Big Moo
02-23-2005, 11:57 AM
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Professor Marable, you went to the Haley collection.
MANNING MARABLE: That's right.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about that experience and how difficult it is, really, to get original information about Malcolm X, and the Haley example is just one.
MANNING MARABLE: That's right. One of the striking things about doing research on Malcolm X, and I believe that most Malcolm X researchers could tell you their own stories, is that there's this paradox of the absence of critical information. Malcolm X is a person who has inspired -- he has been the muse of several generations of black cultural workers, artists, poets, playwrights. There are literally a thousand works with the title Malcolm X in them. There are over 350 films and over 320 web-based educational resources with the title Malcolm X, yet the vast majority of them are based on secondary literatures, that is, not on primary source material. In the case of Alex Haley, Haley's material is located at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, primarily. But there are a whole series of elaborate steps that one has to -- has to encounter in order to even begin to do research. There's an attorney. If you want to photocopy material from that archive, you have to get permission from the attorney beforehand. You have to name the exact pages you want to photocopy before you can photocopy them. So that there are a whole series of steps. You can only use a pencil rather than a pen to copy down material, etc. It's a laborious process, and it takes a long time just to do a small amount of research. Fortunately, Anne Romaine, who was appointed by Haley just before his death to be his own biographer --
AMY GOODMAN: She was a folk singer?
MANNING MARABLE: That's right. A folk singer and a skillful historian, even though she was not formally trained in the field. She collected her own parallel archive to Haley, and without Anne Romaine's archive, which is also at the University of Tennessee – well, I should -- let me put it in a positive light, with that archive, we have gained extensive knowledge about how Haley and Malcolm actually worked and how the book, the autobiography, was constructed. The raw material for chapter 16, a lot of that material, is actually in Romaine's archives, not in Haley's, which is interesting.
AMY GOODMAN: Hmm.
MANNING MARABLE: That's right. But what is most interesting about the book is that as I have read it over the years, something -- something was odd to me. It's like -- you know, Malcolm broke with the N.O.I. in March 1964, and in that last 11 chaotic months, he spent most of the time outside of the United States. Nevertheless, he built two organizations in the spring of 1964. First, Muslim Mosque Incorporated, which was a religious organization that was largely based on members of the N.O.I. who left with him. It was spearheaded by James 67X or James Shabazz, who was his chief of staff. Then secondly was the Organization of Afro-American Unity. This was an organization that was a secular group. It largely consisted of people that we would later call several years later Black Powerites, Black nationalists, progressives coming out of the Black freedom struggle, the northern students' movement, people -- students, young people, professionals, workers, who were dedicated to Black activism and militancy, but outside of the context of Islam. There were tensions between these two organizations, and Malcolm had to negotiate between them and since he was out of the country a great deal of the time, it was rather difficult for him to do so. It seemed rather odd that there's only a fleeting reference to the OAAU inside of the book that's supposed to be his political testament. I wondered about this. It seemed like something was missing. Well, as a matter of fact, there is. Three chapters. Those three chapters really represent a kind of political testament that are outlined by Malcolm X, and to make a long story short, they're in a safe of a Detroit attorney by the name of Greg Reed. He purchased these chapters in a sale of the Haley Estate in late 1992 for the sum of $100,000. Since that time, no historian, or at least I suppose I'm the exception, very few people have actually had a chance to see the raw material that was going to comprise these three chapters. The missing political testament that should have been in the autobiography, but isn't.
AMY GOODMAN: And what is he doing with them?
MANNING MARABLE: Well, they're sitting in his safe. And, I guess the conundrum -- I'm not an attorney or a person who does intellectual property -- but my understanding of the situation is that he owns the property, but he doesn't own -- he owns the physical texts of these chapters, but Mr. Reed does not own the intellectual property, the content of these chapters, so he cannot publish them.
AMY GOODMAN: Is this the same attorney Reed who is involved with, perhaps, a lawsuit to do with Rosa Parks?
MANNING MARABLE: That's right. It's the same one, with the trial with the hip-hop group that's based in Atlanta, and Gregory Reed --.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Outkast?
MANNING MARABLE: That's right, with Outkast. In fact, I was even -- I think even Reed sent something to me asking me to be a -- to give testimony in this trial, which I promptly said, thanks, but no thanks.
AMY GOODMAN: It's because Outkast used in their music, they use Rosa Parks's words, her own voice?
MANNING MARABLE: That's right.
AMY GOODMAN: How does the family of Rosa Parks feel about this?
MANNING MARABLE: I cannot really say. I just know what I have seep on the media. I know that they weren't very happy about this.
AMY GOODMAN: Happy about --
MANNING MARABLE: About Greg Reed's representation, but --
AMY GOODMAN: So, he's not representing them.
MANNING MARABLE: Well, again, I cannot really characterize what is going on with that lawsuit, because I'm not really a party to it.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you are the only historian who has seen excerpts of the attorney Reed, the three chapters that he has in his safe?
MANNING MARABLE: I cannot say that for certain.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the few.
MANNING MARABLE: That's right.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about that experience and how difficult it is, really, to get original information about Malcolm X, and the Haley example is just one.
MANNING MARABLE: That's right. One of the striking things about doing research on Malcolm X, and I believe that most Malcolm X researchers could tell you their own stories, is that there's this paradox of the absence of critical information. Malcolm X is a person who has inspired -- he has been the muse of several generations of black cultural workers, artists, poets, playwrights. There are literally a thousand works with the title Malcolm X in them. There are over 350 films and over 320 web-based educational resources with the title Malcolm X, yet the vast majority of them are based on secondary literatures, that is, not on primary source material. In the case of Alex Haley, Haley's material is located at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, primarily. But there are a whole series of elaborate steps that one has to -- has to encounter in order to even begin to do research. There's an attorney. If you want to photocopy material from that archive, you have to get permission from the attorney beforehand. You have to name the exact pages you want to photocopy before you can photocopy them. So that there are a whole series of steps. You can only use a pencil rather than a pen to copy down material, etc. It's a laborious process, and it takes a long time just to do a small amount of research. Fortunately, Anne Romaine, who was appointed by Haley just before his death to be his own biographer --
AMY GOODMAN: She was a folk singer?
MANNING MARABLE: That's right. A folk singer and a skillful historian, even though she was not formally trained in the field. She collected her own parallel archive to Haley, and without Anne Romaine's archive, which is also at the University of Tennessee – well, I should -- let me put it in a positive light, with that archive, we have gained extensive knowledge about how Haley and Malcolm actually worked and how the book, the autobiography, was constructed. The raw material for chapter 16, a lot of that material, is actually in Romaine's archives, not in Haley's, which is interesting.
AMY GOODMAN: Hmm.
MANNING MARABLE: That's right. But what is most interesting about the book is that as I have read it over the years, something -- something was odd to me. It's like -- you know, Malcolm broke with the N.O.I. in March 1964, and in that last 11 chaotic months, he spent most of the time outside of the United States. Nevertheless, he built two organizations in the spring of 1964. First, Muslim Mosque Incorporated, which was a religious organization that was largely based on members of the N.O.I. who left with him. It was spearheaded by James 67X or James Shabazz, who was his chief of staff. Then secondly was the Organization of Afro-American Unity. This was an organization that was a secular group. It largely consisted of people that we would later call several years later Black Powerites, Black nationalists, progressives coming out of the Black freedom struggle, the northern students' movement, people -- students, young people, professionals, workers, who were dedicated to Black activism and militancy, but outside of the context of Islam. There were tensions between these two organizations, and Malcolm had to negotiate between them and since he was out of the country a great deal of the time, it was rather difficult for him to do so. It seemed rather odd that there's only a fleeting reference to the OAAU inside of the book that's supposed to be his political testament. I wondered about this. It seemed like something was missing. Well, as a matter of fact, there is. Three chapters. Those three chapters really represent a kind of political testament that are outlined by Malcolm X, and to make a long story short, they're in a safe of a Detroit attorney by the name of Greg Reed. He purchased these chapters in a sale of the Haley Estate in late 1992 for the sum of $100,000. Since that time, no historian, or at least I suppose I'm the exception, very few people have actually had a chance to see the raw material that was going to comprise these three chapters. The missing political testament that should have been in the autobiography, but isn't.
AMY GOODMAN: And what is he doing with them?
MANNING MARABLE: Well, they're sitting in his safe. And, I guess the conundrum -- I'm not an attorney or a person who does intellectual property -- but my understanding of the situation is that he owns the property, but he doesn't own -- he owns the physical texts of these chapters, but Mr. Reed does not own the intellectual property, the content of these chapters, so he cannot publish them.
AMY GOODMAN: Is this the same attorney Reed who is involved with, perhaps, a lawsuit to do with Rosa Parks?
MANNING MARABLE: That's right. It's the same one, with the trial with the hip-hop group that's based in Atlanta, and Gregory Reed --.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Outkast?
MANNING MARABLE: That's right, with Outkast. In fact, I was even -- I think even Reed sent something to me asking me to be a -- to give testimony in this trial, which I promptly said, thanks, but no thanks.
AMY GOODMAN: It's because Outkast used in their music, they use Rosa Parks's words, her own voice?
MANNING MARABLE: That's right.
AMY GOODMAN: How does the family of Rosa Parks feel about this?
MANNING MARABLE: I cannot really say. I just know what I have seep on the media. I know that they weren't very happy about this.
AMY GOODMAN: Happy about --
MANNING MARABLE: About Greg Reed's representation, but --
AMY GOODMAN: So, he's not representing them.
MANNING MARABLE: Well, again, I cannot really characterize what is going on with that lawsuit, because I'm not really a party to it.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you are the only historian who has seen excerpts of the attorney Reed, the three chapters that he has in his safe?
MANNING MARABLE: I cannot say that for certain.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the few.