Malcolm X: The FBI File

by Clayborne Carson

Book Overview

The FBI opened its file on Malcolm X shortly after his release from a Boston prison in March 1953. Twelve years later -- on February 21, 1965 -- he was assassinated in a hail of bullets. Yet his fascinating story survived his violent death -- and a vital part of that story is found here in Malcolm X: The FBI File. This extraordinary work distills the voluminous file kept on the most controversial and charismatic civil rights leader, which ran to more than thirty-six hundred pages. Accompanied by the incisive commentaries of Clayborne Carson, a leading scholar of the American Civil Rights movement, this is a fascinating biographical and historical document, one that sheds light on both Malcolm X and the government compelled to monitor him.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881847585
• ISBN13: 9780881847581
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 514 Pages
• Weight: 1.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A useful book, the product of much research exposing the FBI

Carson is a well-known Black scholar whose most important work has been organizing and opublishing from the Martin Luther King Papers. This book was an effort on his part to expose how the FBI followed Malcolm X from the time he wrote to a radical youth group for information, long before Malcolm X joined the Muslims until his death, a death Malcolm more and more expected would come from the FBI/CIA. Along the way the FBI has preserved speeches and letters and views of Malcolm as they evolved throughout his life. Anyone who treats Malcolm X as some sort of prefabricated god, and not a man whose views developed over time, over experience, and particularly after his exposure to the struggles of the civil rights movement, and the anti-imperialist struggles ongoing in Cuba, Africa, and Vietnam at the time, is in for a rude shock as this book shows how his ideas changed and grew. I recommend Pathfinder Press's series of books by Malcolm X. Malcolm selected Pathfinder to publish his speeches before he died. The first book Malcolm X speaks was selected while Malcolm was living, though published after he was murdered. Every book has been published in cooperation and with royalties to Malcolm's family. Pathfinder has gone as far as the jungles of Guyana to find every speech or interview available with Malcolm particularly in the last years of his life.