his parents, earl and louise, were active followers of marcus garvey's negro improvement organization. it drew on the themes of africanism, promoting black pride. >> marcus garvey said the world has made being black a crime. i'll make it a virtue. that the world said black history is a curse. black freedom is a pipe dream. black hope is a joke. >> my father's father, papa earl, was a young garvey-ite. he was a minister. it was during the jim crow era. and he was encouraging african-american communities to be self-reliant, to be independent, to stand up against injustice. it was during a time when lynchings were prevalent. and so my grandfather was assassinated also, tied to the trolley tracks. >> louise was unable to keep the family together. she had a breakdown. the social services came and split the family up and sent the siblings to various foster homes. malcolm attended a predominantly white school. he had charisma, even as a child. his classmates voted for him to be class president. >> most often he was the only person of color in the school. and when he was, i think about 12 yea

narratives, scholars have created what i call a very seductive radical art that runs the gamut from marcus garvey to w e b du bois, to paul robison, to malcolm x.. and to the panthers. in doing so, historians have elevated not just excavated -- because that work needed to be excavated -- but not -- now they have elevated the role of rap radicals of the home and abroad. in the process of that excavation and elevation they have been varying the work of black liveries -- liberals in the struggle for anti-colonialism. there are a few descriptors such as the aplomb of the african revolution or you need a handkerchief. with that, just in explaining how the cold war caused these liberals to abandon colonial freedom struggles, so historians implied that only lacked radicals were in this -- black radicals were in this struggles that they were the only ones left. but it -- this lens of interpretation is much too narrow. and i would argue, implicitly dangerous. what it does is it has funneled the very definition of real black leadership into a straitjacket of thought and action. it has cast militancy and re