The Afterlife of Malcolm X
An Outcast Turned Icon's Enduring Impact on America
-
- $20.99
Publisher Description
Published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the first major study of Malcolm X’s influence in the sixty years since his assassination, exploring his enduring impact on culture, politics, and civil rights.
Malcolm X has become as much of an American icon as Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King. But when he was murdered in 1965, he was still seen as a dangerous outsider. White America found him alienating, mainstream African Americans found him divisive, and even his admirers found him bravely radical. Although Ossie Davis famously eulogized Malcolm X as “our own Black shining prince,” he never received the mainstream acceptance toward which he seemed to be striving in his final year. It is more in death than his life that Malcolm’s influence has blossomed and come to leave a deep imprint on the cultural landscape of America.
With impeccable research and original reporting, Mark Whitaker tells the story of Malcolm X’s far-reaching posthumous legacy. It stretches from founders of the Black Power Movement such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton to hip-hop pioneers such as Public Enemy and Tupac Shakur. Leaders of the Black Arts and Free Jazz movements from Amiri Baraka to Maya Angelou, August Wilson, and John Coltrane credited their political awakening to Malcolm, as did some of the most influential athletes of our time, from Muhammad Ali to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and beyond. Spike’s movie biopic and the Black Lives Matter movement reintroduced Malcolm to subsequent generations. Across the political spectrum, he has been cited as a formative influence by both Barack Obama—who venerated Malcolm’s “unadorned insistence on respect”—and Clarence Thomas, who was drawn to Malcolm’s messages of self-improvement and economic self-help.
In compelling new detail, Whitaker also retraces the long road to exoneration for two men wrongfully convicted of Malcolm’s murder, making The Afterlife of Malcolm X essential reading for anyone interested in true crime, American politics, culture, and history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Whitaker (Saying It Loud) examines the far-reaching legacy of Malcolm X in this captivating biography. Whitaker begins with the immediate impact of Malcolm's February 1965 assassination. Within days, a sign appeared in a Harlem bookstore window that proclaimed "watch his fighting spirit spread," and Peter Goldman, a journalist who had reported closely on Malcolm during his life, began investigating the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death—a thread of Whitaker's narrative that concludes with the 2020 exoneration of those convicted of the killing. Meanwhile Doubleday, the publishing house engaged to publish Malcolm's Autobiography, renounced their publication rights, fearful for their employees' safety, and "the controversy-hardened" editors at Grove Press swooped in to publish it. The poet Amiri Baraka, who later wrote that "Malcolm's outspokenness" was a galvanizing force that pushed him to "go beyond poetry" toward "some kind of action literature," responded to the assassination by founding the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School in Harlem; that summer, "BARTS members took to the streets... to stage poetry readings," performances, and concerts that supercharged the Black Arts movement. Whitaker further traces Malcolm's influence through a fascinating array of figures from the 1970s to the present day, from boxer Muhammad Ali to Public Enemy and Spike Lee. Readers will relish this sweeping and singular work. Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly identified the reporter who investigated Malcolm X's death as William Goldman.
