The Michael Eric Dyson Reader (95 page)

5
. Michael Eric Dyson, “Probing a Divided Metaphor,” in
Reflecting Black: African-American
Cultural Criticism
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 115–128. For discussion of Malcolm’s motivations for his autobiography, and Alex Haley’s role in shaping the narrative of Malcolm’s life, see also Arnold Rampersad, “The Color of His Eyes: Bruce Perry’s
Malcolm
and Malcolm’s Malcolm,” and Robin D. G. Kelley, “The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II,” both in
Malcolm X: In Our
Own Image,
ed. Joe Wood (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), pp. 117–134, 155–175, respectively.

6
. For more of my comment on other books about Malcolm, see Dyson, “Probing a Divided Metaphor,” pp. 115–128.

7
. For a good overview and discussion of these groups, see Raymond Hall,
Black Separatism in the United States
(Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1978).

8
. For an excellent discussion of the links between Malcolm X and the Black Power movement, of which he was a precursor, with discussions of SNCC, CORE, and the Black Panthers, see Robert Allen,
Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 21–88. For a discussion of the economic programs and comparisons of the social visions of each group, see Hall,
Black Separatism in the United States,
especially pp. 139–196.

9
. See especially John Ansbro,
Martin Luther King Jr.: The Making of a Mind
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1982); Stephen B. Oates,
Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King Jr.
(New York: Harper & Row, 1982); and David Garrow,
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King
Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955–196 8
(New York: Morrow, 1986).

10
. John Henrik Clarke, ed.,
Malcolm X: The Man and His Times
(1969; Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1990).

11
. Charles Wilson, “Leadership Triumph in Leadership Tragedy,” in
Malcolm X,
ed. Clarke, pp. 36–37.

12
. James Boggs, “The Influence of Malcolm X on the Political Consciousness of Black Americans,” and Wyatt Tee Walker, “Nothing but a Man,” in
Malcolm X,
ed. Clarke, pp. 52, 67. 13. Albert Cleage, “Myths About Malcolm X,” in ed. Clarke, p. 15.

13
. Albert Cleage, “Myths About Malcolm X,” in
Malcolm X,
ed. Clarke, p. 15.

14
. Oba T’shaka,
The Political Legacy of Malcolm X
(Richmond, Calif.: Pan Afrikan, 1983); Malcolm X,
The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X,
ed. Benjamin Karim [Goodman] (New York: Arcade, 1971).

15
. T’shaka,
Political Legacy of Malcolm X,
pp. 244–245.

16
. Ibid., pp. 57, 118.

17
. Karim, Introduction to Malcolm X,
End of White World Supremacy,
pp. 21–22.

18
. Gordon Parks, “Malcolm X: The Minutes of Our Last Meeting,” in
Malcolm X,
ed. Clark, p. 120.

19
. On his repudiation of the white devil theory, see Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley,
Autobiography of Malcolm X
(New York: Grove Press, 1965), pp. 362–363. For Malcolm’s desire to meet Robeson a month before his death, see Martin Duberman,
Paul
Robeson
(New York: Knopf, 1988), p. 528.

20
. I take up this issue in “Beyond Essentialism: Expanding African-American Cultural Criticism,” in
Reflecting Black,
pp. xiii
–
xxxiii.

21
. The debate about cultural and racial authenticity as it relates to who is able to interpret Malcolm’s legacy legitimately has most recently occurred in writer-activist Amiri Baraka’s attacks on Spike Lee about Lee’s film portrait of Malcolm X before his film appeared. Implicit in Baraka’s charges that Lee would not adequately or accurately represent Malcolm is the belief that Baraka’s representation of Malcolm is superior. Baraka’s hagiographical recollections of Malcolm and his refusal to concede that Lee’s claims and representations of him may be equally valid are a prime example of the often insular intellectual climate surrounding debates about Malcolm. The irony here, of course, is that of all current black directors, with the possible exception of John Singleton, Spike Lee appears most suitably disposed to represent a vision of Malcolm that jibes with Baraka’s cultural views, given Lee’s Afrocentric film and aesthetic vocabulary and his neonationalist cultural perspective.

22
. Malcolm X, “Answers to Questions at the Militant Labor Forum,” in
By Any Means
Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter, by Malcolm X,
ed. George Breitman (New York: Pathfinder, 1970), pp. 22–23.

23
. See Henry Young’s two-volume study,
Major Black Religious Leaders
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1977, 1979).

24
. Louis E. Lomax,
When the Word Is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and
the Black Muslim World
(Cleveland: World, 1963), and
To Kill a Black Man
(Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1968); James H. Cone,
Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare?
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991); Peter Goldman,
The Death and Life of Malcolm X,
2d ed. (1973; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979). For a discussion of moral saints, see Susan Wolf, “Moral Saints,”
Journal of Philosophy
8 (1982): 419–439; and Robert Merrihew Adam’s response to her essay in
The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 164–173.

25
. Of course, the classic treatment of the Black Muslims during the leadership of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X is C. Eric Lincoln,
The Black Muslims in America
(Boston: Beacon, 1961, 1973). Also very helpful is E. U. Essien-Udom,
Black Nationalism: A Search for
an Identity in America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). For a treatment of the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and it transition to orthodox Islamic practice and belief under Wallace Muhammad as the World Community of al-Islam in the West, see Clifton E. Marsh,
From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Separatism
to Islam, 1930–1980
(Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1984). For a historical and analytic treatment of the Nation of Islam, including its history under Elijah and Wallace Muhammad, and its separate revitalization as the second incarnation of the Nation of Islam under Louis Farrakhan, see Martha F. Lee,
The Nation of Islam: An American Millenarian Movement
(Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1988).

26
. Lomax,
When the Word Is Given,
pp. 87, 68.

27
. For an extended review of Cone’s book, see my essay “Martin and Malcolm,” in
Reflecting Black,
pp. 250–263.

28
. Of course, Malcolm’s life and thought represented and addressed various aspects of both religious and revolutionary nationalism. In this regard, see John H. Bracey Jr., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick, eds.,
Black Nationalism in America
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), p. 505. Also see Essien-Udom,
Black Nationalism.
For a fine historical treatment of the heyday of black nationalism, see Wilson Jeremiah Moses,
The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925
(Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1978).

29
. Cone,
Martin and Malcolm and America,
p. 151.

30
. Ibid., p. 170.

31
. Other works explore the relationship between King and Malcolm, along with comparative analyses of other intellectual and religious figures, in a religious and social ethical context. For two fine examples, see Peter Paris,
Black Leaders in Conflict,
2d ed. (Louisville: Westminster Press/John Knox Press, 1991); and Robert M. Franklin,
Liberating Visions:
Human Fulfillment and Social Justice in African-American Thought
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990).

32
. Ralph Ellison, quoted in Robert B. Stepto and Michael S. Harper, “Study and Experience: An Interview with Ralph Ellison,” in
Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American
Literature, Art, and Scholarship,
ed. Stepto and Harper (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), p. 458.

33
. For insightful treatments of Du Bois, see Arnold Rampersad,
The Art and Imagination
of W.E.B. Du Bois
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976); Gerald Horne,
Black and
Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986); Manning Marable,
W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat
(Boston: Twayne, 1986); and, of course, the definitive treatment of Du Bois to date, David Levering Lewis,
W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868 –1919
(New York: Holt, 1993). For the definitive treatment of Booker T. Washington, see Louis Harlan’s two volumes:
Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1972 ); and
Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

34
. Lomax,
To Kill a Black Man,
p. 10.

35
. George Breitman, “More Than One Way ‘To Kill a Black Man,’” in
The Assassination
of Malcolm X,
ed. George Breitman, Herman Porter, and Baxter Smith (New York: Pathfinder, 1976), pp. 131–144.

36
. Robert Franklin also makes use of Goldman’s notion of public moralist in his excellent book
Liberating Vision ’s,
a comparative study of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

37
. There is a swelling literature on the possible plots and theories of how Malcolm was murdered. While the close study of this literature is beyond my purposes here, it certainly constitutes an intriguing category of debate around Malcolm. See, for example, Breitman, Porter, and Smith, eds.,
Assassination of Malcolm X;
and Karl Evanzz,
The Judas Factor: The Plot
to Kill Malcolm X
(New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 1992).

38
. For arguments that Goldman’s views about Malcolm’s assassination support the official government story, and that the CIA and the Bureau of Special Services (BOSS)—the name of the New York secret police agency at the time of Malcolm’s death—were implicated in his assassination, see George Breitman, “A Liberal Supports the Government Version,” in
Assassination of Malcolm X,
ed. Breitman, Porter, and Smith, pp. 145–166.

39
. Goldman,
Death and Life of Malcolm X,
p. 191.

40
. Martin Luther King Jr., quoted in David Halberstam, “When ‘Civil Rights’ and ‘Peace’ Join Forces,” in
Martin Luther King Jr.: A Profile,
ed. C. Eric Lincoln, rev. ed. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1984), p. 202.

41
. Clayborne Carson, “Malcolm and the American State,” in
Malcolm X: The FBI File,
ed. David Gallen (New York: Carroll Graf, 1991), p. 18.

42
. Ibid.

43
. See George Devereux,
Basic Problems of Ethnopsychiatry,
trans. Basia Miller Gulati and George Devereux (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched
of the Earth
(New York: Grove, 1966), and
Black Skin, White Masks
(New York: Grove, 1967); Erich Fromm,
Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962); Christopher Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism
(New York: Warner Books, 1979); Bruce Brown,
Marx, Freud, and the Critique of Everyday Life: Toward a Permanent Cultural
Revolution
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); Margaret MacDonald, ed.,
Philosophy and
Analysis
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1954); and relevant work of the Frankfurt school, including Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas. For a collection of essays by these authors, see Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, eds.,
The Essential Frankfurt School Reader
(New York: Continuum, 1982). For a treatment of their work in relation to psychoanalytic theory, see C. Fred Alford,
Narcissism:
Socrates, the Frankfurt School, and Psychoanalytic Theory
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

44
.
Richard Lichtman,
The Production of Desire: The Integration of Psychoanalysis into Marxist
Theory
(New York: Free Press, 1982), p. ix.

45
. Ibid., pp. ix–x.

46
. Erik H. Erikson,
Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence
(New York: Norton, 1969). For a more controversial psychobiographical treatment of a historical figure, see Erikson’s study of Protestant reformer Martin Luther,
Young Man Luther
(New York: Norton, 1958).

47
. Eugene Victor Wolfenstein,
The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution
(1981; London: Free Association Books, 1989).

48
. Ibid., pp. 1–2.

49
. Ibid., p. xiii.

50
. For an important historical examination of white working-class racism, see David R. Roediger,
The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
(London: Verso, 1991).