freedom reads and he's been our guest for the past hour. thank you for your time. reginald: thank you for having me. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] >> all q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast on our c-span now app.

host: mark whitaker, february 21, 1965, what happened? mr. whitaker: malcolm x was assassinated in northern manhattan. it was the midafternoon.

he was giving a speech to gather support for his new organization he formed after leaving the nation of islam the previous year. which had been the role working at the head of the mob in new york but also the spokesman for this black separatist sect led by a name ma -- led by a man named elijah muhammad. but he split from him and he was still trying to get this new organization off the ground. a sunday afternoon he was giving a speech. there were about 200 people who had gathered in the ballroom. just as he was coming onto the

stage and giving his speech, three black gunmen rose from the audience, rushed the stage, one of them had a shotgun, fired into his chest, knocked him over backwards onto the stage. the two other men came with handguns, shot him from the sides. they fled. he did not survive. he was dead within half an hour. and that whole scene, the murder, set in atrain a murder mystery of who were these men that endured for 55 years, which is a big part of my book. host: his wife betty shabazz was there with his daughters. mr. whitaker: they had six daughters but she was pregnant with twins at the times only four of them were alive at that point. were there to be present.

she had, just the week before, for some time it was clear that people were out to get malcolm x . host: who were these people? mr. whitaker: from the nation of islam. he was being condemned in their newspaper, mohammed speaks, in veiled terms by elijah muhammad himself and his sons. so there was definitely word on the street. they called him a hypocrite. that this trader who had left the organization had to be dealt with. we are pretty sure there were near misses in attempts to assassinate him. and just a week before, his house had been firebombed. he lived in a small house in queens with his family that had been purchased by the nation of

islam for him. he had stayed there after leaving them. but they were trying to evict him. he had been traveling in europe giving speeches. he returned just to spend one night with his family before he goes to give another speech in detroit. in the middle of the night, molotov cocktails were thrown through the window, furniture went on fire. they had to wake up their daughters and take them outside and take them to a neighbor's. so, anyway, it was very clear -- and he knew. he talked openly about how there was -- his life was threatened, he had given an interview with mike wallace, who was still early in his career, a few months earlier where he said i am probably a dead man because of this feud with elijah muhammad.

so, it was pretty clear in everybody's mind that probably the murder had something to do with the nation of islam. but who exactly carried it out? did they come from harlem or somewhere else? were the orders given from chicago? that is the beginning of a murder mystery. host: did he have protection? mr. whitaker: he had his own bodyguards who were stationed in the ballroom on the second floor, the autobahn ballroom, both on the stage looking out at the audience and others behind him. but there was a very thin police presence. at least it wasn't right there. there was one uniformed new york city police officer at the door. there were two plainclothesmen inside. there were a dozen other

policeman. the autobon is near a big hospital in new york so they were over there out of sight. later, obviously, questions were raised about why there is not more protection. because the nypd also knew that malcolm's life was in danger. but there is a lot of evidence, including from malcolm's own tenants after the assassination, that he himself didn't want a stronger uniformed presence there because he thought it would scare away followers who he needed to show up because he was still growing his organization. host: his speech was undelivered. wasn't going to be a ground -- was it going to be a groundbreaking speech? mr. whitaker: he had given his first speech at the same place. so this is february of 1965.

in the summer of 1964, a few months after leaving the nation of his line, he had given his groundbreaking speech where he announced the formation of this organization. he also said that its otto would be, by any means necessary, which became malcolm's most famous saying and we can talk later about what exactly that man. then he had in the months since come every time he came back up from harlem from his many trips and travel he was doing at the time, he would have meetings to talk more about what the agenda was going to be and so forth. what we don't know is, and this is an interesting part that connects with the murder mystery. is that some people said that he had told other people that he was going to say more about what he knew about the threats on his life at that meeting. the other thing that was perhaps

in part explains the timing, is that the nation of islam had a big annual celebration every year for what they called save your day i -- savior day in chicago. it was the birthday of this mysterious figure who had actually started the nation of islam. his name was wallace fard muham mad. he had brought elijah muhammad into the fold. elijah muhammad was born in georgia, migrated to detroit. he joined the nation of islam under wallace fard muhammad and then wallace fard muhammad mysteriously disappeared. but they had this at the very end of february, this big commemoration in chicago. thousands of people gathered there for savior's day. and the where that had been put

out was that chicago wanted malcolm x dealt with by saviors day. host: what was the immediate reaction to the assassination of malcolm x? mr. whitaker: what is really interesting and one of the things -- in order to understand what i try to do in this book, which is not another biography, it is a study of the impact that malcolm x has had in death. it is 100 years since his birth this year and 60 years since his assassination. and why he is a much bigger figure now than he would have been just based on what he accomplished in 39 years, or less than 40 years of life.

or how the perception of him has changed over the years. at the time, he had become fairly well known. because he was an unbelievable speaker. >> it is the first law of nature. we assert the afro-american's right to self-defense. the constitution of the united states of america clearly affirms the right of every american citizen. mr. whitaker: so he went all over the country giving talks on college campuses, he went on radio shows. they were paid, probably not much. but at the same time, he was still considered a pretty scary, fringe figure in the minds of a lot of people. certainly a lot of white people at the time, and even a lot of people in black america at the time.

we can talk later about his relationship with martin luther king and the stature they had and reputations they had while they were alive and what it looks like now. but when you go back, it is a pretty good test for how the new york times covered their assassinations. malcolm was on the front page but it was a one column story in the middle of the front page, and he was described as the leader of a local militant sect. right? so, local, he was still not really viewed even by the new york times as being a national figure. sect, militant, those were all words connected with him. in 1968, three years later when dr. king was assassinated, there was two banner headlines, two

columns, the kind of headlines you only see when presidents are elected or killed or we land on the moon or something. so, king was considered a much bigger figure and more consequential figure. now it is interesting, because they are now very commonly paired together as the two great figures of black history in the last 50 years. and in some ways, recent biographies and histories of king have gone out of their way to talk about what he had in common with malcolm rather than what people talked about at the time which is what their differences were. host: of course that is part of the legacy which we will get into. i want to quote from your book. you quote the new york times writing about malcolm x after his assassination. he was an extraordinary and twisted man who turned many true gifts to evil purpose.

that is from the new york times at the time. new york post, even his sharpest critics recognized his brilliance. often wild, unpredictable, and eccentric, but nevertheless presenting promise which must now remain unrealized. time magazine, an unashamed demagogue whose creed was violence. mr. whitaker: yeah. it is interesting because clearly what he was known for in the white press, as you see there, are a couple of things. most of them still dated back to the positions he took while he was a spokesman for the nation of islam, where he was really speaking for them and their worldview and doctrine as much as he was speaking for himself. and what did they preach? first of all, they were separatists. they basically didn't believe in racial integration. they thought blacks would be better off either physically removing themselves and finding a homeland someplace else, or if

not, just so sufficiently living their own lives in their own communities and not really trying to interact with white people, who they described as blue-eyed doubles and so forth. and that is something that he preached during that phase when he was still speaking for them. the other thing which he constantly got all the attention in the white press, was that he, unlike dr. king, believed unconditionally in nonviolence, he said that blacks had a right to self-defense. right? and when people heard the term by any means necessary, often that is what they imagine. now, the way he is described in the white press at the time, you would think that what he was advocating was armed revolution. in fact, what he was just saying is that faced with armed

violence and the threat that -- the kind of threat that black folks faced from police and so forth, blacks had a right like everybody else in the country to defend themselves. so, that kind of colored -- and even after he left the nation of islam, that was still how he was widely perceived and written about even at the time of his death. but he had evolved to a great degree just in the last year after leaving the nation of islam. i think partly because he was free to speak his own mind. he no longer had to just repeat what elijah muhammad believed or what the nation of islam believed. i think partly because he had grown himself. in that last year he travels abroad, he makes a pilgrimage, he embraces the orthodox, sort

of, form of islamic religion. he makes pilgrimage to mecca for the first time. he meets white muslims, which comes as a total revelation to him, that there are people of his own faith that are as white as anybody. he visited the capitals of africa and europe. he debated at the oxford union. so, i think his view had evolved. on white people, he came back from those travels and he said i no longer believe that all white people are people. i think there are white people of good faith, particularly from his point of view, who were islamic. but even allies who previously he had rejected their offers to

help him, he started to welcome them. he started to reach out a little bit to moderate black leaders. he clearly wanted to get more involved in the civil rights struggle. he gave a speech called the ballot or the bullet, where he basically made clear that if he was talking about any form of self-defense or violence, it was secondary to the use of voting power. but it's not clear. certainly he didn't have enough time, honestly, for everything -- all the changes and all the evolution that he was undergoing to really penetrate the national consciousness. people became much more aware of how he had changed even in the last year after he was killed as a result of, first, the

autobiography a malcolm x. so, think about that. how do most people in america first learn about malcolm x? to this day, it's by reading that book. which now is commonly taught still in high school and college courses. alex haley, it was written in cooperation with a journalist, a black journalist who became famous later -- first for this, and then for "roots," which many people remember. and in that book, he tells his wole life story, which is fascinating. we can talk about that later. but you see all the changes that you underwent. -- that he underwent.

from childhood to dropping out of school, to joining the nation of islam, from breaking from elijah muhammad, going to mecca, it is all in the book. by the time you finish that book, you feel you really know this man. it is one of the most extraordinary autobiographies that has ever been written by such a public figure in our history. right? but it only came out nine months after his assassination. it only became a bestseller in paperback a year later in 1966. host: but malcolm x had been working with alex haley on this book for quite a while. mr. whitaker: yes. alex haley is an interesting fellow. he was actually sort of a moderate republican. he was not in any way a follower of the nation of islam. but he had served in the coast guard, and he became very interested in writing. once he was eligible to retire

from the coast guard and had a small pension, he decided he was going to become a writer. and he started pitching ideas to various publications and magazines. and he had heard about this small sect that was just sort of starting to kind of get attention in detroit. nation of islam. and he pitched that story to the editors of reader's digest, if you remember that publication. at the time it was actually the most widely read publication in america, this small little digest of stories. so a story appears in reader's digest. then a couple years later he writes another story in the saturday evening post. and then, you hafner -- hugh he fner, who had started playboy magazine, was looking to elevate it a little bit beyond some of its other offerings, and he

introduces the playboy interview. and alex haley did the first playboy interview with miles davis, the famous jazz musician. so he is then thinking -- and he had written a couple of these pieces -- he said malcolm x would make a really good interview. so he approaches malcolm. malcolm's a little bit dubious but he says if elijah muhammad is ok with it i will do it. so haley goes to chicago, or maybe it was fees -- was phoenix where elijah muhammad was based because he had health issues. and the playboy interview, for people who remember those interviews, they were quite extensive. they could go on for five or six pages, they were very in-depth. it caught the attention of the new york publishing world, specifically the head of doubleday books at the time who

reads this and said, i think maybe there is a book in this. so he approached haley with the idea, could you persuade malcolm x to cooperate with you in writing an autobiography? i had a whole chapter in the book that is just about the making of the autobiography. the interesting thing, even at that point, so malcolm agrees. he starts to visit -- haley was living in a small apartment in greenwich village in new york city at the time. and he would come in the evening after doing everything else, drive to greenwich village, and spent several hours with haley before then driving back to queens where he lived. and at the beginning, haley couldn't get him to talk about his personal life at all. he just wanted to talk about the ideas of the nation of islam.

they were sort of polemics. and it was only when alex haley very shrewdly said, one day asked him whether he had any memories of his mother. and his mother was a fascinating figure we can talk about, but malcolm's father was a preacher who also was a follower of marcus garvey, the black nationalist leader from another era, as was his mother. his father died under mysterious circumstances when malcolm was six. his mother was left to raise the family and sort of cracked under the pressure and had to be institutionalized. and malcolm had not seen her for years at this point. but one day alex haley, while he

is trying to get him to say something about his childhood and so forth, said, can you tell me about your mother? and all of a sudden malcolm just stopped and all of these memories started to flood back. and that became the start of malcolm trusting haley enough to tell him his personal story. and of course that became the book. host: and the autobiography a malcolm x by alex haley was basically the first root in malcolm x's legacy, correct? mr. whitaker: yes. again, the thesis of my book, and i say it in the introduction, is that malcolm -- as a result of the influence that malcolm x has had on people since his assassination, he has

actually accomplished more in death than he did in life. because when he was alive, he was a fascinating figure, but unlike king he didn't get legislation passed, he didn't build an institution. he was part of the nation of islam, he split from that, he hadn't really gotten his new organization off the ground. right? but in, you know, since his assassination, 60 years, he's had this extraordinary influence on all kinds of people. so it starts with everybody who has read the autobiography. and there are people from kareem abdul-jabbar, the basketball great, to barack obama, clarence thomas, all sorts of people who have talked about just how reading that book changed their life. so that starts with that.

again, we talked a couple years ago about my black -- my last book, the birth of black power in 1966. the germ of the idea for this book came from the fact that all of the figures in my last book, sophie carmichael at the student nonviolent coordinating committee, eldridge cleaver who founded the black panther party, the founder of kwanzaa, the first advocates for black studies, all in 1966, they all cited malcolm as their hero and their inspiration. so he has this extraordinary influence on the black power movement, the black arts movement, on athletes. then when it looks like his influence is starting to fade, he gets rediscovered by the pioneers of hip hop in the 1980's. then spike lee comes along and makes him a big figure in "do the right thing," then makes the

legendary biopic movie with denzel washington and then there are all of these x hats and malcolm becomes a fashion statement. then conservatives started to embrace him, not only clarence thomas. then it extends all the way into this century with his influence on obama, and then of course on the black lives matter activists. their was a recent revival of an opera written about malcolm in the 1980's that made it all the way to the metropolitan opera in new york. and a new production with a staging that was afrofuturist, which is sort of the whole aesthetic of the black panther movies. so this whole new generation that is into that showed up to an opera, wearing afrofuturist costumes. so, you know, so, that

influence, and then to think about today, what's his significant, think about someone -- what was it about malcolm that was so compelling? that coming from nowhere he developed the following that he did while he was alive, and that he has had generation after generation re-embrace him. that is what really made me want to write the book. like, to understand both that influence, but what was it about him that created that influence? host: mark whitaker, are you of an age to remember malcolm x? mr. whitaker: i was vaguely aware. i was born in 1957, so i was eight years old when he was killed. i was vaguely aware of him. but my parents were very much kind of more supporters of the more mainstream civil rights

movement. so, i probably, to the degree i had a consciousness of him, i'd see him the way i think a lot of people i talked about earlier did, as a sort of, martin luther king good, malcolm x bad. but then i read the autobiography when i was a few years older as a teen, and it had a huge influence on me. partly because my dad was black, my mom was white, they were both college professors. so i grew up in these kind of integrated college environments. but by the time i read the autobiography, my parents had split up, i was living with my mom, she was raising my brother and me as a single mom. she had landed teaching at wheaton college, a small, then -women's college in

massachusetts south of boston. and so, in addition to just being taken with the story in general, the way malcolm, even before he joins the nation of islam, the way he conjures up black life in roxbury, where he went to live with his half-sister after dropping out of school when he was in eighth grade, and then in harlem, was just very vivid for me. and my exposure to those sort of black urban communities was mostly through my grandparents, my father's parents in pittsburgh. i wrote a whole book about that as well. but i think partly because i was so taken by my visits to pittsburgh and the old feeling of the black communities in that age. i love those scenes in roxbury and harlem and so forth. so, and then, honestly, i didn't

think that much about malcolm for a while. and then in 1992, i spent 30 years at newsweek starting as an intern in college and then eventually became the editor of the magazine. but at this point i had become an editor by 1992, but i was still writing occasionally. and when spike lee's movie came out, i wrote a cover story for newsweek called the meeting of malcolm x. i talked to spike and did some reporting, but newsmagazines in those days had all these bureaus around the country. so i got all these files from our correspondence talking about how much of an impact even in 1992 malcolm still had. and at thtat -- that point it was two generations. it was the generation that was alive and had known or witnessed him, but by 1992 you have this

new generation, the hip-hop generation and so forth, and people who were buying the hats and so forth. so i wrote this whole story about that. so really starting then, i didn't know i was going to write a book at that point, but i felt like i knew a lot more about him, and i was definitely fascinated by his impact. i also tell the story in the book, a whole series of books that have been written about him, but in addition to the autobiography there are two big biographies. one came out in 2010, i believe, or 2011, and the other in 2020. both of them won pulitzer prizes. many mirabel and les payne.

many mirabel was an academic historian. both of those books were like melville-like, great white whale obsessions by their biographers. both of them spent like, 30 years each writing them. marable's was the first book to really go through his entire life and try to document -- sort of retell the story of the autobiography but based on real research into the documentary evidence. les payne's book, which came out a decade later, was more an act of his own reporting. he was an extraordinary reporter. i talk about the strengths and weaknesses of both books in my book.

in a really sort of tragic irony, all three -- malcolm did not live to see the publication of his own autobiography, and neither of those auto biographers lived to see the publication of their own books. manning marable had a rare lung disease that he died of just days before the book was supposed to come out. and then les payne died of a heart attack, at a point where he had been working on this book for 30 years and he was sitting on all this extraordinary reporting that was still exclusive. but it wasn't really in the shape of a final book yet. and it was only after he died that his daughter, working with their editor, really managed to pull it all together into a book. but obviously it added enough that it, too, won all these

awards including the pulitzer prize. host: before we move on to some more of these legacy issues, from your book "the afterlife of malcolm x," a couple of things i learned. malcolm x and martin luther king met one time. mr. whitaker: it was 19 62 four, soon after malcolm left the nation of islam. the civil rights act of 1964 was still being debated in congress down the street here. and both of them showed up to watch the debate. and malcolm, it was clearly -- i think malcolm was a little more interested in the meeting than king. because he actually showed up sort of unexpected and then positioned himself in the hallway. king was giving a little press conference in the capital and the sort of positioned himself outside the door so that he would run into king. and then of course cameras were

there and it took pictures of them together and they had a very pleasant exchange. in one of the pictures they are both smiling. malcolm, very typically, malcolm had an unbelievable sense of humor. said, oh, now they are going to investigate you. of course they were both being investigated by the fbi at that point. so, they only met once. but even then, it was striking because they had been viewed and pretrade as antagonists for so long. and malcolm in particular, while he was a member of the nation of islam, would routinely go and make media appearances: dr. king uncle tom, a house negroe, and all of these pejorative terms. but the fact of the meeting and the fact that malcolm clearly had sought it was a sign that he

had wanted to figure out a way, even though they still differed philosophically on a number of key issues, one, he wanted to figure out how to play a larger role in the civil rights movement in general, but specifically perhaps of finding some way to work with dr. king. host: malcolm x referred to the march on washington as the farce on washington. from your book, here is a copy of the telegram that marn luther king sent to betty shabazz when malcolm was assassinated. quote, while we did not always see eye to lie onetds to solve the race problem, i always had a deep affection for malcolm and felt h had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem. he wasoquent spokesman for his po vw and no one can honestly doubt that malcolm had a great concern for the problems that we face as a race. mr. whitaker: yeah. so, a couple of things.

by the time malcolm is assassinated, king has three years left to live. but i think that he was starting to -- you know, his focus had been in the south on ending jim crow, and then getting black folks in the south, many of whom had been kept from voting for generations, registered to vote. but i think he understood even by february, 1965, that the next frontier for the civil rights movement was going to be one, in the north geographically, and two, be more focused on issues like jobs and housing, where indeed in 1966, which i wrote about in my last book, he moves the movement to chicago and encounters as much resistance there as he did even in the

south on those other issues. and i think he understood that malcolm had a kind of a credibility. malcolm had been talking -- malcolm was someone, even though he was born in nebraska, he had lived in harlem, he had lived in boston, he had not only led the mosque in harlem of god and other mosques up on their feet in other urban cities. so he was definitely someone who understood northern black communities and their concerns and so forth. so i think king had a respect for that. but i also think that -- you know, this is something that a number of people write about in the book, referring to both of them as prophets. when you think in religious

terms, how do we understand a prophet. sometimes they are self-proclaimed, sometimes they are kooks. but sometimes they are people who are speaking the truth at a time when people don't want to hear it and often suffer for it. so king i think as a man of deep faith, and also deep spiritual education and learning, probably on some level recognized malcolm , even though they differed on some political issues, as coming from the same place as having a prophet's mentality. which is, being fearless in speaking truth to power and a truth that people don't necessarily want to hear at the time. and, you know, being willing to run the risk of dying for it. and so, i think that they

probably, you know, they viewed each other as kindred spirits in that sense. host: fact number two, malcolm x met with the kkk about buying land. is that true? mr. whitaker: it is. he was kind of scent on that mission by elijah muhammad. i mean, it definitely was not his idea. but it's sort of a comic scene. we knew about this. there were all of these things that sort of came out when malcolm left the nation of islam . it started with -- at these publicly -- not long after president kennedy was assassinated in november of 1963, malcolm gave a speech in new york. and at the very end of the speech there was a q&a kind of

exchange with reporters and supporters and so forth, where he made this remark that kennedy's death, the chicken is coming home to roost. what he meant by that was he thought that kennedy has not been supportive enough of the civil rights struggle of black america, or black independence movements abroad. but elijah muhammad was very upset by this, thought he was disrespecting the president, and he used this as a pretext to suspend malcolm x for 90 days. that they were never able to patch things up and that led to malcolm leaving. but there were a number of other issues that were simmering in the background. one was that elijah muhammad was jealous of malcolm and all the attention he got. second was malcolm had discovered that elijah muhammad had impregnated a number of young assistants who worked

for him in chicago and may have gotten pregnant. of course the nation of islam, t heir creed, part of their creed was monogamy and so forth and so on. and so, he had confronted elijah muhammad with this evidence of adultery and elijah muhammad had not denied it, but said, well, i am -- he himself compared himself to figures in the bible and so forth. so that was a point of tension. then another one was that, we mentioned earlier that after malcolm split from the nation, they were trying to evict him from his house in queens. but then yet another was malcolm kept making references to things in his speeches and reporters about embarrassing information he had about elijah muhammad.

another of these things he was referring to was that elijah muhammad had instructed him to meet with members of the ku klux klan. and the idea was, again, under this idea that blacks -- this separatist idea that blacks needed their own homeland, the idea was that the klan, the southern klan, which had somehow ownership or access to big tracts of land in the south, would set aside a territory where black folks could go and move. it's sort of a crazy idea, but it's something that elijah muhammad might have envisioned, and the klan might potentially have supported because they also believed in separatism. they didn't think that the races should interact. so, as a result of this, malcolm had a series of meetings with

these klan leaders in the south. and there are some funny exchanges. so, he says, at one point he says, hey, if we have a few more meetings, am i going to be eligible to wear one of your hoods? but then it turned out that they were actually more interested in getting the cooperation of the nation to assassinate king. and so at that point he sort of broke it off. but malcolm did make reference to this while he was alive in that last year. it was very veiled. it had been reported in a number of the books that have been written, but in les payne's book, one of the ways in which les payne, even though that book wasn't published until 2020, 55

years after malcolm's assassination, the nation of islam minster in atlanta who accompanied malcolm to these meetings -- actually a few of them took place in this guy's kitchen -- was still alive in the 1990's went les payne started working on his book. and he interviewed him before he died, and then he sat on it for a long time. but he has like this, fly on the wall reconstruction of these meetings, which is just fascinating, and one of the things that makes reading les payne's book worthwhile. host: maya angelou traveled with malcolm x in 1964 on his africa trip. mr. whitaker: she was actually in africa already.

she had moved there with her son and was living in ghana, which had just become independent under the leadership of kwame n krumah, the great black postcolonial leader. and malcolm, after splitting from the nation of islam, embarks on this trip to the middle east and africa. so while he is in ghana, they become friends. she actually chauffeured him around. and she was present for this fascinating scene in the movie. so, malcolm had become sort of a mentor to muhammad ali when he was still caches clay. -- still cassius clay. he had yet to win the heavyweight crown. unbeknownst to many people at that point he had also embraced the nation of islam. malcolm had taken him under his wing.

and was present in miami when he beat sunny less than an actually gave him a pep talk -- sonny liston and actually gave him a pep talk which people credit with him getting prepared for that fight. after that fight, then-caches clay was talking about the nation of islam, malcolm was right by his side. this was right at the point where he was about to split from the nation of islam and essentially elijah muhammad, before ali won the crown, had no interest in him and didn't think he had a shot at beating liston. when he did, all of a sudden he became very interested in having his support. partly in order to drive a wedge

between the two of them, elijah muhammad offered him this new name, muhammad ali. but the price of taking it was that he was going to have to discontinue his relationship with malcolm. ok, so, all of happens. and then when malcolm goes on this trip abroad, the nation sends ali. and they run into each other at a hotel in ghana. where even after this estrangement, malcolm still tries to approach him and greet him and ali rebuffs him and then turns on him and says you never should have left elijah muhammad . and malcolm was crushed by this.

he was checking out of the hotel, he gets in maya angelou's car, and she drives him to the airport. and she said that she had never seen malcolm more upset than he was about his estrangement from ali. and then decades later, ali said at the very end of his life that the one thing he regretted -- you think about everything ali did, he lost his prime fighting years because of his opposition to vietnam, he took all of these stances. the one thing he regretted was turning his back on malcolm x. host: very quickly, mark whitaker, i also learned in your book that on february 21, 1965, malcolm x took a bus to the autobon. mr. whitaker: again, his house had been firebombed a week before. you knew that there was danger all around.

and after the firebombing, betty had taken the kids to stay with a neighbor in queens. and malcolm decided that it was not safe for the family for him to even go back to queens the night before the final meeting at the autobon ballroom. so he checked himself into a hotel in midtown, new york. his car was a blue convertible. you should go online and just check it out. it is a very cool car. host: it is a pontiac? mr. whitaker: yeah. but it was very recognizable. everybody knew that that was his car. whether he had a premonition that this was going to be the day when he was going to meet his fate, whatever. he had it parked in the garage at the hotel.

he didn't want to arrive in that recognizable car at the autobon ballroom. so he parked about a half-mile mile away, something like that, and decided he would just take the bus the rest of the way. and as he was waiting for the bus, a couple of followers who were on the way to the speech noticed him and picked him up and drove him the rest of the way. host: i want to play some video from barack obama, the 45th president of the united states. >> only malcolm x's autobiography seemed to offer something different. his repeated acts of self creation spoke to me, the blunt poetry of his words, is insistent on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, marshaled in its discipline forged by sheer force of will. one line in the book stayed with me.

for he spoke of a wish he once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him thereby an act of violence might somehow be expunged. i knew that from malcolm, that wish would never be incidental. i knew as well that traveling down the road to self-respect, my own white blood would never recede into mere abstraction. host: that was from 1995 prior to being senator or president. mr. whitaker: he is reading from the autobiography, which became a bestseller when he became a national political figure. what he said in the book is he was describing where his mind was at as a teenager in hawaii, biracial, never really knew his father, his father was african and had gone back to africa. and his mother was an

anthropologist who spent much of his time abroad. so he is living with his grandparents. his white grandparents in hawaii. and trying to figure out his identity as a black man. so he is reading all of these books by baldwin and by richard wright and by ralph ellison and so forth, all the greats. and he finds them all very deep in terms of their description of sort of the existential condition of black folks. but he doesn't see any model for how to live your life in a productive way. right? whicvh h -- which he does in malcolm. and again, this is one of the things that really sets malcolm apart, even from king and others . which is, before he even talks about politics, about activism, he talks about psychology and culture. about respecting yourself, and

believing in yourself, and then believing in your people and your history and your culture. for him, that his primary repo -- that is primary before you even get the politics. and barack obama sees that in him. so he becomes kind of a model, not in terms of what he stands for politically -- so he is not necessarily embracing this idea of self-defense and all this other stuff -- but just in terms of justice, believes, self belief, imposing discipline on yourself, figuring out a way to be sort of a productive person in the world. and what is really interesting, so, i have a whole passage about his influence on obama. but he has much the same influence on clarence thomas, even though clarence thomas comes from a completely different political position

than obama. a young clarence thomas sees the same thing in terms of malcolm standing for dignity, self belief, pride, self-mastery, self-reliance. and isn't that fascinating that this one man can have such a profound influence at this kind of formative age such different men? host: mark whitaker, we've only got a couple minutes left here. when you look at the denzel washington spike lee movie, when you look at the maj biographies of malcolm x, and then you hear chuck d saying, our genation didn't see anyone filling the shoes of martin luther king jr. or malcolm x. the music filled the vacuum. how did this legacy develop, and is it complete at this point? mr. whitaker: what is

interesting to me is that nobody ever said, let's pass a law to have a national holiday for malcolm x. this was never from the top down. there were never people in classrooms saying, oh, we want to teach malcolm x because he reflects the best in our tradition and the hope for the future and so forth. really his legacy has been kept alive by successive generations of young people. and i think what's appealed to them is first of all, the bluntness of his message. he's a realist, he is not an idealist. and sadly, we keep -- every time we think there's racial progress in this country, there tends to be a backlash. so every time that happens, we tuern -- turn to malcolm again and say, maybe he was right

to be such a realist. part of it is this emphasis on culture, even before politics. that is something that i think young people relate to. but then there's just the style of communication. it gets back to visibility. today we have all these debates about what kind of style of communication works in leadership. people within the democratic party for example are saying that democrats have to figure out how to communicate in a more direct way and a more down-to-earth and authentic way and so forth and so on. that was malcolm. study malcolm if you want to understand how to do that. because he had this ability to sort of -- he was brilliant in his ability to sort of capture these complicated ideas in this very, very pithy way. he could talk to anybody. he had a sense of humor.

so, i don't think his legacy is done. first of all, i think the times are going to continue. we're going to continue to have these cycles in our history, where i think his political message is going to look newly relevant. but i think his style of communication seems more contemporary today, or as contemporary today as it did then. host: "the afterlife of malcolm x" is the name of the book. the subtitle is, an outcast turned icon's enduring impact on america. the author, mark whitaker. thank you for your time. mr. whitaker: it is always great to talk to you. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: all q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast on our c-span now app.