toil away in obscurity, with their contributions being slighted or overlooked, now at least a few of them -- through a combination of intelligence, charisma, and moxie -- seemed to be everywhere.

And while some celebrated the new visibility of people like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cornel West, and Michael Eric Dyson, others sensed a certain entrepreneurialism in their approach. Sure, they could all talk a very good game, people used to grouse. Hell, put them in range of a microphone, and they’ll talk about anything! But when it came to scholarship, what did they actually do?

That was never quite my own view, but regardless: nobody ever credibly said such a thing about Manning. True, he made TV appearances and gave paid lectures (oh, how he must have loved Black History Month). But he was also an author of god-knows-how-many books and articles, the great bulk of which showcased his immersion in fields as diverse as history, sociology, political science, economics, and even literature.

His new, nearly 600 page opus, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, is already being celebrated as an exhaustively researched tome, one that will completely upend our understanding of that fabled leader.

What an incredible exercise in self-restraint it must have been to keep plugging away on that biography for 15-odd years, all the while sitting on so many explosive revelations. I remember him excitedly making a few vague allusions to the discoveries he was making, way back in the day. Now we all know just what he was onto..

The past few days, I’ve been sad about the fact that I didn’t stay in better touch with Manning in recent years, though I can take some solace from the fact that about six weeks ago, I sent him a warmly inscribed copy of my first monograph. I have so many fond memories from the three-year period that I worked for him, but I’ll always treasure that first meeting the best. After listening to my concerns, putting me at ease, and making me laugh, he said something I did not expect: “I might be able to help you out.”

Five months later, I’d relocated to Manhattan, and I was meeting a considerable portion of my grad school expenses by working as his research assistant. (We collaborated on two books.) Without him, I’m not sure I’d have mustered the courage to go to Columbia, something that later turned out -- without question -- to be one of the great blessings of my life.

And yet whenever I tried to thank Manning for anything -- whether for helping to pay for my education, or for buying me a sandwich (as he sometimes did), I always got the same response. He’d shrug, smile impishly, and say, “Hey, what do you expect? I’m a socialist!”

[John McMillian is Assistant Professor of history at Georgia State University. His most recent book is Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford, 2011).] A version of this article was published at The Atlantic.]

Manning Marable. Photo from the New York Daily News.The Rag Blog

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