The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon’s Enduring Impact on America

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. (May)

Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly identified the reporter who investigated Malcolm X’s death as William Goldman.