CNN
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In his brief and tumultuous life, Malcolm X took on so many identities that it can be hard to know which version someone is talking about when they cite his legacy.
In one of his earliest incarnations, he was Malcolm Little, the charming and whip-smart student who was elected class president by White students at his junior high school. In another, he was “Detroit Red,” the Harlem street hustler who wore flashy zoot suits. He eventually morphed into a fiery spokesman for the Nation of Islam who once said, “the only thing I like integrated is my coffee.”
By the time his life was cut short at age 39 by assassins, he had changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and was moving toward another identity as a Sunni Muslim and a Pan-African leader who had renounced his hatred of White people.
But when Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times # 1 bestseller “How To be an Antiracist,” began writing a biography of the civil rights leader for young readers, he uncovered yet another Malcolm X: a thoroughly contemporary figure who would fit right into America’s turbulent political landscape of 2025.
Kendi says Malcolm would have been uncomfortably familiar with rising Islamophobia in the US, the surge in White Christian nationalism and politicians who routinely deploy White supremacist rhetoric.
And the recent campaign to abolish DEI efforts across America would have reminded Malcolm of growing up in a “separate but unequal” society under Jim Crow laws, Kendi says.
“The ultimate impact of the erasure of our ability to promote diversity, inclusion and equality is to have a nation that Malcolm could recognize,” Kendi says. “When he died in 1965, the nation was just beginning to be desegregated, particularly in places like Mississippi and Alabama. That’s the irony — we could be headed towards a nation that is entirely recognizable by Malcom X, and by people who did not live past the 1960s.”
That Kendi would make such an assessment is another grim irony. Five years ago, the scholar was a symbol of racial optimism in America. He became an intellectual celebrity in the George Floyd summer of 2020 after his books became a go-to source for millions of Americans who, at least for a moment, experienced a racial reckoning.
He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” became a sought-after commentator on race and added a new word to the way we talk about it: antiracist. The term means to actively fight against racism rather than passively claim to be non-racist.
Then came the “Whitelash.” Kendi’s books were banned by some school libraries, and he became a central villain in a GOP-led campaign to purge the teaching of systemic racism in American public schools.
Today, however, Kendi is back with an upcoming book, “Malcolm Lives!” Billed as the first major biography of Malcolm X for young people in more than 30 years, it’s set to be published in May on the centennial of Malcolm’s birth in 1925.
The fast-moving narrative uncovers a side of Malcolm that remains unknown to even some of his biggest followers: the staggering brutality he experienced as a child, the tender letters he exchanged with relatives, and a shocking revelation about the identity of the man who founded the Nation of Islam, the Black separatist group that was catapulted out of obscurity by Malcolm’s charisma.
CNN talked to Kendi about who assassinated Malcolm X, why he thinks Malcolm would recognize America in 2025 and how Malcolm’s example could help inspire antiracists who feel demoralized today.
There have been many books about Malcolm X. Why have you written about him now, and what are you offering that’s distinctive?
We’re living in a time that Malcolm X would recognize. A time when you have different groups of Black people who are divided politically. A time when Islamophobia and even genocide against Muslims are ever-present. A time when White nationalists and White supremacists are gaining control of governments.
If there was ever a person in American history who was fearless, who had the capacity to not only unite Black people but boldly challenge racism, global White supremacy and Islamophobia — and could not be co-opted because he truly loved Black people — it was Malcolm X. I wanted the book to convey that his bold voice is here with us in this moment.
The book is written primarily for young people, but of course adults will read it. Many people are not fully aware of all that Malcolm went through as a young person. It was critically important to chronicle Malcolm’s youth so that readers could fully understand all he had to overcome so that youth who are facing similar challenges — whether they’re impoverished or hungry, in foster care, incarcerated, lost their parents, or they’ve been separated from their siblings — they could relate to Malcolm and realize that they could be an impactful person like him.
What are some of the common myths about Malcolm X?
He’s contrasted with King (The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.), so that there’s this notion that King is this non-violent activist and Malcolm is the violent activist. Malcolm X was a champion of self-defense. He would often say to his followers, do not hit anyone, fight anyone or break the law. Do not engage in violence. But if somebody lays their hands on you, you have to defend yourself. The teaching of people to defend themselves has been transformed into somehow (that) Malcolm was violent.
I also don’t think people know the full extent of his travels. By the last few years of his life, he truly had a global outlook on racism and imperialism. He was constantly trying to encourage members of the Nation of Islam, and ultimately his followers and other organizations, to recognize the global import of what they were facing in the United States. People don’t fully grasp just how much he was thinking about Black life and struggle all over the world. He visited Gaza. He spoke to students and community leaders in dozens of countries across Africa, the Middle East and in Europe about their issues and how it connected back to the United States.
You mention King. There is a tantalizing passage in the book where you write about their one and only meeting in 1964. The photo of that meeting, with King and Malcolm standing side by side, is seared in my mind. What would have happened if Malcolm had survived? What kind of relationship would he have developed with King and other civil rights leaders?
In the last year of his life, Malcolm routinely spoke about a willingness to work closely with other civil rights leaders. One of the major reasons for leaving the Nation of Islam was to be able to form coalitions with civil rights leaders. What’s striking is in 1967, Martin Luther King started expressing ideas from the Black Power movement that was largely birthed by Malcolm X. By 1967, King was moving towards Malcolm. King was talking about the importance of Black solidarity, and the recognition that there are these ideas suggesting that everything Black is bad.
If Malcolm had lived and Martin continued to move closer to Malcolm, as Malcolm moved closer to Martin, they could have created a grand alliance that could have attracted Black people across the country. Between the two of them, you had a person who was from the North, and another person who’s from the South. You had a person who was raised in the Black middle class (and) another person who came out of a working-class family. You had a person who was a Christian, and another who was Muslim.
You had a person who was comfortable speaking to people who were incarcerated, impoverished or who were sex workers. You had another person who could give the baddest sermons in any church in this country. Together, they represented so many facets of Black America. If they came together and formed a grand alliance, it could have been quite powerful.
There’s another moment in your book that’s striking. Is it true that Nation of Islam was founded by a White man who was a con artist?
Yes.
Please elaborate.
This finding was first discovered by (the late journalist) Les Payne. He, of course, revealed it in his book, “The Dead are Arising.” He revealed that the man known as Wallace Fard was a White man from New Zealand but presented himself to the early leaders of the Nation of Islam, including Elijah Muhammad, as this ‘quote unquote’ Asiatic Black man from the Middle East. He had a long track record of conning people, including members of the Nation of Islam.
Was the Nation of Islam responsible for assassinating Malcolm in 1965?
It’s a fact that the five assassins were not only members of the Nation of Islam, but members of the Newark mosque of the Nation of Islam. The question becomes — and I think this is the question that Malcolm’s family and his estate are seeking to answer — is the role that the NYPD played, the role that the FBI played and potentially even the role that the CIA played in Malcolm’s assassination. It’s one thing to actually pull the trigger. It’s another thing to create the circumstances in which the trigger can be pulled.
Toward the end of the book, you talk about what Malcolm meant to you personally as a young man. Could you elaborate?
On so many different levels, Malcolm meant something to me. I was not necessarily a reader when I was younger. I didn’t really start reading until I went to college. I was around the same age as Malcolm when he was incarcerated and started reading. I had grown up thinking that the problem was Black people, only to realize that those ideas were the problem and that there was nothing wrong with Black people — just as Malcolm had grown up thinking that there was something wrong with Black people. I came of age with parents who were nurtured in the Black Power movement just as Malcolm came of age from parents who were nurtured by Marcus Garvey’s UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association).
Where Malcolm became incredibly critical for me, particularly as a scholar, is his constant and routine challenge of what in my work I call assimilationist ideas. These are ideas that Black people hold that essentially everything White is better and that we should seek to essentially become White because to be White is to be better. Malcolm routinely pushed back against those ideas. And it really encouraged Black people to realize that their culture is beautiful. The way they look is beautiful. The way they love is beautiful — ideas that I have been encouraging Black people to realize through documenting anti-Black racist ideas and pushing back against those of us who’ve internalized those ideas.
Some antiracists have been pretty demoralized by recent events. What can they learn from Malcolm?
People can learn how to think, how to organize, and how to be inspired at a moment when they’re no reason to be inspired. Malcolm argued that we should think beyond the construct of civil rights and instead recognize and fight for human rights. In this moment, in the United States and other countries, I think his formulation of human rights — what we deserve as human beings, no matter what — is invigorating.
It can also create mechanisms for multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious organizing, because all of our human rights are being stolen, taken and abused in this moment.
Are you surprised at how quickly we went from a racial reckoning four years ago to where we are now?
I am. At the same time, I’m surprised, but I’m not surprised. I’m surprised because … like other people who were doing this work, I was hopeful that we had turned a corner as a nation. We were finally going to recognize that racism is harmful for most of us, that we were going to eradicate racism, and that we were going to build a society that was going to be better for the vast majority of Americans.
When that didn’t happen, I became disappointed and shocked. At the same time, as a student of American history, I’ve constantly documented how racial progress, at least how we hoped to experience it in 2020, is typically met with what I call racist progress, or the progression of racism. And we certainly are experiencing that progression of racism right now.
What have the last four years been like for you? In 2020 everyone wanted to hear you speak, and your books were everywhere. Then the backlash hit and you’ve become one of the symbols of the so-called racial reckoning. Have you lost friends, or had speaking engagements dry up?
Well, what’s interesting is that working on this book as I was experiencing the last few years was both devastating and therapeutic. It was devastating because of what I’ve experienced, and others have experienced in this moment, Malcolm X experienced in the early 1960s. As he became more prominent and as his antiracist ideas reached more people, he experienced a bitter backlash against his work. He was constantly misrepresented, in ways that he didn’t even recognize, to undermine his standing with people.
We’ve experienced all sorts of distortions and misrepresentations and attacks and allegations that were false. Chronicling what Malcolm experienced while being part of a community of people who experienced something similar has been devastating. At the same time, it’s been therapeutic, because whenever you experience something and you realize other people have experienced it across time, it puts what’s happening to you in perspective.
You once wrote that racism is not an all-powerful deity that cannot be defeated, and that racist ideals are not natural to the human mind. Do you still believe those things?
I do. And I do largely because I’m someone who has studied the origins of racism, and particularly racist ideas, and have tracked their development over the last 500 years. I know and can demonstrate that in the grand scope of human history, race and racism are only a relatively new development. It’s not the case that since humanity has existed, racism has existed. It’s still a largely new phenomenon. And like with anything else humans have created — if we can create something, we can eliminate it.
John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”