The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

"Landmark indeed, and brave. It follows Malcolm Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2012 and The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm which was published in 1965 to great acclaim. The Payne biography is a rebuke to those who insist that if a subject has won the attention of one biographer, it is off the market to others. New evidence can be unearthed, existing evidence can be challenged or lead to other inquiries. Perspective, structure, and expression matter. Payne has elevated oral history and narrative to an art form and excavates Malcolm X’s origin story, from his birth as Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska to his assassination in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City’s Washington Heights. Payne captures the winding arc of Malcom’s life through the death of his father—which Malcolm believed to be nefarious, and Payne disproves—and the confinement of his mother in a psychiatric hospital. As a troubled adolescent, he landed in prison while his brothers, who Payne interviewed, found their way to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm joined them, and transformed into an evangelist for Black self-respect and a fierce critic of white America. “The Paynes did not simply visit archives, they created the archive” It is remarkable that the Paynes did not simply visit archives, they created the archive through thousands of eyewitness reports and personal documents. They went way beyond the declassified FBI files and secondhand stories of the legend of Malcolm’s transformation. Payne may have drawn on his journalistic skills to build this biography on firsthand accounts and oral history, but he also worked as a historian to contextualize these contradicting accounts and synthesize them into an extraordinary narrative. Payne writes the 20th-century American history of the Nation of Islam and situates Malcom in these ideological battles— through his parents, who adhered to Marcus Garvey’s philosophy of self-reliance, Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism; through activist intellectuals like W E B Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. Payne explains Malcolm X’s route to Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, including his break from them which led to his assassination. Payne shows his experience as an investigative reporter, especially regarding the recovery of details involving the plot to kill Malcolm. Indeed. Payne confirms that the assassination order came directly from Muhammad’s headquarters in Chicago to the gunmen. We also learn that Malcolm, on the direction of Elijah Muhammad, met with Ku Klux Klan leaders in 1961 about a land deal. It turned out that the Klansmen were really set on the assassination of Martin Luther King, which led to Malcolm’s break with the Nation of Islam. These revelations establish the historic record, but—without diminishing their importance—explosive disclosures make a news story not a biography. What distinguishes Payne’s biography of Malcolm X is the multiplicity of voices and evidence, and his creation of a richly rewarding narrative."