the book. any other questions? thank you very much. [applause] >> writing is a transactional process. writing assumes reading. it goes back to that question about a tree falling in the forest if there is no one there to hear it. if you have written a really wonderful novel that one of the parts of the process is that you want readers to be enriched by it. and you have to pull on everything at your disposal to do that. >> offer until apprize winning columnist ann quinlan will talk about writing and life and her guide to social security and the politics that make it happen live sunday on in depth. sir latest rumination on life is lots of candles, plenty of cake and she will be ready for your tweets an e-mails starting at noon eastern on booktv's index

on c-span2. >> herb boyd response to the late marable biography "malcolm x: a life of reinvention" published in 2011 and nominated for the national book award in nonfiction. herb boyd presents the collective thoughts of 30 african-american scholars who examined mr. marable at the pictures of malcolm x. about two hours next on booktv. >> herb boyd is an award winning author and journalist. he has published 22 books and many articles at the national and international level. i am not going to give you a litany. i will tell you his web site. you can go and find out for yourself. i will say to you that he has been associated with a series of people pushing the envelope,

trying to get messages not only across to the people who are our opposition but people on our side. to get courage, to get the desire to move forward and in that particular motif -- malcolm x rises like the fecund. you have your own story. when we started listening or hearing about the marable book which we thought we should bring forward because in terms of the intellectual honesty you don't ignore what someone is saying whether you like it or don't like it. you become knowledgeable about it and then you refuse it but then we were glad to hear that

herb boyd and a series of other people had written a response and with that i am going to now introduce you to herb boyd for the response. [applause] >> do not speak to me of martyrdom, of men who died to be remembered on some perish day. i don't believe in dying though i too will die and like the flowers, the violets, i cast the net. they will echo me.

yet this man, this man, this genius, the one who has cheered a foreword fake whipped with words will no longer speak again. those words were the opening of costanzas that sonya sanchez row back in 1968 in a book called for malcolm that was edited by the late w. randall and margaret

burroughs. randall was the founder of broadside press in detroit, michigan. my home town. i always like to say that is where my soul is an new york is where my spirit is. margaret burroughs died two years ago. she was the founder of one of the outstanding museums in this country. dudley died in the year 2,000 and always remembered him as a mentor. is most famous poem is about w. e. b. du bois. he says i don't agree. pretty much summarized the kind of tension between those two individuals but was an outstanding poet and warrior of the highest order and founder of broadside press and if you want

to get more on him and there's a fine documentary called the black unicorn leaders believe very fine work. i say that because it is also a poem we utilize by any means necessary because it sets a certain tone. the whole spirit of what malcolm resented, it was exceedingly brief especially when you get as old -- anyway -- since i have been here so long. some of my students think i do frederick douglass. first name basis. abraham lincoln.

abraham lincoln never invited me to the white house. obama did. anyway, it sets a certain kind of tone for us. we ask permission to use it again. that is the opening poem in the book and the day after you have a flood of information coming -- it is the critical conversation. the title is by any means necessary but the subtitle is a "malcolm x: real, not reinvented". the impetus on the word reinvented, many contributors, 35 contributors in this book. it goes back to 1968 when you start talking about responses by

african-american scholars and activists. we put a book out called the confessions of nat turner. it caused quite an up or. and as similar fashion a long black intellectuals. dr. john henry clarke, my mentor brought together a number of respondents. the book was called ten black riders respond to william styron's confessions of nat turner. some precedent had been established in terms of reacting to stuff out there. this was by no means the first time but certainly -- the first time you had a solid collective of african-american writers. to respond to a particular book out there continued to be absolutely demeaning,

reprehensible and particularly in terms of meditations on history. we call it messing with our history. as he did. even though at the time he was doing the book james baldwin, one of my e rose was in residence with him temporarily and he eventually ultimately endorsed the book but we will talk about that later. particularly james baldwin. after that, two years ago about the same time of year we are going through right now moving into the spring of 2010 and henry louis gates wrote an op-ed piece in the new york times called ending of slavery blame getting -- blame game in which he said almost 90% of the slaves

traffic on the atlantic across the atlantic ocean was facilitated by the african chiefs and other africans which was an astonishing number for us and i immediately wrote a response in terms of how he was shifting the blame around and taking the european traders out from under the hammer. he said no, the africans were complicity in this. we are always concerned to what extent they were complicitous in terms of receiving the benefits of that and of course subsequently when you move into the dark days of the plantation and slavery in this country we know full well who the beneficiaries were. nonetheless after that letter to the editor that i wrote to the new york times a number of people called me up and i began to talk to people like dr. ron

daniels and dr. mabouti. good to surround yourself with all these doctors. we start a conversation on how we are going to respond to that. set the record straight. the problem with that is there had been nothing written so you had to commission pieces and therein lies the rub. so it never got off the ground. skip got away clean on that one also we had a number of conversations and independent articles were done but not in a collective way. the book we pledge to do similar to what we have done here so those two in sinss going back to 1968 and with skip gate two years ago gave us the kind of ground work to move to this here and now.

this is not my book. this is our book. i say that because i am talking about a three men are just mentioned. they grew out of an event we had where we put together a conference be personally forum where rodney collins who is the step nephew of malcolm x as well as james small and our little flair ron daniels and myself. we were all part of that particular panel and that is when i raised a question about weekend take the product of this to course to begin to assemble a responses out there. it was like 75 to 100 reviews came out on marable's book so we

plowed through all of them and decided where the most reflected -- trying to be evenhanded about it all. we chose 45 of these. i wanted to get permission to use them. folks were somewhat reluctant to be a part of it and one of the writers decided to be part of the project wanted to back out because he saw the title. he was planted in a particular way. was skewed in a way he couldn't live with. he decided to stay, seven or eight other people who share your position. i wanted to have more women but looking at 100 reviews. if you go to one of the contributors with one of the best web sites out there, you

can see all of the 100 reviews that he has compiled and many of them are similar to what we have in the book here. this is our book and it is the contributors we have and their impressions, critical conversations how they really feel about this book so one of the things we wanted to do was make sure that the money we raise for this would go back to the family. we had that in mind from the start. there would be no profit at all for any of our contributors although they have free books. many were stunned to get ten books. it is rare that a publisher would give you ten books. was that 350 books that you have given away and struggling against a small publisher, that is considerable out of your budget. nonetheless we feel this is

something, and endeavour that is absolutely necessary and we pushed ahead with it. we turned around and in nine months, that in itself is remarkable to get a book turned around that fast. it was published by third world publishing. so i had the end with him right from the beginning. he was excited about the project. he was amazed he was able to turn it around that fast and get permission from 35 reviews that we wanted to use and we pushed forward and there is the product. i guess we should get to they constructing the deconstruction this -- manny -- let me say this from the top in terms of my feelings about dr. marable who

died april 1st just three days before the book came out and in my review our talk about the kind of tragic irony because it is a similar position that malcolm experience. he never had a chance to realize the fruits of his endeavour or to challenge so many people who had concerns about what he had to say in the autobiography. i was very much concerned about making sure i was fair. i read the book twice for i wrote the review to make sure i was moving in as expeditiously as i could so what we have here is a friend -- i am uniquely in a position where being a member of the nation of islam when malcolm was there and being a member of the black radical congress when marable was there i have a unique -- not many of

us left. had that situation where we actually knew malcolm and probably new marable better than malcolm because i was with him on many occasions as communications director of the black radical congress. it was that association and i thought about that for many years. very rare you have an opportunity to be so blessed in a privileged position to share that kind of evolution in terms of the struggle to be on those fronts. the particular ramparts with two important people and i say that with all due respect for marable because for me he was an outstanding scholar. everything we said about this book, we have to be fair about that but also look at the kind of accumulation of his work in

particular how capitalism underdeveloped black america. and astonishing piece of work which carries on what walter rodney had done with how europe developed africa. st. patrick's, there was a continuation of that particular methodology. very concerned about race and class and that was something we struggled about in the 1960s that tried to find some common ground between narrow nationalist and mechanical marxist and how you bridge the principal contradiction out there with race or class or is it necessary to see both in terms of having the holistic analysis about where we are. so when he came -- he bounced

around. he was peripatetic. all over the place. he was two years at one institution and one at another one and i see the similarities and malcolm was a real adventure and moving all the time. if there's one thing i would like to focus on thematically it would be his internationalism which is often ignored. you should give certain special attention to it. spike lee did the best he could with the film but i thought it was somewhat whacks when it came to the last year and a half of his life which is the most productive period and it cries out for further discussion and he told me do your own movie. it was not that easy but maybe we can do a book. you have that kind of

conjunction of malcolm and manning, seven letters. they have a number of other commonalities too. i had a chance to share in all of munificence of their thoughts and ideas. all of that is to save valuable things in the book and probably the best thing about manning's book is we resume the discussion about life and legacy of malcolm x and what we have done is continuation of that discussion and that dialogue and i am sure there are two or three other books in the pipeline. liz payne has been working on his book for a while and i look forward to seeing that. jerry ball and dr. todd burroughs, todd is one of our contributors in this book. they're working on their own response to bork that will be

coming out by black classic press. paul cote sir, very good friend of ours. i look forward to seeing that. i think at last when you get down to the nitty gritty the most important thing is what the people have to say. so let some point we have to have discussion ended visitation -- two things that jump out at me, the issue of the autobiography itself and you always have to go back to the point of origin. where does any discussion begin? what propagates that as what has propagated how it perpetuated

sometimes without any investigation of from one researcher to another. all they are doing is spreading the same kind of distortion and misinformation without doing their homework. currently i am working with craig reid who for many years has been my friend in detroit and we are working on a biography of alex haley and in doing research we make a number of discoveries about the relationship between alex haley and malcolm x. three of four contributors in the book dealt in to that as well. manning's position is that alex was not the right person for that project. in terms of differing ideological and philosophical positions and called him a liberal republican which i don't know where he gets that from. i tried to research that too to find out where this came in and say that at some point and

thereby picked up and spread all over the place. i am not sure -- i could not find that anywhere in doing all of my research and looking at the life of alex haley but it is just beginning. so much more to plow through. 82 books of information in tennessee down to the university of tennessee that haven't had a chance to go through. nonetheless you talk about this dismissal and the construction he sets out to do. he says the eye opener came for him when he understood that he had to deconstructs the autobiography to launch his own research process. had to tear it apart and see exactly where the strengths and weaknesses were. one of the things i like to do

is think ok, you can deconstructs the autobiography and the autobiography is not a perfect book. there are number of problems there. first of all you talk about the relationship between some one who alex haley had been in the coast guard for 20 years and to what extent he was in touch with the vitality of the culture that malcolm x had he missed so many of the nuances and subtleties of what the conversation was all about and the psycho analytical probe of the relationship between the two of them, victor eugene wolfeinstein, psychoanalytic by elected going non that alex haley was analyzing him all along. he did have malcolm psychoanalyzed twice. that is never brought up that

much but greg reid has all of the documents and information that pertains to that and we will be bringing that out in the book. now calm was even aware this was being done that he was being psychoanalyzed. but he was leaving that behind on tissue paper and napkins' and alex would gather up this material and in doing so pass it on to these psychiatrists and psychologists so they begin to do certain studies and the dueling. what is that all about? we get to the bottom of it. it became very important for alex as he assembled the book itself. beyond the autobiography, we have the kind of up for that has come with theroar that has

come with the assertions and accusations of homosexuality--those resonate with readers who have not had a chance to get into the book but they have heard those things and they want to know what is going on with that. as we say we have these particular kinds of issues you need to get to the bottom of them. where do they start? so with the origins of the homosexuality, you look at it and talking about what manning says is what malcolm does is he changes and name and it becomes the individual and you try to track that down, how do you know that he is changing that and it doesn't exist? at some point when you have any kind of allegation you have to

substantiate, there was evidence. you have too many instances with no evidence whatsoever. remarkable that he was able to go along like that for so long without substantiating -- very critical issues. you have to ground is in some sense of reality but what happens is you go back to the beginnings to discovery is something that or originated possibly with malcolm shorty jarvis. this was malcolm's friend for many years after malcolm had gone through from michigan to boston to roxbury into roxbury. and begins to hang out with malcolm shortly jarvis. in the film that is -- played by

spike lee. he died in 1998. a lot of this could have profited -- solved if they had gone to mel foam and again -- about that situation. it is amazing on face value so much marable took without further investigation. he had an opportunity -- he was a round in 1988. he wrote his autobiography a few months before his death the book came out. cote edited by paul nicholas who worked with malcolm jarvis on the books. nothing is ever said about william hall when who is a man who malcolm sprinkled talcum

power ron to bring him into sexual climax. that constitute, 6 about the. sound like a mrs. if anything. sprinkle tom cotter ran rub somebody down, how does sex get into it? he had an orgasm or climax as a result of that, that is a homosexual act. shorty jarvis says nothing about this in his autobiography. neither of them. nothing was said about that. where is it picked up? where does it come from? if you look at manning's book, the seventh child. he gives page numbers and everything and you go to those page numbers and they have nothing to do with sexuality whatsoever so you wonder maybe it is the wrong page numbers. then you try another word and get another source out there and

of course perry's book has been absolutely the kind of rumors it put out you talk about a book that is exceedingly flawed. he tries to do is psychoanalysis practicing without a license. .. >> throws you into some doubt about the worthiness of the project, particularly when you discover someone is talking about not sure what year the naacp was founded and not sure the distance from the apollo

theater to the hotel teresa. so those little things like that my friends say, herb, let's not deal with the factses, let's get to the interpretation. i say, that's good because then some of these facts, you know, related to the interpretation because if you can't get it straight, like even the wolfenstein's book, you're doing a psych coanalytical propose of an individual, and you don't even know what year they were born, you know, you screw that up, you get that date all wrong. wait a minute, you p don't know this individual at all x yet you're trying to psychoanalyze them. so there's something to be said about getting the facts straight. certainly in terms of the interpretive of aspects, what can be done there. i mean, all people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts, you know? you have to go ahead and say let's deal with what the real facts are. and i guess in this day and age when we live in reality

television and the digital universe is and social networking, you know, things get a little haywire out there in searches of the dissemination of information and the absolute accuracy and clarity of things. so anyway, beyond the homosexuality which, of course, manning disavows it himself. i guess he feel the need to kind of raise it warts and all, i'm going to talk about it and then dismiss it. but it's not a total dismissal. i mean, he kind of conditions it by a particular year, 1952. indicating that even in other places he'd talk about possible sexual end counters. we haven't have -- we can't have a lot of what have you, there's a lot of supposition, too much supposition out there when you're doing a kind of scholarly endeavor, a work on a very important american hero for us. you can't be speculating like

that. you've got to have some evidence. similarly, when you get to the infidelities, what's the source of these infidelities that you're talking about? well, the letter, march the 25th, 1959, that malcolm writes to elijah mohamed. and in the letter he talks about the difficulties he's having with his marriage. and it goes on for three and a half, four pages. and you can see that, you can see the entire letter if you go online and check out gary zimet. and this is the same guy, he runs his auction company, and he had also the schindlers and adolf hitler and a number of other letters out there supposed to be authentic and ran into all kind of difficulties and lawsuits, people talking about there's forgery here, forgery there. so here he ends up with this letter. and so the question becomes, how

did he get the letter, you know? this was a letter that was sent from malcolm to elijah, and suddenly its in his hands, he was auctioning it off for $100,000. so you're concerned about, like, where did you, i mean, how did manning then rely on that? so he says, he goes to the web site called moments in time, he sees a letter, and he bases it on that, taking at face value what's there. my concern would be in the age of the kind of ages of repression and the distortions particularly cointel pro, the kind of stuff they've done out there, you might want to examine the type script and see exactly, you know, is that coming from if his typewriter? but the key thing there, though, is how does he end up with that letter? there's been some speculation about that, but it's a very critical point in terms of the authenticity of that letter. but that's the source of it, how it's picked up and spread, you

know, from one book to another, from one scholar to another. and they're just taking on face value because, hey, so and so said it, it must be all right. it was an exhibit they just took down the other day in terms of malcolm x, and you see how, you know, a number of things that have to be corrected, you know? you have to carefully go through this and vet it and make sure the captions on particular photos in the chibt are absolutely -- exhibit are absolutely accurate. so i took my students, and they were just pointing out all these mistakes and everything, so it forces the old instructor to go back and read it carefully because he's kind of zooming through there and taking for granted that the people who put it together did a pretty good job. it just says we have to be constantly and very vigilantly concerned about, you know, the scholarship out there. so beyond the infidelities and the homosexuality, i just throw those things out there and,

also, to suggest that what has to be done now, how do we move forward on this? well, i don't throw the baby out with the bath water. i think there's a lot of valuable information, you know, in manning marable's book. it's almost like, you know, a pot of stew, and if you put one little ingredient in there, does that spoil the whole soup, you know? is the stew destroyed because you didn't put enough onion in there, or you put too much onion in there? well, if you've got too many flaws does that discredit the book, you toss the book out. so it calls for a careful read, you know, separating fact, you know, from fiction. or sometimes it gets into faction, it's a combination of fiction and fact as alex haley did so remarkably well, matter of fact too well, it led to some plagiarism suits, you know? [laughter] be careful the information you take because manning had the same thing. manning had a number of folks

working with him at columbia university, you know? you round up your crew. and so when people turning stuff into you, you have 40 carefully check -- you have to carefully check it out you're not going through and making sure, first of all, that the facts are right, that, you know, this particular person actually eroded and then lifted from somewhere else and, boom, it's been passed on second, third generation, and you can't get back to the original. but that's what happened with alex haley. he began to take information from his students without checking it out, and they were giving him stuff from other books. i remember margaret walker did her best to try to get somebody with her book that she did on jubilee. and a number of, i mean, i compared that when "roots" first came out, i saw so many similarities there. similarly with harold doorlander's book, the african, and he sued and got heavy six

figures and really hurt alex haley's estate sufficiently. so what happens is, is that, you know, looking at what has to be done as we go forward, we have other books that are coming, things that have to be done, and we're working on that as we look at the papers that was found in if an attic out in detroit. which gets back to the whole founding of the nation of islam, you know? so we're going back to first principles again, you know? can we take it back to the beginning and kind of sort it out and see how this particular thing evolve. and then finally with the word "reinvention," we felt that the word itself, you know, the connotations that it tend to infer, you know, not at all admirable and suggest that malcolm was manipulative, that he was very deliberately, you know, doing these things for some kind of self-promotion or

self gain. so we were concerned with that particular word. we thought that political evolution, you know, transformation which pops up quite often in the book or, you know, a little bit more neutral and softener terms of his intentions -- softer in terms of his intentions. malcolm says at what point does he take the mask off? he's kind of a trickster, you know? and we understand that that can both, that can work -- that's a double-edged sword. in our culture we have a number of instances in which that form of tricksterrism was a survivor element and how we got over, particularly during the plantation period, you know, when you had to wear the mask as paul lawrence dunbar said. and at last i can say this, i don't know if you want to have an exchange with me, you have some questions that you want to raise before we go to the audience, if you want to raise some questions, that'd be fine.

>> i didn't have questions, i did have a comment though. >> go right ahead. >> contextualize the period in which -- thank you. i said i did have, um, a comment to make with regard to contextualizing the period in which malcolm lived and struggled because it is hard to actually put it in 2012 context, actually. and so i just wanted to say something about that. but i'm waiting until you're finished. thank you, sir. [laughter] >> well, actually, you know, i could -- before i go to the audience, you can conclude with maybe the last stanza of sonia sanchez's point which is that do not speak to me about living, life is obscene and crowds of white on black.

death is my pulse. what might have been is not for you or not for him and not for me. what could have been floods the womb until i drown. sonia sanchez. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much, herb boyd. i wanted to acknowledge, i mean, it's a belated acknowledgment, but the comptroller of the thety of new york -- the city of new york, john liu, was here, and unfortunately could not stay, but i wanted to put it on the record that he had come and we hope that we see him again on front pages about -- >> the comptroller, the

comptroller was here? did he bring money? [laughter] >> no. but we hope to see him around in the big leadership aspect of the city of new york. >> sure. >> and i'll leave it at that. [applause] >> yeah, thank him for coming out because it's kind of a tit for tat thing. he knows i'm a journalist with the amsterdam news, so -- [laughter] >> keep 'em happy? >> hey, man, i'll give you some play, you dig? all right. [laughter] but it would be only fair. okay, i guess we can -- >> i just wanted to say something because, you know, there weren't a lot of us out there in the '60s. i mean, that's just the reality. and the other thing that i wanted to let you know is that those times were so dangerous, and you just don't get it. if you look at it in 2012 time, you're missing, you know, you have to really look at a time

when, you know, africa was bubbling and demanding and pushing, and you had a guy named patrice who was a postal worker who was turning the congo upside down and was so powerful in that call that the head of the u.n. went over to see him, and they killed both of 'em. they killed both of 'em. they have never, ever come up with how did this happen. i'm -- well, because the people who are investigating are the people who did it. [laughter] very simple. you know what i mean? it doesn't take a genius to figure this one out, you know? and i just wanted to say, also, that my opportunities to observe malcolm, i was not a cohort of his, but there were people who i knew that were very close to him. and malcolm's progression which was not a mask, it was new growth, new movement, new

incorporation of ideas, people who had before been on the outside now on the inside, and that is part of the sinner eyeing of this -- sinner eyeing of this new thing that was going to be something. i mean, it really was going to be something. because for the first time you had a black american crossing international lines, talking to people who had been never involved in this progression who had resources of their own. i mean, do you understand that? can you appreciate that? you know, when we get a chance to talk about gadhafi hopefully sometime soon, we're going to be looking at this again. because if you don't understand kohl thinkization, if you don't understand the way the system moves to contain itself, it will

sacrifice everything, anything, you know? i just read a book not too long ago called "spy master." you would be surprised at the kinds of things these people do. i mean, that they write about. i'm not talking about the stuff of that's secret. [laughter] what they're prepared to do. if you, if you get a document from somebody, and i don't want to prolong this, but if you get a document from somebody, you better ask the person -- even if document looks authentic, you better ask them where it came from. >> yes. >> because they've got people who create documents. that's their job. that's what they're supposed to do. they're supposed to insert things in people's files. that's their job. do you follow what i'm saying? so i'm, one of the things that i love about the society that we're putting together here, and i hope i see you again is because this may be the one place in all of north america with this kind of discussion

actually carried on and so that you leave with more than what you came with. you know? so i want to thank you, herb. and i want to now open the floor for questions or comments, if you have comments, don't make yours as long o as mine. [laughter] but, you know, please, the floor's open. yes, sir. >> first, i'd like to thank you, brother herb, for your presentation. >> yes. [applause] >> for your great work. i didn't know until you mentioned it you had been a member of the nation of islam, so was i, during the time malcolm was there. and you might have been also at the meeting at the manhattan center where he made the famous chickens come home to roost statement around the assassination of brother -- >> right. and, you know, there's no real recording of that either. >> no, there's not.

you know -- >> but khalil islam told me he was standing right there when it was said. he became, you know, khalil islam, and we lost him august the 4th, 2004. >> yes, yes. some of those people are gone. some are still around. >> yes. >> some of us. but i just happened to be there and share that moment in history and didn't realize what an historic moment it was until maybe the next day, and after it was over, the rest is history. but there's so much can be said about malcolm. now, this book that we're discussing put out by manning marable, i have the book, and i have, you know, certain concerns about it too, as most of us who was around malcolm and knew, you know, was associated. but then i have the opinion, too, that none of us -- [inaudible] go through life. malcolm was such a remarkable person, you know, and the

teaching of mr. mohammed, he raised himself up to be one of the greatest men of the 20th century. of the last century. so we have to look at that beautiful transformation of malcolm x. i first met him in the 1950s, actually around 1958, and believe it or not in virginia, not new york city. [laughter] >> wow. >> in richmond, virginia. but i'm so proud to have been able to interact with him. there's a lot we can say. i know other people have things to say. >> thank you. great, thank you. [applause] >> to give you, while the microphone is moving, i just want you to know that in the '50s malcolm's, to get him on the radio, you had to fiddle the dial can, -- dial, okay? on the far right side, and

sometimes it would come in, but a lot of times it was blocked, you know? the nation of islam was underground. period. straight up. i mean, people did not, people had to be careful because it was considered, you know, they didn't know what to make of these people, you know? and so, i mean, again, i'm recontextualizing for you so that you understand that what you're looking at now, you're seeing 40, 50,60 years of change with regard to what is possible on the public scene. but the guts of it, you know, so that when malcolm was taking this stuff on, i mean, malcolm was like a lone rider, you know? and in a very serious sense. and i don't want to go on. [laughter] the microphone is in somebody's hands. yes, sir, brother. >> good evening. thank you for writing the book, and i read your articles and, you know, we all go back. >> but this is, keep in mind

that this is -- >> collection -- >> -- an anthology. you know, i'm just an editor there. it's been said to be an editor, all you need is a pot of glue and a pair of scissors. [laughter] but, of course, in the digital age, it's even faster. but again, i'm sorry, go ahead. >> anyway, what's important here and when i pick up the book because i had read manning's book, it is an historical replay of a polemic within african-american history. malcolm had represented the liberationist, nationalist tendency within our history. i would argue that comrade and brother manning or some of his latter positions collapsed into a social democratic accommodationist position. and within that polemic it's

always that negation. now, what made brother malcolm important is that at the time of his assassination he had mobilized to the public space a nationalism that was revolutionary but is also particularly secular. because after garvey was attacked and demised, african-american nationalism became religious nationalism. and that's, that's what caught elijah mohamed. also, too, as we examine malcolm and what makes malcolm important -- and it's not his charismatic symbolism, but i go back to the time when he was in prison, meaning that malcolm's articulation wasn't what it was when he came out in '52. what he did was to read the dictionary. and the reason why i raise this from a to z as malcolm asked the most of himself, he demanded the

most from the world, and thus, when he was purged out of the nation in, after the kennedy assassination -- because he had been a member when he came out of prison in '52, so his political life wasn't as, it was militant, but it wasn't as radical. so when his tribals, how he absorbed all that talking with kwame and toure, how he could synthesize all that in a year's time, right? and, thus, as a religious person led the catalyst of the radicalization of the african-american population because everyone else had failed. the cpusa, whatever. other formations. and so we have to see malcolm as a catalyst for the polemic that is still going on in african-american history of

accommodation or liberation or self-determination. and what manning, from what i read, had really misunderstood was the revolutionary implications of nationalism particularly coming from malcolm because it's always viewed as narrow minded. but to be self-determination, the self-determinationist in a, excuse the term, somewhat selective fascistic american society, that in itself is revolutionary, and i'm going to end it here because not the essential contradiction in that period, but the principle contradictions in that period was peerless oppression and national liberation. now, the essential contradiction was not being exploited which existed before karl marx. but the principle, the contradiction that you see. and malcolm best represented that and, thus, he was a

catalyst for the resegregation of black revolutionary nationalists. >> solid. [laughter] when did -- let me just add, let me put tag on that. i would direct you to page 20. do you have the book in your -- i don't know if you have the book anyway. read page 20, jeff will pass it there to you. that's dr. malana's essay, and he deals with that in a very thorough fashion in showing how you move from nationalism to the kind of revolutionary nationalism that you're suggesting as well as the internationalism. because, and you're absolutely correct in terms of this speed. he was a quick study. malcolm was a quick study. my interviews with dr. john henry clark, dr. clark said that malcolm was the best student he ever had. tremendous.

and they wrote, they sat at his table and put together the principles, the organizing principles of the organization of afro-american unity. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. oau to the oaau. but anyway, you pointed out the number of people he was coming into contact with, including in algeria with mendela, including in tanzania, including in nigeria. and it's amazing that he became like a minister of our portfolio or our ambassador or our president of black america. they were recognizing him on that same level in terms of how he was bringing the message there. but he had a larger message, too, in terms of what he was trying to do within a religious context. because he had moved firmly into

orthodoxy. he was moving into -- he was a sunni muslim, and he, of course, that would put him at odds with a lot of folks who were carrying baggage, you know, from understanding exactly what the nation of islam was all about. i went in when i was, like, 20 years old, and one of the things we learned right away is, what you're talking about here is we're the lost foundation. we're in the wilderness of north america, and a certain kind of precepts and cosmology has to be put into effect because we have been robbed, you know, of our ancestry, our culture and our history. and in terms of the cos moll, in terms of the -- cosmology, in terms of the theory, that also was rationalized and justified in terms of people talking about they're the chosen people. we could make that same kind of assertion in terms of where we come from as being the original people and the grafting of other folks. i guess theodore allen would love the invention of the white

race and how they come together. but you're absolutely right in terms of your commentary. >> because -- [inaudible] collapse into a -- my uncle was one, mason, masonic theory, right? and, thus, moving away from what is called orthodoxy because we were never african people, we're asiatic black men. and i was also a member of the nation of islam, and we had to wear our hair short because our hair was -- [inaudible] the hair on our eyebrows. and we were forced to go to africa to toughen ourselves up. so there was still a rejection of the african center or just who you are, right? >> uh-huh. >> and the class dynamics in the nation which they couldn't handle because if you're telling people, like, you're growing businesses, you're buying land. and the best you can get is people who say, well, you know, the white man's the devil, and

the pig is this, that and the other, you're not going to get graduate students from harvard or howard to run your businesses. so that led to some of the liberalization. because they needed part of the educated class to help run those businesses. because originally if you came out of jail, it would reform you and put you somewhat in a stable situation which was a good thing, but outside of more reforms to take power here, you need a program, and that's what malcolm was groping for. >> exactly. >> and that's how we have to understand and look at malcolm. >> beautiful. thank you. >> i have a comment and, and i wanted to -- actually, i have two comments, and i wanted to get a reaction on one of them from you, please, professor. first comment is i would like to thank you for your efforts. i know that you have an

insatiable appetite for information, and there's so many things you could have been working on, so many things you want to work on, and the fact that you took this time out to work on this book and to help inform all of us is greatly beneficial and appreciated, particularly the fact that the proceeds are going to not to yourself, but to actually help continue malcolm's legacy -- >> exactly. >> something, i think, is very commendable. so personally i'd like to thank you. >> uh-huh. [applause] >> but the comment that i wanted to get a reaction from you on is this: i heard about the manning book, and i read it, and my personal feeling was that, you know, there were things that i questioned or, hey, maybe this isn't so, what have you.

but as a devil's advocate, so to speak, i looked at it and said, well, even if everything he says or suggests is true, it actually made me admire malcolm all the more. in other words, as much as malcolm had, as smart as he was, as fearless as he was, as much as he sacrificed and contributed for society as a whole and our people in particular, if he had a secret of homosexuality, if he was going through marital strains in addition to people trying to kill him and discredit him and all, if he was going through all of those other things additionally and didn't have certain support, it made me feel like, well, then he's even badder than i thought he was. .. there are

if malcolm would have had his druthers it never would have been a writer within, james spaulding. does that sound -- they couldn't work the schedule out. can you imagine the majesty and where schism and stuff like that, not to discount or discredit alex haley because he was a very fine craftsman but in terms of the literary flair that

baldwin would have brought and the understanding that they were brothers coming out of a common cauldron, one was i can talk about in one of my books and i have a chapter on baldwin and malcolm and he was a poetic warrior and another warrior poet and they both had a tendency, in the autobiography malcolm is having a discussion with alex haley. i know alex didn't keep up because they were in to philology and linguistics and malcolm was -- etymology and he was sane at think i get a gift for your going but i don't think he really understood what malcolm was trying to say.

being self-taught, he was concerned -- one of the regrets he had was he did not get the education but he is talking to heads of state. come on! eighth grade! prison had become an institution where he self-taught grappling with -- all the way through the dictionary and he was concerned the same way james baldwin did it. james was an auto didactic. he came straight out of the hollows in park avenue when they were playing all coal piles and everything but he comes out of that bank ground so he had the understanding where meld home

was coming from. the crowning achievement is -- when baldwin came up with in terms of the screenplay, if you read seventh child, talk about his mother who was saying we want james baldwin on this project and if you can't do it with the book maybe he can do the screenplay and he did the screenplay and the going back and forth that never really got him off the ground but spike lee use a lot of that in his film version, sell malcolm had in mind the debate that went on. they became solid friends overo the debate that went on. they became solid friends over the years. was amazing -- something in the

book that cavan agreed does and the situation of sex in terms of one way to play it down but if he were a homosexual that in and of itself if you dismiss him on those grounds would you do with james bowlen? the questi ? the question is is it true? only three people know. the person who did it, person it was done to end the eyewitness. jarvis was not an eyewitness. he never put malcolm on these powdering incidents. he was never there so in a court of law would you call it? here say. >> i want to point out something

before we go on which is to say malcolm was doing his travels. he was the kind of person who picked up every piece. he didn't drop anything. he picked it up and moved it to the next level and he was putting in his head the potential for coming back this way to look up the next level of organization and that is what made him more dangerous. the people who are the powerful are always concerned about shifts in production, shifts in resources, shifts in transport, shifts in profits and they go berserk. some of the stuff you see on tv is light lunch. they have been doing that.

hy wanted to put that out there, he had the intelligence of a secretary of state for a president. i am trying to say that this man was operating on multiple levels and i wanted to save one another step on malcolm because he had a public persona and the private persona. talk about people in the civil-rights movement, all this kind of stuff and we had telephone conversations back and forth. his secretary used to be -- what was fed to the public was not necessarily what was actually going on. i am just trying to say that. this man had such a world view that it was frightening because all the pieces, all he needed to do was slot in appeases and

everybody was poised, we actually had leadership of integrity on every continent and everybody was listening. that was a very powerful moment. this is bigger -- they may have been the people who pulled the trigger but they were not the people who made the plan. >> or made the bullets. >> i am finished. [inaudible] >> he had that history. >> a double transplant. goodness. >> in your research into the production of the book was there any and they tried to rush it at all in order to get it out when he was still going to be able to

appreciate it. you know that the publishing industry is not what it was. a lot of lower level copywriters and fact checkers and second or third edition. i was wondering if there was any hint of that kind of push to get the book out. >> there was a lot of details, personal ins and outs between manning and his editor. he talks about it in the book. you have to go back to see the proposal. i have heard all kinds of scuttlebutt about the proposal. what you have to do and how he was able to command such a large advance because he promised to do this or that but one thing he did not deliver and could not deliver was three missing chapters and from what i know

from rumor and innuendo that was part of the proposal. those three missing chapters. when he went out to they troy, greg reid who brought those missing chapters in an auction to the haley estate in '91-'92, he spent big bucks for that. he has been holding close to his best and not ready to let it go until he gets the right compensation for it because he invested heavily in that. he only saw it for 15 minutes and took -- open up and that was it. he didn't get a chance but what he did see and commented on he told simon black, what i saw was three chapter's called -- the 20

-- twenty-two million muslims and the negro was all written before he left the nation of islam. it wouldn't amplify a lot of the thinking as he moved out of that political straitjacket that he was in because he is grappling and the growing at such a rapid pace. herman ferguson said it very well. he was moving almost at warp speed. moving too fast. you can imagine going 27 weeks of the last weeks of his life he spends in africa or the middle east. he is constantly on the road. and when you had that kind of travel agenda, then the people you are contacting and information you are gathering you are absolutely right in terms of this world view, international perspective from a

religious standpoint and manning does make a point in the ridge that he supplied between the growing international -- to make sure the cause the african-american people have is taken to the united nations and charging them with genocide so here it is in terms of the bigger target to the fbi and cia to say nothing he knew the last page of his autobiography i am a walking dead man. he knew it was just about up the same way that you might say manning new -- maybe that had a lot to do with him not having an opportunity to go over the kind of fine tune and comb out those inconsistencies because you talk

about a 600 page book. any of us who have written books, we know what you write on page 10. when you get to page 110 if you don't go back and check it out you might have a whole different understanding of something and keep processing. it is the process you go through in terms of developing information making sure you got it right so you have to read it and i am sure the way it was coming in you didn't get the chance to do the kind of job you would prefer to do, the best scenario is held in the condition that a lot of those things would have been corrected. [inaudible] >> on malcolm's political and

international perspective. malcolm was international -- just an illusion that took place after he left. malcolm was denouncing colonialism in the nation. he had great admiration for the movement in kenya. like no other muslim minister malcolm started with people including people -- like the shadow cabinet. what i am saying is malcolm had that broad view. malcolm was denouncing the vietnam war five years before dr. king got there.

he was still with the nation of islam. you have to appreciate the process of growth. the nation was going on while he was fair. there are ten years of speeches left with the nation, much of the work that he did. the admission -- >> i heard it too. >> so much could be said about that. just a remarkable human being. but malcolm laid the foundation for much of what we call -- today. give him credit for that like he had. the nation of islam itself is still misunderstood by most people who have never been

there. most people don't like to talk about mohammed these days, does not get the credit he deserves. that man was out there during the 1930s calling the enemy out. he took a young man like malcolm and whatever happened he took the young man like malcolm and made him one of the great men of the last century. the man you got in america, two million show up, also a student of mohammad. malcolm was the main one. a lot can be said about that. told thing is he was advanced in that nation and international. >> i am sorry. you have something? >> that speaks to the redemptive aspects of the nation of islam in terms of people coming out of the dungeons of this country and

being elevated to that status. it certainly is remarkable. thank you. [inaudible] >> great-grandson. thank you. >> i am so grateful that i am here because growing up right behind all of you, malcolm meant a lot to me and my generation but i was around just a kid around for the big chains. but what i think is so important and you say it but i want to put another kind of balance on it. spiritually when that door opened, we saw something else

emerge. as human beings and that human struggle and the gift that he left was a gift that muhammed so exemplified and there are people out there--many more who have that wisdom today and that wisdom of interfaith religion and spirituality and interconnectedness' and hart to hart. in reference to what you say, there is an old saying that describes it best. never forget that what you teach is teaching you. i am grateful there was a malcolm. i bought marable's book as soon as it came out.

i read the reviews. i was hoping that he would focus on that very last year so that we could understand the bridge that was being created across the world. when i discovered it wasn't that it wasn't interesting to me any more. >> yes, jeff? >> i would like to thank herb boyd for the presentation and writing the book and all your other efforts. we are all facing some really hard times now and we have a younger generation that is coming up and they are really getting hit with it. i wonder if -- we have a national audience and you get a chance to speak to them here and if you offer in a couple minutes what they hope to draw from malcolm based on your understanding and thing they can

draw from him. >> i have a very good friend in detroit and probably of all the folks out there who know anything about malcolm x's wife he is the foremost expert. i have an irredeemable respect for paul lee. the best thing you can do is let malcolm speak for himself. the speeches, you have to really go back and be careful with the speeches as well because a lot of them have been edited and depending on what company has put them together they may delete some stuff from it that

robs it of its vitality or absolute meaning. for young people out there be -- bowlen youtube these days you can see all kinds of stuff on malcolm. it is amazing. the other day i was looking at a couple things i haven't seen before. the man talking about all we put up a piece that was for many years the one you anything about. listen to these speeches and we live in an age where attention spans are so short. they need audiovisual orientation and it may be best to get acquainted with malcolm through his own words. decouple young books for young readers in which malcolm is

talking and at the end of his life he did a lot with young people at the forum's at the militants forums bringing young people into that when he went to alabama and spoke at brown chapel just the same -- two weeks before his assassination and a lot of young people turned out. there was an opportunity -- this will attack. and other civil rights leaders to draw back on that. when fannie lou hamer came to new york there was an instance of reaching out when going to the march on washington, he was

there. a quick rendezvous that he had with dr. king that you see quite often and whether it was staged or what have you but nonetheless -- when he was in selma because dr. king was in jail and he said i got your back. anything happens just call on me. i am at your service. beginning to reach out for the civil-rights movement but not diminishing or losing sight on human-rights because he sought a connection and it is important that you see the evolution of these ideas and many people speculate james cone does a good job speculating on the convergence and trajectory of their lives. coming closer to get there. can you imagine what that would be? in terms of devastating in terms of the unification of the

struggle in this country. those two big thinkers on the second page. >> i would like to throw in a little bit as an old teacher to the national audience and look at malcolm's life as an example how to transition to another place. and where they need to be. and how to cut the tee the off and you need to learn how to expand -- opportunity to concentrate, focus, think, read everything. and read about people who hate you. didn't say you have to own it.

the example of malcolm, here's a fellow, boy hanging out in the street getting caught up in a mess. at some point and a epiphany happens and that was not the way his life was going to go from that point forward. all of us have people who knock on the door and say are you ready? at some point you have to say i am ready to take the next step. you must learn how to read. there are lots of fox. no one will tell you what to believe but you have to have a reservoir of information. when you get there you will know that you are there because it is now going to run over so you know longer keep it in and talk to somebody else about did you

read this or that and the people who said i don't want to be bothered with that you learn how to say they used to be my friends and i will find new friends because i want to meet somebody or talk to somebody who will talk to me about the things that interests me that have to do with the progress of my people that you are on your way. [applause] >> yes, sir. >> for the national audience as we look at the life of our brother and comrade mao calm one of the things we have to understand, malcolm was an organizer. example, when malcolm had the muslims around the police precinct and got to mike wallace

it was malcolm that in 1958 the hate that produced hate that began to articulate the view of the nation in relation to american racism. 59. also, malcolm would go out and organize -- it was malcolm who organized mohammad's speech as a newspaper. malcolm as a speaker didn't always deal with the white man. he was a polemicist challenging the limits of integration in the civil rights movement. i only say that. that is what young people must learn because you can offer them organization right now. we don't have the institutions but what we can teach is the ability to question.

without that, nothing will come to fruition in this country. the ability to question. >> other questions? yes, sir? you need the mike. feed it into the mike so it is recorded. >> it is truly a pleasure and an honor to meet you, sir. having said that i am going to challenge you on something. a number of people i have spoken to within the black community feel the reason why we fail to have another malcolm x so to speak, until 2012 for two simple reasons, the power of the almighty dollar and the specter of death. do you agree? >> let me say it like this here.

from the standpoint of the commercial, the enterprise, the endeavours in this country there is a bottom-line orientation and when you talk about that book, a lot was invested in marable's book so you have to get your money back on this thing. that is where the promotion comes in and advertising comes in an reviews came in. you got to get the book exposed. the other day i went on line and followed his instructions in the end of this book. he says if you want to get more information about this project, here are the links you can go to. if you go to those links you have to be a columbia student or staff to get in to have access to the fight. you cannot say that you are a researcher because they don't have the license to do that yet.

you know what i am saying? it will be a while before independent researchers can get the information to people with a commercial spin to the possibility of edit process. .. >> he had let go the kind of, the demonology stuff, you know, he didn't need that any longer because that was part and parcel of the experience. but there's this constant evolution that is going, how he

can begin to understand how are you going to bring about change, you know? so possibly the ballot or the bullet began to suggest some of those things because he was saying that even the electoral process is something we can utilize. so all these tools then become more and more available that were not a part of his arsenal before. so now he's, like, growing to a point and now he has a full arsenal of attack in terms of civil rights, human rights, in terms of the race analysis, class analysis and also the concern about gender, you know? people kind of overlook the fact that, you know, coming out of the nation of islam in terms of where they stood on the whole agenda question, but he was trying to make sure even when he started the oaau, you know, he put a lens right in the leadership position. so he brought a woman right in there. so that may have disturbed some of the old school folks who were coming out of the nation, saying what's going on with that, or just the reversal of certain

practices there as it applied to the religious concepts, the kind of theology that had been developed, you know, in the nation of islam. so he was trying to do away. i mean, it's a revolutionary process that's going on in terms of understanding how the society operates, the whole exploitation, the question, how we begin to question the certain corporate aspects. you know, he was dead on that. that's what he was talking to. and i think this government began to recognize how dangerous he was becoming. pause from an international -- because from an international standpoint he's beginning to talk about the nationalization of the mineral resources, and suddenly the connection that you have to certain enterprises in this country k you imagine the -- can you imagine the kind of threat that would bring in terms of cutting into the profits of these here transnational corporations? so, certainly, dollarism is part of it, uh-huh. >> thank you. >> yes, ma'am.

>> yolanda? >> thank you, so much, herb, for just your indefatigable commitment to us and to constantly lifting us up and challenging us to think. i appreciate the brother's comment, and i'm trying to get my thoughts together and try to do it quickly, and i wonder because i was on the malcolm x project as a graduate student, um, with manning. but that's just we're putting the autobiography online. >> yes. >> and i was thinking about what you were saying, sister, about how you were hoping for something, and when you got to a certain point in the book, you realized it wasn't about that. so my question is, this has been a ten-year commitment. so in ten years choices can be made, i would imagine, in terms of what to focus on and what not to focus on. and to connect it back to that brother's point, i wonder how much, um, was it a rush to put the book out, and how much is it -- and i'm thinking about the

mountaintop as well -- how much in terms of not that our leaders and our heroes are above reproach, but to ruin their credibility? so whether it be sort of this, this new narrative about dr. king being such a womanist and all these other things that we're hearing, and now this very historic and, i believe it will be a historic text, of what malcolm was or wasn't, that these capitalist forces, right, that do put these texts out and put these shows on broadway being very particular to martin and malcolm and what our leaders have been for us. how much do you think is -- and i'm a conspiracy theorist -- how much do you think is deliberate in all of this, if you understand the question? i was just sort of rambling, but my love goes to you and everything that you do, and thank you for being here tonight. >> colorado land da, she asks -- yolanda, she asks a question and answers it too. [laughter] but i think that's a part of,

like, you know, as we gather understanding where malcolm was, i mean, understand now he's 39 years old. this is 1965. he's out there, i mean, he's walking the tight rope. he's nervous. his house, i mean, he's getting phone calls, people are shadowing him, he's under surveillance. can you imagine the anxiety, the trepidation? i mean, just trying to organize his life with all of these particular demons and fears, you know, hovering, every shadow. two or three times even at his house when he arrived there and he see these two men standing there in the darkness, he figure it's all over. and people feel that maybe the death wish came in at some point, how do i get out of this situation? because he knew, because he

said, i trained them. i know exactly what they're capable of. but add to that the complexity of this year and the international question again, you know, the whole corporate enterprises and what's going on. and even with the autobiography when you understand that doubleday backed up on that. and it was groll press that picked it up, and we just lost the founder, and he put out all those other controversial books, tropic of cancer, tropic of chancellor that caused quite a stir, lady chatterly's lover, you know, books that nobody else would touch. and he put them out there. and then the whole going back and forth with the editors there. i mean, alex haley was struggling there, trying to get additional money. near the end when his house was fire bold, he had to go -- bombed, he had to go and stay up the street with rube by dee's

brother -- ruby dee's brother, mr. thomas wallace. and he had all of the money he made, it was like it went right back to the nation. he didn't, i mean, he didn't own the house. he eventually after they fire bombed it, the next day or so he's evicted. because he went back on february the 15th and tried to pick up what was salvageable from the fire. so right away, i mean, you add all of these here different kind of pressures on his life, it's amazing that he was able to accomplish as much as he did. and many people felt that what he should have done is since he made such solid connections with all of these african leaders, and on a couple of occasions particularly in ghana, kwame -- [inaudible] later on w.e.b. duboise, he ended up making that his home, that he was offered those opportunities to stay in africa. but, you know, the greater issue

for him was circumstances and conditions of his people in this country. and he felt out of necessity he had to come back and be a part of the struggle. even if it meant, you know, that his life, he knew his life was in danger and there was a possibility of annihilation, extermination was almost at any point. and toward the end i think he, people have speculated broadband dr. king having these same kind of squeeze intonations, this kind of intuition that something very violent is going to happen. he's trying to spare some of the people not to be caught in the cross fire. read herman ferguson's book, "the unlikely warrior." he talks about that in a very meaningful way, i think, in terms of the last -- because he was at the, he was there in the audubon ballroom in washington heights on that day in which malcolm was gunned down. and some of the things that he saw. and he saw some of the stuff

that was leading up to it as well that indicated to him that his life was in imminent danger, that it wouldn't be very long. so he may have had a rush, too, in terms of hurry up and getting his autobiography finished in the same way you said earlier about possibly with manning recognizing that the clock was ticking. going to have to hurry up and get this job done, because i don't think i have very long to be here. and sometimes we can hear the, kind of the death rattle, you know, in our lives. so so he said let me hurry up and get this thing done. he told alex haley, manning -- i mean, malcolm told alex haley, i'll never see the finished product. and he never did. he got a chance to look at some of the last chapters when they met out at the airport, but after that, i mean, the final version he didn't get a chance to see it. and we know that because we had an opportunity to see the

annotated version -- well, what's being done now is greg reid who owns the original manuscript, and he's going through it and annotating it and showing the disparities between the published account and be the, and the one that they have in his possession. so you can see they're -- the kind of marginality, the crossing out, the deletions, the rewrites and everything malcolm's suggesting, and none of those things were done. so it's almost talking about another book. so we're working on that in terms of, like, annotating that. if as greg comes along with it, i mean, that should be a revelation along with the three missing chapters. >> yes, sir. >> yes, ma'am. >> speak into the mic, sir. >> uh-huh. >> evening. my name is jonathan, and i wanted to ask you a question, if i may. towards the end of his life, one of the most important things to malcolm was reaching out to and

connecting with young people. >> uh-huh. >> and so my question is, when it comes to reaching young people today and helping them to become critical, analytical, independent, african-minded thinkers, what do you suggest be done in that today's youth is very, very different from the youth of the '60s and the '70s and even up into the mid '80s? do you have any feedback on what we could do to reach these young people in regards to their ability to think for themselves? thank you. >> thanks, jonathan. i think what you're doing is part of that process. because you're trying to get your education together. you're trying to process information and be in a position

where you can teach. because, you know, you have a responsibility, an obligation, you know, to go ahead and do a job, too n terms of reaching -- in terms of reaching the young people. we say there's three ways you acquire it, you know? enlightenment, education and consciousness, and that is in the family. it starts in the family. then after the family, it's the school systems, the educational process. then after that it's your peer group. what you can get, pick up from your friends in the streets and what have you. so the family is missing and the educational system is falling apart, then, you know, the peer group will kick in and take over. and that may be the intervention that's absolutely necessary from people with some consciousness as you have and you possess, that you have to jump in there and take that role as a mentor. you know, a lot of us, you know, got a few hours that we can give from time to time as melanie

does quite often in her storytelling with young people. and the earlier you can get 'em, the better. you get 'em very early and begin to give them your own proper indoctrination, you know, give them the kind of survival skills and the education that they need, you know, coming from are your background. because you've been there, you know what it's about. malcolm x's autobiography to a great degree is a cautionary tale too. you know? okay, here's what i did, and people figure that maybe they can go through that same process and reach the same kind of heights. but at the same time you're saying, huh-uh. toward the end of the book he begin to tell you, no, this is not the way to it. the one thing, the one thing i wish that happened in my life was an opportunity to get more education. that was the only regret that he had, you know? and so, but despite that, you know, he went on, he recognized that deficiency, and he worked on it.

our young people need that kind of guidance. more so than ever. because there's so many other p kind of distractions out there. and, you know, if you're going to -- they've got access to all of this technology, it's absolutely amazing in terms of social networking, what's going on. and how do we get involved in that process and make sure they're doing the right kind of social networking, you know? because you have to be there and look over their shoulders and help 'em out. you have that responsibility be, that obligation as a parent, you know, as an elder, as one who has been through that. you know exactly what's needed. so you don't have to be listening to nobody, or, you know, you know what to do. thanks, jonathan. by the way, he's one of my students. [laughter] at this college of new rochelle, not at city college. i have one of my students here from city college, james.

james is back there. he knows he's going to get that a now. [laughter] >> are there any further questions or comments? you would like to make a last comment? >> i would like to ask him some more conversation. >> okay. take the mic. >> i know we had a brother behind me was asking why there are no other malcolm xs out there. where can we find them? and i'm sitting here reflecting in the meaning of malcolm x. you probably got hundreds of thousands, if not millions of malcolm xs out there that you don't even know about, see? is -- one of the things among others to pick up about malcolm's life and take into

consideration that there are more young black men in prison today than in college. the point is that that's deliberate. also recognize that some of our brightest minds, some of our most brilliant young people are those who are behind bars. >> that's right. >> and, my brother, each generation creates his own leaders. time and circumstances create leaders. they will step forward. the leaders, to young people of today have just as much potential if not more than i had. the conditions that they face today was very similar to the conditions that was from my generation. i'm 72 years old. you have gangs now, the crips and the bloods, we thought we

had gangs back in the '50s, too, just as mean as the ones you've got now. they didn't have the weapons, but they was just as mean. you couldn't go from brooklyn to manhattan or the bronx sometimes without looking over your shoulder. chicago has some of the meanest gangs that are still around. but what i'm saying is that it goes from generation to generation. we had a drug problem, now it's crack cocaine, in the '50s, we had heroin. the same generation also gave us malcolm x. it gave us the stokely carmichaels. that same generation gave us dr. king in spite of what we was up against. you have young people out there now, and you know what? they will step forward and rise to the occasion. when i saw millions show up in washington, d.c., two million at the million man march, that told me something. we concentrate on the negative a lot rather than the positive.

that should have been a signal that there are a lot of positive, forward-looking young black men and women out there. we have to understand history. malcolm x was a product of his time. we have those out there now who will rise to the occasion. it might not even be necessary for another malcolm x. we need a lot of malcolms now. but the point is that young people out here now, support them, back them up and understand that there is a lot of changes in our young people. >> wanted to say one quick thing, and i think we're getting ready to wrap. >> sure. >> if you go online ask be you pose -- and you pose a question, something you want to know about and you follow out that question until you exhaust what's up there, you're going to see some

percentage of that information is going to be hmm, another percentage of it was going to be, like, i've heard that before. and another percentage is going to be, hmm, i can work with this, okay? you begin to make some accumulation of information. there is, there are a lot of black, very positive black curricula that are online, you know, that you only have to look -- there's a guy out in california who's learned how to take math and make it, it's like literally fun. i mean, there's all kinds of stuff out there. but you have to do the searching, you know? and that's one of the things i wanted to just reraise about malcolm. it's not going to come to you, you got to it. you know? you've got to be the aggressor around information. i used to tell students you can't have a teacher or you

can't predicate your education on a teacher that's going to like you. because chances are that a lot of them are not going to like you. in life a lot of people are not going to like you. is that going to stop you, or are you going to move on? when you go to class, are you prepared, or are you saying, oh, i don't want to be bothered with that stuff? i could tell you the students i've seen with books versus the students i've seen with no books. i mean, it's one thing that the school doesn't have it, but the library has them, you know? or you can put your money together and not have $150 tennis shoes and go get a book, and the ten of you could share the book, you know? when i was a kid, we used to have school after school, you know? that's how we spent our evenings. and we weren't bright. i'm not a bright kid, you know? the brilliant kids didn't have to do that, you know? [laughter] but what i'm trying to say is what do you want out of life? what are you prepared to give to

this life in order to get something more positive out of it? can you see the we in the i, or is everything you do always i, me, my, mine? if that is what you see, that is your world view, all right? and there's no one else going to share that world with you, okay? and so i'm saying that you have to begin to reeducate yourself. that's part of what i was saying about the quest. what are you looking for, what answers do you want? the computer, unlike what we had to go through nine million books, and one of the things i used to love about it, everybody read. i mean, we were reading in the middle of a demonstration. did you read this? do you know about this paragraph? blah, blah, blah, we're going to see you after the demonstration to discuss it. these things are very important. what do you hear on the subways? what do you hear on the buses? what's on young people's minds? who's sleeping with whom and all

kinds of this ridiculous, very low-level conversation. black people have to take themselves seriously. you take yourself seriously, other people take you seriously too. you know? everybody who's not black is not the enemy. you should know that by now. i mean, we've got more sophistication going on here, okay? and we have to step up to the plate. that's it. i want to thank herb for coming, thank you. [applause] >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> there are two wonderful books out now about where al-qaeda and the taliban are. steve coll is working on one, seth jones from the rand corporation is working on the other one. david mare misis working on another biography at this time, and there are a lot of great

books that come out every year by serious journalists/historians that are worth reading. walter isaacson's book on steve jobs is a perfect example of that. it was an international best-selling phenomenon, and with good reason because of alll of the things we could learn from it. >> what are you currently reading? >> i'm read ago lot of things. i read eclectically, actually. i read a wonderful book called "blood knots," i loved that. i'm reading about the '48 campaign which if you think this is wild, that was really wild. harry truman and henry wallace and tom dewey, first election after the war. so i said about terry anderson and the book about george bush and how he decided to go to war. my wife just finished katherine the great which was given to me, and she picked it off, so identify got to go back and -- i've got to go back and get involved in that. i read a lot of magazine stuff,

a lot of essays. i read, i actually opened up a little correspondence with a poet by the name of donald hall as a result of something he wrote in the new yorker about growing old, and it really spoke to me in a way, and so we had a little exchange, and that was quite gratifying. i'm in awe of great writers. i don't pretend to be a great writer. i'm energetic, and i'm pretty good sometimes, but great writers move me in ways that nothing else in life does. >> for more information on this and other summer reading lists, visit booktv.org. here's a look at some books that are being published this week. in "confront and conceal: obama's secret wars and surprising use of american power," new york times' chief washington correspondent david sanger analyzes how the obama administration has handled new foreign threats. in "the great destroyer: barack obama's war on the republic," political commentator david limbaugh presents his thoughts on president obama's first term

in office. gail collins, columnist for "the new york times," examines the political influence texas has on the united states in if "as texas goes: how the lone star state hijacked the american agenda." political columnist and lawyer linda hershman recounts the history of the gay rights movement in "victory." former member of the maryland house of delegates, mark. >> liker, presents a memoir of his father, sergeant shriver, in "a good man: rediscovering my father, sargent shriver." anthony beaver provides a comprehensive account of world war ii. in chris christie, journalist bob ingle and michael simons explore the life and career of the new jersey governor. look for these titles in the bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the

near future on booktv and on booktv.org. i know many of you might not have been born in 1973 and '4 when watergate took place. but richard nixon won, in one of the biggest landslides in the history of the united states, which meant that most americans who voted in that election voted for him. yet when facts came out suggesting that laws were violated, the american people -- including the overwhelming majority who had supported richard nixon -- said, congress, you have to investigate, we have to have a special prosecutor, the laws have to be enforced no matter what. and in the end when the house judiciary committee acted on a bipartisan basis to vote for the impeachment of richard nixon, the country overwhelmingly supported that verdict. and what did that tell us? that more important than any

political party and more important than any president of the united states and more important than any single person and more important than any ideology was the bedrock principle of the rule of law and the preservation of our constitution. and americans united on that thing regardless of how they had voted just about a year and a half before that. we're not talking about ancient history in that vote. people put behind them their own partisan views and said what is good for the country and, and the rule of law and one standard of law was critical. so i said, gee, you know, a really important principle, and i believed in it too. and then we got the bush years. the accountability principles pretty much worked, i won't say they were perfect. hardly. government doesn't operate in a perfect world, and it itself is

rarely perfect. but then we got to the bush years, and things changed. and so i and my co-author, cynthia cooper, wrote a book about impeachment. i was an expert on it. that's a very niche in this country, that worked, the nixon impeachment proceeding. but we saw, and we wrote a book, and we saw, however, that there was no accountability through the impeachment process. and so then we said, well, let's look at what else can be done because we knew the framers of the constitution understood, and it's clear in the debates about the constitution that once the president leaves office, he -- someday maybe a she -- can be prosecuted. there was nothing in the framers' debates that said, oh, you've been president? be free. you get a forever free-from-jail

card. nonsense. the framers understood that presidents could do very bad things. i mean, they were human. they created checks and balances because they understood presidents could do bad things. they also understood congress could do bad things. they were not idealistic about people. they were very practical, and they were very pragmatic. so we said, okay, let's do this book about what kind of accountability can exist. and to our surprise as we began to look at what the criminal statutes were, what we saw was not just the possibility of accountability, but that the bush team was excruciatingly sensitive to the possibility of prosecution and had tried to erect barriers in a variety of