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Summary:

"An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author's interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative. Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X - all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. The result is this historic biography that conjures a never-before-seen world of its protagonist, a work whose title is inspired by a phrase Malcolm X used when he saw his Hartford followers stir with purpose, as if the dead were truly arising, to overcome the obstacles of racism. Setting Malcolm's life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century's most politically relevant figures "from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary." In tracing Malcolm X's life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm's Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher who was run over by a street car in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929, and his mother, Louise, who continued to instill black pride in her children after Earl's death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm's exploits as a petty criminal in Boston and Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s to his religious awakening and conversion to the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts penitentiary. With a biographer's unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations-from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder "Fard Muhammad," who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz's 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X's murder at the Audubon Ballroom. Introduced by Payne's daughter and primary researcher, Tamara Payne, who, following her father's death, heroically completed the biography, The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Introduction / by Tamara Payne
• Part I: 1925-1939
• Born against the current
• Storms of racism
• The anchor is lost
• Pulling the family apart
• Part II: 1939-1946
• East Lansing Red
• Lighting out for his territory
• Chased out of seventh heaven
• Luck runs out
• Learning to fight with words
• Part III: 1946-1963
• Birth of the Nation of Islam
• Building temples in the east
• Hartford : "The dead there are rising"
• "Meet with them devils"
• Malcolm, the media, and Martin Luther King
• Part IV: 1963-1965
• The split

• The international stage
• The week before : a dry run
• The hit
• Back at the mosque
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X) : some questions answered.

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Author/Creator:

Payne, Les, 1941-2018 , author

Contributors:

Payne, Tamara , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

The dead are arising: the life of Malcolm X [by Payne, L.]

Subjects:

X, Malcolm, 1925-1965

Black Muslims — Biography

Black nationalism — United States

African American Muslims — Biography

African American civil rights workers — Biography

African Americans — Biography

United States — Race relations — History — 20th century

1900-1999

Black nationalism

African American Muslims

African American civil rights workers

African Americans

Race relations

Black Muslims

United States

Genres:

Biographies

History

General Notes:

"First published as a Liveright paperback 2021"--Title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
National Book Award for Nonfiction, 2020
Pulitzer Prize in Biography, 2021

Physical Description:

xxiii, 612 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Physical Characteristics:

portrait; plate; illustration

Call Numbers:

BP223.Z8 L57655 2021

ISBNs:

9781324091059 (paperback)
1324091053 (paperback)
9781631491665 (hardcover)
1631491660 (hardcover)
9781631491672 (electronic publication) [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

1233267755