"He was born hungry, and he grew up on the streets. Odd jobs and petty crime took him from Detroit to New York to Boston to a Massachusetts state prison. He was not yet twenty, but the journey that Malcolm Little had begun would take him eventually from incarceration to martyrdom." "A convert to Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, Brother Malcolm would rise quickly in the Black Muslim ranks. He would spellbind thousands at NOI rallies. He would lecture at universities. He would debate at Oxford and travel in Africa. He would speak to the plight of twenty-two million African Americans. He would live dangerously, as he put it, and before he was forty he would be dead." "The pieces in this collection pause at some of the stages in Malcolm's journey from the turmoil of a troubled household in Omaha in 1925 to his assassins' gunfire at a rally in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom forty years later. In one selection, for instance, biographer Bruce Perry looks at Malcolm Little's early childhood from a psychological perspective. In another Malcolm himself writes about his conversion. Journalist Louis Lomax, in a candid 1963 interview, speaks with the dynamic Malcolm X of the Black Muslim movement, and theologian James Cone examines Malcolm's mission after his fall from Elijah Muhammad's grace. From the reports of agents and informants in the field the FBI offers its version of the assassination, whereas historian Michael Friedly reconstructs the events of that fateful Sunday afternoon in light of later evidence." "The Reader also includes oral history and memoir as well as reflections on the character and legacy of Malcolm X. And in an interview never before published Alex Haley shares with David Gallen his observations of Malcolm throughout their close, two-year collaboration on The Autobiography of Malcolm X."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved