Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [1]
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Marable, Manning, 1950–
Malcolm X : a life of reinvention / Manning Marable. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-44527-3
1. X, Malcolm, 1925–1965. 2. Black Muslims—Biography. 3. African Americans—Biography. I. Title.
BP223.Z8L57636 2011
297.8’7092—dc22 2010025768
[B]
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No one has made more sacrifices to realize the completion of this
work than Leith Mullings. For more than a decade, she has been
my constant companion and intellectual compass as I have
attempted to reconstruct the past.
This work is hers.
PROLOGUE
Life Beyond the Legend
In the early years of the last century, the neighborhood just north of Harlem, later to be named Washington Heights, was a sparsely settled suburb. Only the vision of a businessman, William Fox, led to the construction of an opulent entertainment center on Broadway between West 165th and 166th streets. Fox’s instruction to the architect, Thomas W. Lamb, was to design a building more splendid than any theater on Broadway. By the time all was finished, in 1912, an expensive terra-cotta facade adorned the front walls, marble columns stood guard at the entrance, while carvings of exotic birds graced the foyer: it was these colorful motifs, inspired by the great nineteenth-century artist John James Audubon, that prompted Fox to name his pleasure palace the Audubon. On the building’s first floor, Lamb designed a massive cinema, large enough to seat twenty-three hundred people. In subsequent years, the second floor was reserved for two spacious ballrooms: the Rose Ballroom, which could accommodate eight hundred patrons, and the larger Grand Ballroom, holding up to fifteen hundred.
Within a few decades, the neighborhood around the Audubon began to change, becoming increasingly black and working class. The Audubonʹs management catered to this new clientele by booking the most celebrated swing bands of the era, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Chick Webb. The Audubon also became the home for many of the city’s militant trade unionists, and from 1934 to 1937 the newly formed Transport Workers Union held its meetings there—accompanied by the occasional violent confrontation. One night in September 1929, for example, a four-hundredstrong party sponsored by the Lantern Athletic Club was disrupted by four gunshots. Two people were badly wounded.
During World War II, the Audubon was rented out for weddings, bar mitzvahs, political meetings, and graduation parties. After 1945, however, the neighborhood changed yet again, as many white middle-class residents sold their properties and fled to the suburbs. Columbia University’s decision to expand its hospital at West 168th Street and Broadway into a major health sciences campus generated hundreds of new jobs for the black influx, while the Audubon adapted to economic realities by shutting down