By Bill Castanier
I spent the last week trying to figure out if the new biography of Malcolm X breaks any new ground. My conclusion was: very little and most of the purported new and controversial information is hogwash which I expected will be proved out when the original annotated manuscript is published in an e-book format by Detroiter Gregory Reed who owns that document outright. In the annals of publishing this is a big deal and you can expect quite a bit of controversy.
When I talked with Gregory this past week he told me some things that would be in the manuscript that absolutely no one knew about. This should rock the industry especially since the supposed definitive biography just came out. I got to know that book pretty damn well and my copy looked like it had been held captive by Emily Dickinson. Stickers were pasted every which way on pages. Here’s the review I wrote for today’s Lansing City Pulse. Watch for updates on the “new” version.
It’s only fitting that the recent publication of “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” has received both compliments and a firestorm of criticism. After all, that befits a conflicted and complicated life.
The book, by noted African-American author and historian Manning Marable, professor of history and public affairs at Columbia and director of Columbia’ Center for Contemporary Black History, comes 46 years after Grove Press posthumously published “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” co-written by Alex Haley.
Like Malcolm X, Marable did not live to see his book make it into print; he died three days before its publication. In the book, Marable makes numerous claims — which are being called “revelations” —that Malcolm X was bisexual, that he exaggerated his criminal background, that he was unfaithful to his wife, Betty Shabazz, and that his assassin was never brought to justice.
It’s unfortunate Marable is not around to answer questions. Historians, journalists and, in particular, the daughters of Malcolm X would like to ask him what evidence he used to arrive at these conclusions.
Marable was quick to invoke the seldom-used word “fictive” to describe “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” the scores of other biographies and the folklore fueled by Spike Lee’s 1992 film; ironically, Marable’s own work is being questioned.
On the surface, “Reinvention” purports to destroy some of the commonly held assumptions about Malcolm X, some created and perpetuated by Malcolm X himself and others created by Haley. In the book, which he spent more than 20 years researching and writing, Marable points out time and time again that Haley may have created a Malcolm X that didn’t exist. It’s important to note that Malcolm X never got the opportunity to review Haley’s final manuscript and that three chapters were excluded all together. (More about that later.)
Twenty-five pages of the book recount Malcolm X’s time in Lansing, when he was known as Malcolm Little. Even Marable (who at one point had 20 graduate students researching chronology) admits having difficulty in tracking his subject, due to the many names Malcolm X assumed during his life: He was known at various times as Red, Red Detroit¸ Satan and Malik El-Shabazz.
Malcolm X’s stay in the Lansing area (from when he was about 4 until he was 15 and took a Greyhound bus to Boston) was largely left unchallenged by Marable. However, the author did reinforce the idea that the death of Fred Little, Malcolm’s father, in 1931 was never conclusively determined to be the work of the Black Legion, a Klan-like organization, contrary to what has become popular opinion.
The Littles’ first home had already been burned down and, as Marable points out, although arson investigators tried to blame Little for the fire, it is likely the home was torched by racists protesting his presence in an all-white neighborhood just south of Lansing.
Marable recalls how at various times in his life Malcolm X claimed his father, a follower of Marcus Garvey, was murdered, but that in a 1963 speech at Michigan State University he specifically said his father’s death was accidental. If anything, Marable only confirms what historians have long known about Malcolm X: that he was a conflicted individual open to reinvention and that his storytelling was often inconsistent.
Mid-Michigan and Detroit area readers will be fascinated by the passages about the time he spent in Lansing, Mason and Detroit. In many ways, it is a quick tour of what clearly must’ve been a formative time in his life: the recounting of the arson and his father’s death underneath a Lansing streetcar; the disintegration of his family; his time with the foster family, the Gohannas (about whom readers will want to know more); his uprooting to rural Mason, where he would become class president in junior high school, etc.
John H. McClendon, MSU professor of philosophy and former director of the African-American and African studies program, said that overall he was disappointed in Marable’s work.
“He makes charges demeaning Malcolm’s character without sufficient proof,” McClendon said, citing the section describing Malcolm X’s alleged homosexual encounters as a case in point.
“The proof he offers is second- and third-hand, and anyone who is a historian would have problems with that. If there was no evidence, it should’ve been left out.”
McClendon also has strong opinions about Marable’s assertions that not only did Malcolm X exaggerate his criminal life, but that Haley created a totally new persona for Malcolm X based on his own Republican beliefs. McClendon said that documenting that type of thing is quite difficult: “Description of street crime is nebulous at best.”
McClendon said the research was further complicated by how easy it could be to confuse the various aliases of Malcolm X, especially “Red,” which was a common nickname among other African-Americans with red hair.
Marable’s psychological analysis of Malcolm X is something else that McClendon finds questionable. He is especially critical of Marable’s analysis of the relationship between Malcolm and Betty Shabazz that’s based on a smoking letter that Malcolm X sent to Elijah Muhammad about their relationship.
“It’s a shot in the dark,” McClendon says, “and a credible scholar and credible historian would not have done that.”
McClendon’s take on the overwhelmingly positive reviews the book is receiving is that journalists and historians may be giving a pass to Marable because of his untimely death. “The bottom line is it will become the definitive biography for years to come,” he said, “and that is unfortunate since, in reality, it hasn’t taken us that far.”
The battle over the facts of Malcolm X’s life is far from over. In 1992, Detroit entertainment lawyer and MSU graduate Gregory Reed purchased the manuscript of the “Autobiography of Malcolm X” for $100,000 in a sale of the literary estate of Alex Haley. Reed was also able to purchase three unpublished chapters for $23,000.
The chapters, according to published accounts, detail Malcolm X’s blueprint for the future in a world he could see evolving into one that was less racially divided.
Reed did allow Marable to read short portions of the unused chapters, but the exact content of those pages is still a secret. Reed will publish an annotated electronic version of Haley’s manuscript on May 21 that he says will refute much of what’s in Marable’s biography.
The final chapter of the life of Malcolm X clearly has not been written.
Bill Castanier is a writer for the Ctiy Pulse and mittenlit.com.
May 8, 2011 – May 21, 2011 Edition
