“He transformed his mind”: How did Malcolm become little Malcolm X? | Books

PAtrick Parr’s first book, The Seminarian, concerned the young Martin Luther King Jr and his stay at the University near Chester, Pennsylvania. Parr’s new book, Malcolm before xconcerns the young experiences of another giant of years of civil rights, in Massachusetts and in another closed environment: prison.

The prison is “something where you do not think there would be sources,” says Parr de l’Ohio, during the visit of Japan, where he is a writing teacher at Lakeland University. “But it turns out that Norfolk’s prison where Malcolm had a bihebdomedary newspaper that was released, and that details all events while he is in prison, and he converts to Islam.”

Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1946, when he was convicted of accusations of rupture and sending and sent to the hell of Charlestown’s state prison, he was still called. He served time in two other Massachusetts prisons before walking freely in 1952, when he was involved in the nation of Islam and on the verge of rejecting his “slave name” to become Malcolm X.

Many have been written over the next 13 years, in which Malcolm X has become a leading black voice in America and in the world, at the militant tip of the civil rights movement, dreaded and monitored by the police; About his assassination in New York in February 1965, an intestinal tragedy; And about his life after death as a martyr of the black power. The autobiography of Malcolm X, written with Alex Haley and published posthumously, remains widely read. Biographies abound. Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic, in which Malcolm X is played by Denzel Washington, remains a lasting visual declaration.

Little may seem unknown. But Parr produced: “No other book had used newspapers in prison, and I don’t think they even thought of looking for them”. For a separate relief of Parr, which included the dead on the point, the epic biographies of Les Payne and Tamara Payne of 2020, published while Parr has progressed through mountains of prison files. Although Garrett Felber, a researcher who worked with Manning Marable, author of another epic, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2012), found “some good songs” from the Journal de la Colonie From Norfolk’s prison, “he I never went there as much as I do,” says Parr.

Encouraged by the author and activist Ilyasah Shabazz, one of the girls of Malcolm X, and David Garrow, the biographer King Parr has as mentor, Parr has undertaken “to build the world around Malcolm. I said, “Well, let’s see this world. Let’s see the people who have been incarcerated at the same time. I felt that I could build a world here, not only in Norfolk, but also in Charlestown then also in Concord, the three prisons where Malcolm X served time, so that we can understand his transformation, his bow. “”

The result is a portrait of Malcolm X as a young prisoner who also represents men who have served time with him, especially Malcolm JarvisThe friend with whom Malcolm carried out the burglaries that led to prison and whose own dreams of success as a jazz trumpeter were condemned. Institutions that held such men also become characters. Norfolk was a remarkable place, a high security locking with a superb library and a Crack debate team that beat Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge (and helped change Malcolm Little), all part of a rehabilitation mission rather than simple punishment.

Parr’s book is a portrait of growth. Literally. Raised in poverty, mainly in Lansing, Michigan, Malcolm Little abandoned the school after the eighth year, found its way to the east and worked on the railways and as master of ceremonial ceremonies At night before turning to a small crime. When he went to prison, he was 21, held 6 feet 2 inches and weighed 172 pounds. When he came out, he had 27, 6, 3.5 inches and 185 pounds. His prison boxing career has stalled – one of the many errors examined by Parr – but another form of exercise has remained.

“He completely transformed his mind. When you put his photos of Mugs (from prison and departure) from one side to the other, you can really feel how intense he has become, and perhaps too intense for part of his family. But at that time, I think it was good for him to find this goal and direct him in a productive place, “explains Parr.

In prison libraries – even in the desperate despair of Charlestown, where he picked up Shakespeare and Melville – Malcolm read novelists, poets, philosophers and religious thinkers. He proved a natural reader, “playing with language and voice”, adding an understanding of the rapid and fast style literature that he picked up in the streets of Lansing and in Harlem clubs.

The result, said byr, was “something very different from King. When I was making the book on King, it was as if he even joined his own voice so that it could have an effect on a certain number of people as wide as possible. While with Malcolm, it is much more of himself as an individual. He is like: ‘I find My voice. I choose this word because I want this word to have an impact on me and the reader I try to reach. There is a lot more than one individual process with Malcolm in his writing. »»

Parr also discusses an unlikely source on which Malcolm drew: how to win friends and influence people, the self-assistance manual of Dale Carnegie, published for the first time in 1936. It seems more than incongruous In the company of Milton and the King James Bible, remains in prison – however, as Parr says: “When we raise the title of the book, you and I, we share a laugh, Malcolm reads This real serious literature, and his brother says: “You must connect with people, read this:” And recommend to Dale Carnegie. ” Malcolm denies that but Jarvis, who was so important for the transformation of Malcolm, he takes this book and uses it (to prepare for a successful parole audience), and perhaps it strongly influences Malcolm to do it too .

“I think that, regarding a book like Dale Carnegie, Malcolm is like: ‘OK, I have this voice. I just need to twist the literary frequencies on which I worked the whole prison. »»

After his release from Norfolk, Malcolm X returned to Michigan and the nation of Islam, the black militant group to which his brothers had presented him and of which he had tried to follow behind bars – abstaining from pork, other that in the lard in which all the food in prison was cooked. Among the police, at least, he could never have earned friends and influenced people, even if he had chosen to do so. As Parr writes, even if Malcolm made his first movements as a free man, “provocative letters written while they were in prison” were “used to start the first pages of what would end up being a page 13 years old and over 3,600 years old FBI file ”.

“After only 23 days of freedom, he was now under the supervision of the FBI, where he would remain the rest of his life,” explains Parr.

Parr quotes the very first FBI memo on man then still officially known as Malcolm Little. Reflecting “potential communist ties and its interest in” the Muslim worship of Islam “”, the G-man behind the note identified his subject as being Malcolm K, also known as Malachi Shabazz, Rhythm Red and Detroit Red.

Two years later, noted, the FBI began to refer to Malcolm X.