BOOK REVIEW by Karl Evanzznote: Please feel FREE to copy and republish AS IS only; no editing.
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Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning Marable
Viking (April 4, 2011)
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Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is an abomination. It is a cavalcade of innuendo and logical fallacy, and is largely “reinvented” from previous works on the subject.
It may serve as grounds for at least two defamation actions. The publisher would do well to consider recalling the book and issuing an apology for two reasons: a man labeled an “alleged murderer” has never been formally accused or convicted of that crime, and a woman mentioned by name is accused of committing adultery 46 years ago. As such, there is virtually no way to verify the allegation.
Marable, who died on April 1, takes cheap shots at Malcolm X, Malcolm’s parents, Betty Shabazz, Malcolm’s siblings, and almost anyone with a familial nexus to Malcolm X.
Its official release on the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is symbolic because this book amounts to an assassination of Malcolm X’s character. Marable’s friends dare to call this his “magnum opus.” To use street vernacular, this ain’t his magnum nothin’.
It is merely the logical culmination of a life spent in the ivory tower writing books of scant interest beyond the tower walls. If the so-called public intellectuals praising the book were Marable’s true friends, they might have at least apprised him of the hostile tone and the lack of vetting on key allegations, the central one being Malcolm X’s alleged homosexual affair. The media ran with this allegation without checking its validity.
Malcolm X, Marable claims, “falsely attributed” his own sexual encounters with an older white male to a friend named “Rudy (p. 66).”
“Based on circumstantial but strong evidence, Malcolm was probably [emphasis supplied] describing his own homosexual encounter with Paul Lennon. The revelations of his involvement with Lennon produced much speculation about Malcolm’s sexual orientation.”
Speculation by whom? Marable, that’s who.
There are four footnotes for this page, but none substantiates this scurrilous assertion, one that would be grounds for libel were either party alive. The claim is juxtaposed by dozens of pages relating to Malcolm’s maturation into selling drugs, pimping (including white women), burglary, and other crimes. If you look at the mug shot – the first in a pallid 16-page photo section – you see the face of a thug you do not want to tangle with.
Moreover, there is nothing in Malcolm X’s far superior work to suggest that there was any touching of genitalia, let alone oral or anal sodomy. In fact, Malcolm X’s autobiography clearly shows (in the chapter titled “Caught”) how amusing he found the strange things that made white “johns” reach orgasm. One man, he wrote, ejaculated by sitting outside a bedroom door listening to a black couple making whoopee.
Nor does Marable offer proof that the employer was homosexual, bisexual, or asexual. The only logical conclusion from the facts is that the man had unusual recreational habits. Marable offers no proof that the man didn’t pay women to pour powder on him from time to time, for example, or that anyone employed by the man was homosexual. His proffer is a want ad for a male secretary. The ad ran twice over a three-day period in one newspaper on one occasion.
Another example of logical fallacy here is the one used to denigrate Malcolm X’s father, Earl Little Sr., who is accused of bigamy.
“Earl abandoned his young wife and children . . . He did not bother to get a legal divorce,” he writes (p. 16).
Marable cites other authors to support this claim, but none of them establishes that he checked court records to confirm this allegation. He offers nothing to show that he conducted a court search for the divorce record.
On the opening page of Chapter One, Marable writes: “In 1909, he married a local African-American woman, Daisy Mason, and in quick succession had three children: Ella, Mary, and Earl, Jr.”
Notice the problem? Marable neglects to inform us of the exact date that the couple married in 1909 and whether the marriage was done legally or by common law. Again, his notes show no indication that he searched court records for a marriage license. Did Marable know the date of the marriage?
If they were not legally married, Earl had no legal obligation to file for divorce. As such, Marable’s condescending tone – he did not bother – shows his contempt not only for Malcolm but for Malcolm’s father as well. The real sin here is that Marable fails to show that he bothered to check for a marriage license or a divorce filing.
He uses similar tactics to malign Ella Little – the woman who fired one of his key sources – describing her as “belligerent,” “paranoid” and “reckless.” While he tries to countenance his charge by citing a psychiatric evaluation, Marable knows full well that psychiatrists routinely employed such terms to describe supporters of Marcus Garvey. Their reasoning was simple: any black person who rejects America has to be crazy.
In the preface, Marable boasts that his book will “reconstruct the full contours of his remarkable life” (p. 14), and proceeds to contrive the most mean-spirited biography of Malcolm X in two decades.
The footnotes reflect heavy reliance upon people who were known enemies of Malcolm X. An earlier biographer used anonymous sources for some of his controversial claims, which was bad. Marable gives no source for some of the tabloid-type allegations, which is a million times worse.
According to Marable, Malcolm was having an extramarital affair with one of his secretaries, an affair that lasted until his death. Keep in mind that Malcolm knew by early 1965 that he was under constant surveillance by the FBI as well as by members of the Nation of Islam. How do we know? Because Malcolm X said so repeatedly in speeches and his posthumous memoir:
“Elijah seems to know every move I make,” Haley quotes him (Epilogue) saying in the final days of his short life. On February 16, Malcolm X told Haley: “I have been marked for death in the next fives days. I have the names of five Black Muslims who have been chosen to kill me. I will announce them at the meeting.”
On February 21, five Black Muslims killed him while his wife and four little girls watched in horror.
FBI files show that agents worked in eight-hour shifts to keep Malcolm under around-the-clock surveillance in weeks prior to his death. Malcolm told Haley and others that he would see them watching him as they took notes while he left his house, as he went to the drugstore to get a newspaper, and as he went to his office. FBI documents confirm his suspicions.
Note further that Black Muslims were threatening to kill him to prevent him from testifying in a Los Angeles paternity case filed against Elijah Muhammad by two of his teenage secretaries.
With those kinds of stressors, an extramarital affair the night before he died seems highly unlikely, and he certainly would not have chosen a teenage girl at a time when he was scheduled to testify against Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad for doing the same thing.
After claiming that Betty Shabazz had an affair with one of Malcolm’s assistants guarding his family (p. 394), Marable alleges that Malcolm X pursued yet another extramarital relationship.
He also claims that Malcolm met with Alex Haley on February 20 to discuss their joint book project, took Betty to a friend’s house for her to spend the night, and then rented a cheap hotel room where he “may have” had the teenage secretary as a bed-warmer (p 423).
By that logic, he may have met with Olive Oyl, Bluto, and Popeye that night as well.
There are numerous published accounts from those close to Malcolm that he was near his breaking point by then. Black Muslims had bombed his home on Valentine’s Day because Malcolm refused to move out of the house pending a judgment over its ownership.
Marable claims that the same teenager who was romantically involved with Malcolm the night of February 20th showed up at the Audubon Ballroom the next day. She sat in the front row next to a man whose name would later appear in FBI documents related to the assassination.
The teenager, Marable writes, and the Newark mosque official now “live together in the same New Jersey residence, and [name deleted] has maintained absolute silence about her relationship with both Malcolm X and [name deleted]” (p. 452).
The source given for this allegation is Abdur-Rahman Muhammad. When I asked Muhammad for his sources, he declined comment.
Despite the obvious lack of due diligence, Marable spares no opportunity to praise his own ingenuity and tenacity.
“After years [my emphasis] of research,” he writes in “Life Beyond the Legend,” “I discovered that several chapters had been deleted [from the biography] prior to publication – chapters that envisioned the construction of a united front of Negroes led by the Black Muslims.”
Yeah, and Columbus “discovered” America.
The word “years” has to be a typographical error. Surely he means after minutes of research.
This is from the front page of the Life section of USA Today:
“MEMORIES FOR SALE: A manuscript of Alex Haley's first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, sold for $ 100,000 at an auction to settle claims against the late author's estate. The buyer was Detroit entertainment lawyer Gregory Reed, who also paid $ 21,500 for three deleted chapters of the book.” [my emphasis]
The date of the story? October 2, 1992.
The story ran in practically every major newspaper and black magazine in the next two months. Any college student could have signed on to Nexis or other news databases and found that in five minutes or less. A Google search for “Malcolm X,” “autobiography,” and “missing chapters” generated more than 4,000 hits on April 5.
As a former professional researcher (I worked in the news research department of The Washington Post for more than a decade), I immediately recognized Marable’s fraud, one of many in this pedestrian publication.
The late professor uncovers no significant new material, yet he has the chutzpah to dismiss with a flick of his wrist earlier books about Malcolm’s life and assassination:
In reading “all [emphasis supplied] of the literature about Malcolm produced in the 1990s, I was struck by its shallow character and lack of original sources (p. 490).”
When I began reading Chapter 7, I felt like I was revisiting my biography of Elijah Muhammad. It deals with marital discord between Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and Clara Muhammad. The chapter’s first four pages read like a “reinvention” of chapters from The Messenger, published by Pantheon Books in 1999. I checked the footnotes for those four pages and noticed that seven of the first ten cite The Messengeras the source (p. 521).
Why didn’t Marable use the original source material?He makes no mention of the FBI’s national and Chicago files on Clara Muhammad.
Marable has two primary arguments: (1) the intelligence community and the New York Police Department deliberately ignored serious threats against Malcolm’s X life, and (2) there is overwhelming evidence that the five assassins came from the Nation of Islam’s Newark mosque.
That’s it.
His first argument is based upon research in my first book, The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X, published in November 1992. His second argument – and the one that the media chose to ignore for the past two decades – is based upon the research of Zak Kondo of Baltimore City Community College. Conspiracys: Unraveling the Assassination of Malcolm X (1993) is without question the most authoritative examination of the mechanics of the assassination.
Marable had hundreds of thousands of dollars at his disposal for more than a decade. He had over twenty researchers at his disposal. Given far less capital and manpower, both David J. Garrow and Taylor Branch separately produced three-volume works of encyclopedic detail on Malcolm’s contemporary, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Despite his acknowledgments of gratitude to other prominent researchers and benefactors, Marable’s book is a single volume with questionable documentation.
Poor exposition and inexcusable typographical errors taint the book. When I communicated with Marable last June regarding a statement obtained from Linward X Cathcart by New York police after the assassination, his reply referred to “Linwood” Cathcart. I advised him of the misspelling and cautioned him to check his manuscript for the mistake.
One of his assistants replied under his name and told me that Marable dictated his responses for her to relay. She blamed herself for misspelling the name and assured me that the book had the proper spelling. There are two references to Cathcart’s full name in the book, and both times the name is spelled Linwood (p. 5, 452).It is also misspelled in the index.
In the prologue, Marable describes Malcolm X’s memoir as a “cautionary tale about human waste and the tragedies produced by racial segregation (p. 9).”
Human waste? As in feces and urine?
“No man has more accurately described and analyzed the existential, political, social, moral and spiritual plight of a victimized people than has Malcolm X in this book,” an objective reviewer wrote about theAutobiography of Malcolm X.
A Life of Reinvention, by contrast, is immediately forgettable. It was written by a chronic pen pusher who lived a rather unremarkable middle class existence but nonetheless implies that Malcolm X was an amateur this or a mediocre that.
“I’m the man you think you are,” Malcolm X said. Malcolm X was at the top of the class in school, on top of the hustling game during his hoodlum years, and a hell raiser in prison. He was national spokesman for a black organization that barely functioned before he joined in 1952. He was, finally, a revolutionary known and respected by other prominent revolutionaries – Fidel Castro, Ben Bella, and Che Guevara, to name a few.
He was, in short, a black panther of a man. By contrast, Marable was just another paper tiger.
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Karl Evanzz is the author of three books, including an investigative look at the assassination of Malcolm X. He is the coauthor of Dancing with the Devil with hip-hop artist Mark Curry. His next book will be published in May.
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At first I was annoyed, but I actually kinda like that this article doesnt answer any of its own questions.
mont-claire, you have to stop speaking like white rondebosch kids at homegrown parties. enough with the aweh bras already!
great article. great photos.
gentrification means the restoration of run-down urban areas by the middle class (resulting in the displacement of low-income residents)… no art is going to result in the displacement of anyone! so this article is cool in that it makes us aware of whats going down in woodstock, but actually it’s position is total hype! get it right dudes! more sloppy journo mahala!
the pics rock. nice work.
Haha, Montel crushes on Anthea Duce, while Anthea Duce crushes on the collective indie boys of SA and makes a little blog about it.
MONTEL CRUSHES ON EVERYONE…EVERDAY IS A WEEKEND
“Live for yourself – there’s no one else more worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more”
“Live for yourself – there’s no one else more worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more”
what the fuck does that mean?
He isn’t fat but he isn’t exactly Henry Cele either! – My man! This is y im dating your sister.
so what you saying anonymous? That people must just sommer pull themselves up by their boot straps? And how does that relate to the debate around art and gentrification?
Graf might mean a lot to Mahala readers.
But I imagine that most lower Woodstock residents would have preferred it if Addidas had chosen to plaster some walls, and paint them a nice colour.
Graf on their houses just highlights the fact that they are living in sub-economic squalor (good people don’t graf nice hoods)
Saying that graf gentrifies these houses is like saying that tatts ennoble their occupants.
Gentrification se cat!
nissim has a point. You dont see any graffiti in the bo kaap. Those moslem tannies will whip your butt if they catch you.
Very interesting article. Especially on the angle of gentrification and art! Glad to see some white kids from the burbs understands the cost of gentrification.
Who you calling white? Bitch!
Wasn’t me…
Gentrification starts with cheap rents. People move in. Rents go up.
Blah blah – you know the rest.
Investigating why the rents are cheap is more interesting.
Because the buildings are empty.
Why? Because they are no longer needed.
Why? Because there are no more jobs there
cheap eastern imports of clothes
Where does adidas have half their clothes made?
ironic isn’t it
well said Nissim! i feel the exact same way. Even though these sorts of community projects bring some much needed colour, care and attention to the ‘forgotten’ areas, i can’t help but wonder to what extent these initiatives truly uplift/empower these people/places. It is not, after all, just another function of our economically divided society that the affluent can go play artsy artsy on the old urban canvas? i tend to favour community projects that have real benefits (like running water, electricity, recreational parks etc) for and that require the participation of the communities involved.
All I can see is that this author is a dooshbag. Keep wanking asshole
Author = dooshbag = coin operator = 5
@badassbitches…you read this at 1am in the morning..you fucking love me..hope you enjoyed playing with yourself.
the artist who did the pieces of the grey sculptural skeleton like animals (that are mentioned first in the article) his name is not “Dissident”, its Dal
http://www.daleast.com/
Thanks Anonymous… DAL is insane
faith47 and DAL [not 'dissident'] were not part of of this adidas project.
Yes we know… sorry it wasn’t clear in the article! You both rock for doing it on your own steam (for years now) and your art contributes to the greater good of the whole world… love your work!
watch the video and read over the whole website of the project,the is article doesnt seem to give the full perspective of what the project accomplished
be sure to watch the video,its shows you what the community has to say
http://www.i-art-sa-project.com
I enjoyed the article and enjoyed the project. Although i have a small correction, Rashid did not go get my camera. I met the Lady that…lets just say runs shit on Gimpy, and had to pay a “donation” to her to get my camera back from her son. Rashid helped in so many ways unrelated to crime itself.
At first the project was presented to me as I-art-SA and I was keen to film as a video artist, at Rickys invatarion. But when we were told it was supported by Adidas I was concerned that the film would be subject to head office approval, and be a form of commercial. So I told Ricky that, like the films I have done with Faith47, I would prefer to thank those who helped make it possible in the credits rather than ad a corporate logo. He agreed.
With that in mind I looked over what was shot and can say as one of the creatives involved i felt blessed to have worked in that area. I make no debate. I am terrible at it. But that said believe we are accountable for how we spend our time. If not to God than to ourselves. I have chosen to believe that any care and attention given that is openly received like our efforts were and are as the artists of this project, by that small part of the Woodstock community, brand or no brand, made for real connections between people. Long term connections, and feel most importantly that it was a great use of our time.
The old lady in the film summed it best. She told me that business not “hipsters” were trying to evict her. 87 years in the house she was born in and the factory across the road wants her and her frail husband out. Art can do many things, in this case as in many others it simply turning some heads in the direction most are not looking.
Viva Makhulu Viva! Thanks for the intimate perspective Ro!
They probably saw the U2 photos and decided ‘fuck it’.
<3 u montle
see you at the sizzler in sea point…..
I just found the i art woodstock video on youtube…worth the watch.
These locals seem to really dig it…so…eh..?
If it has this kind of effect on the local community…nice one i guess…
i think adidas did a great thing with this project and merely chose to support a bunch of artists that wanted to share their work and creativity with the woodstock community. it wasn’t about throwing the adidas brand in peoples faces, they were merely a supporter and clearly let the project find it’s own course, i don’t see a single adidas logo in any of the murals and the documentary merely thanks adidas for their support – i bet that they actually funded that documentary and saw it before it was revealed to the rest of the public – therefore approving it without insisting that their logo to be thrown in at the end and merely wanting to be subtly acknowledged at the end. i love this project and think that the voices in the documentary speak louder than all the ‘anti-gentrificationers’ out there – who cares what you want for the woodstock community, watch the documentary and listen to what they want…
This is the best art/culture article I’ve read on Mahala.
Really great job Montle and Andy.
Pretty amazing art. I live about a block from Gympie and have done so for about a year. Being white I’m too shit scared to wander around and get to know the area properly so there are a few pieces here I haven’t seen before. They are uniformly awesome.
I have however met plenty of people from around the area and I’m not so sure everybody is as enthusiastic about gentrification as this piece makes out. Plenty of folk around the lower woodstock area rent – they have nothing to gain from higher house prices besides higher rents and/or the pain of finding a newer spot in an even poorer area. Most are struggling too hard to worry about house prices in the years ahead.
PS Montle. Your writing rocks. Fuck your critics – they are uncultured cretins.
not really a ‘community’ mural project IMO. doesn’t look like there was any real community involvement? we just finished a community mural project in atlantis – a real lost city – forgotten by just about everyone and in no danger of gentrification.
we were sponsored by the city and did a 6 day project involving 3 professionals + 6 local youth as mural interns – so there was a training element too. we were based at the local primary school and held community consultation sessions with local residents to input on the design/content. the result may not be the quality of public art seen here in woodstock but it was a community mural!
SICK
First a kak rapper,then a kak Dj now you a kak writer…wow time to reassess!
@ fuck….we obviously know each other..you probably smile in my face and shake my hand..say it to my face please so i can kick your cunt in next time…youre either a girl i ignored or a guy whose girl likes me..im sorry…i cant help it.