The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

Fifteen-year-old Malcolm heads to Boston to stay with Ella. He is determined to make a living with his mind. His friends believed that he would become a criminal and go to prison. His family worry that Ella’s side of the family—with its criminal proclivities—might enable him. However, Ella is growing more respectable by the time he arrives. She gives Malcolm a daily chore list and tries to hold him accountable for his performance and behavior. Malcolm works part-time at his uncle’s garage.

In his autobiography, Malcolm refers to a man named Shorty. Payne reveals Shorty to be a composite of several people Malcolm knew: Malcolm Jarvis (a Bostonian trumpet player who was one of Malcolm’s street friends and his most frequent partner in street crime), Earl Jr., and Kenneth Collins, Ella’s husband. Payne writes: “Upon retracing his steps and comparing the traits and actions attributed to this Shorty, it appears certain that the character was not a single individual but composite of several persons whom Malcolm encountered during those days” (150). Ella doesn’t approve of Malcolm’s friends. Malcolm straightens his hair and begins to dress ostentatiously.

He begins to hustle at the Roseland, shining shoes and connecting white men with black women. He sees many music legends perform. Earl Jr. is a singer at the club. He introduces Malcolm to Billie Holliday. Ella tries to keep Malcolm at home, to no avail.

Malcolm next works full-time at a drugstore soda fountain, where he meets a woman he calls Laura in his autobiography. He quickly leaves her for a white woman named Sophia. Laura is so devastated that she becomes a drug addict and prostitute.

For his next job, Malcolm washes dishes at a hotel during the day. At work he hears about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ella gets Malcolm a job on the New Haven railroad, helping in the sandwich car. The job gives him the ability to travel. He wants to go to New York and see Harlem. When he gets there, he goes to a club called Smalls Paradise. Harlem is ninety percent black at the time. Malcolm arrives near the end of what is called the Harlem Renaissance.

Malcolm calls Harlem Seventh Heaven (169). The nightlife absorbs him. He later wrote that he wanted “to become one of the most depraved, parasitical hustlers among New York’s eight million people” (170).

Sometimes he invited a white girlfriend, Beatrice to come to New York with him. Beatrice gives him access to a new circle of people. Club owners start to give him special treatment. He dresses in outlandish zoot suits and wears brightly colored shoes. Occasionally he uses his train privileges to visit his family, who are stunned by his transformation. He gets a job waiting tables at Smalls Paradise, where he overhears professional criminals discussing their illegal activities. He learns different hustles from them and gets involved in running numbers.

He is fired when he offers a serviceman the favors of a prostitute. Military men were off limits for hustles. He starts selling marijuana while looking for a new job.

Women always wanted Malcolm, but he uses them for power rather than sex. Malcolm mistreated women, even slapping Beatrice. Jarvis says that Malcolm never loved white women but used them as revenge against white men.

Malcolm is increasingly reckless and always seems to be seeking attention. He organizes a burglary ring with Cooper, Jarvis, and three women. One night he feigned a Russian roulette stunt in front of them to show them that he wasn’t afraid to die, but he had secretly hidden the bullet that they thought he had loaded into one of the cylinders.

The gang gets caught after several successful heists. In court, Malcolm and Jarvis plead guilty and the judge gives them an eight to ten year sentence. Beatrice serves seven months and the other girls get probation. Malcolm leaves the courtroom quietly after the sentencing.

Malcolm enters Charlestown State Prison on February 27, 1946. He is almost twenty-one years old. He becomes introverted. There is a second trial for burglaries that his gang committed in another county. On the witness stand, Beatrice testifies that Malcolm forced her to help and she only did so because she was afraid. Furious, Malcolm reveals their affair and Beatrice’s role in planning and scouting.

Ella visits Malcolm in prison. She thinks her influence corrupted him. Malcolm curses the God and the Bible. He abuses the guards and his anti-religious defiance gets him the nickname of Satan. Jarvis is transferred after six months.

Malcolm meets an inmate named John Bembry. Bembry knows history, philosophy, and has the ability to convey complicated concepts in simple terms. He inspires Malcolm with his eloquence and breadth of his knowledge. As letters from his family diminish, Malcolm realizes that he has pushed them away. Hilda encourages him to learn to write better. He takes a correspondence course in grammar and begins studying books from the library. He commits to mastering English and reads eclectically, paying specific attention to a rhetorical book called Loom of Language.

Before his transfer, Jarvis has an early visitor named Abdul Hameed, a Muslim from India. He met Malcolm once and Malcolm came away from the meeting uninterested in spirituality. Now it is different. After Malcolm exhausts the library, he asks to be transferred to Norfolk Prison Colony, where Jarvis and Hameed are incarcerated. He is transferred instead to the Concord Reformatory, a medium-security prison with a better library than Charlestown.

Malcolm and other inmates watch Jackie Robinson play in a professional baseball game on April 15, 1947. He is the first black person to play in the league. Malcolm describes himself as Robinson’s biggest fan. He writes letters and improves his family relationships. Reginald writes and says that he knows how to get him out of prison.

Meanwhile, Wilfred attends his first Islam meeting with a man named David Farr. He sees potential in the religion.