Malcolm X: The FBI File

Clayborne Carson

ISBN 10: 0881847585 / ISBN 13: 9780881847581

Published by Carroll & Graff, 1993

Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0881847585I5N00

Synopsis:

The FBI opened its file on Malcolm X shortly after his release from a Boston prison in March 1953. Twelve years later — on February 21, 1965 — he was assassinated in a hail of bullets. Yet his fascinating story survived his violent death — and a vital part of that story is found here in Malcolm X: The FBI File. This extraordinary work distills the voluminous file kept on the most controversial and charismatic civil rights leader, which ran to more than thirty-six hundred pages. Accompanied by the incisive commentaries of Clayborne Carson, a leading scholar of the American Civil Rights movement, this is a fascinating biographical and historical document, one that sheds light on both Malcolm X and the government compelled to monitor him.

From the Publisher: From March, 1953 forward, shortly after he was released from a Boston prison, the FBI watched every move Malcolm X made. Their files on him totalled more than 3,600 pages, covering every facet of his life.

Viewing the file as a source of information about the ideological development and political significance of Malcolm X, historian Clayborne Carson examines Malcolm's relationship to other African-American leaders and institutions in order to define more clearly Malcolm's place in modern African-American history.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of reading Malcolm X: The FBI File is discovering what the G-men decided was worth noting about Malcolm Little, aka Malcolm X. They read his private letters, monitored his phone calls, taped his interviews, and shadowed him wherever he went, except to the Audubon Ballroom on the day of his death.

With its sobering, close scutiny of the FBI and the national policing strategies of the 1950s and 1960s and its look at such issues as the relationship between J. Edgar Hoover and black civil rights leaders, Malcolm X: The FBI Files is one-of-a-kind: never before has there been so much material on the assassination of Malcolm X assembled in one place.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Malcolm X: The FBI File
Publisher: Carroll & Graff
Publication Date: 1993
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Fair
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket