Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [7]
A deeper reading of the text also reveals numerous inconsistencies in names, dates, and facts. As both a historian and an African American, I was fascinated. How much isn’t true, and how much hasn’t been told?
The search for historical evidence and factual truth was made even more complicated by the complex and varied layers of the subject’s life. A master of public rhetoric, he could artfully recount tales about his life that were partially fiction, yet the stories resonated as true to most blacks who had encountered racism. From an early age Malcolm Little (as he was born) had constructed multiple masks that distanced his inner self from the outside world. Years later, whether in a Massachusetts prison cell or traveling alone across the African continent during anticolonial revolutions, he maintained the dual ability to anticipate the actions of others and to package himself to maximum effect. He acquired the subtle tools of an ethnographer, crafting his language to fit the cultural contexts of his diverse audiences. As a result, different groups perceived his personality and his evolving message through their own particular lens. No matter the context, Malcolm exuded charm and a healthy sense of humor, placing ideological opponents off guard and allowing him to advance provocative and even outrageous arguments.
Malcolm always assumed an approachable and intimate outward style, yet also held something in reserve. These layers of personality were even expressed as a series of different names, some of which he created, while others were bestowed upon him: Malcolm Little, Homeboy, Jack Carlton, Detroit Red, Big Red, Satan, Malachi Shabazz, Malik Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. No single personality ever captured him fully. In this sense, his narrative is a brilliant series of reinventions, “Malcolm X” being just the best known.
Like a great method actor, Malcolm drew generously from his background, so that over time the distance between actual events and the public telling of them widened. After his death, other distortions—embellishments by devoted followers, friends, family members, and opponents—turned his life into a legend. Malcolm was fascinating to many whites in a sensual, animalistic way, and journalists who regularly covered his speeches picked up a subdued yet unmistakable sexual subtext. M. S. Handler, whose home Malcolm visited for an interview in early March of 1964, attributed his aura of physical prowess to his politics: “No man in our time aroused fear and hatred in the white man as did Malcolm, because in him the white man sensed an implacable foe who could not be had for any price—a man unreservedly committed to the cause of liberating the black man.” Even Malcolm during his early years routinely employed evocative metaphors to describe his personality. For example, portraying his time in a Massachusetts prison in 1946, he likened his confinement to that of a trapped animal: “I would pace for hours like a caged leopard, viciously cursing aloud. . . . Eventually, the men in the cellblock had a name for me: ‘Satan.’” Handlerʹs wife, who had been present when Malcolm had visited her home, admitted to her husband, “You know, it was like having tea with a black panther.”
To black Americans, however, Malcolm’s appeal was rooted in entirely different cultural imagery. What made him truly original was that he presented himself as the embodiment of the two central figures of African-American