No comments about Samuel L. Jackson: The Unauthorised Biography.

No comments about The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation: Stories of My Family's Journey to Freedom.

1 comments about Great Negroes: Past and Present: Volume Two (Great Negroes).

1. As a high school teacher my students often asked ,do you have to die to be famous?This book features 200 contemporary famous African Americans.Thank you!

1 comments about Maine's Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People.

1. Every state should strive to make such an effort to capure its African American history and Price and Talbot did a tremendous job.

5 comments about Always Bring a Crowd!: The Story of Frank Lumpkin Steelworker.

1. This fine book centres on the familiar experience of company asset stripping and closure. But it also shows how the workers at Wisconsin Steel made two companies pay!

   After 75 years of making profit out of the 3,500 workers of Wisconsin Steel in Chicago, its owners, the directors of International Harvester, decided to dump the plant in a phoney sale. They kept the mortgage on the mill, transferred ownership to Envirodyne, a consulting company with 20 employees and no steel making experience, and even lent it the money to buy the plant! They did this to try to cheat the workers out of the $45 million in benefits promised in their union contract. Two years later, they called in the mortgage and closed the mill without notice and without paying the workersý severance pay or health benefits.

   The workers there, led by Frank Lumpkin and the Save Our Jobs Committee, fought for 18 years to get the money they were owed, and to stop any company ever again dumping their workers. And they won - in 1988 they got Harvester to pay out $14.8 million, and in 1995 they forced Envirodyne to pay $4 million.

   They also fought the wider struggle to rebuild the cityýs industry and fabric, to get workers back into work on public works projects, where the steel they produced was indispensable. They realised that services depend on industry: like most US cities, Chicagoýs bridges, streets, sewers, schools, hospitals and houses need structural repairs that would use all the steel its mills could produce.

   This book is also the story of Frank himself. He was one of the best workers, never late and never absent; his skills won him promotion to the tool room. He was always willing to pass on his skills to the younger generation, saying, ýIf you have knowledge, you have responsibility to share that knowledge. You canýt take it easy.ý ýIn order to learn you have to be able to teach and learn at the same time. That means we must listen and speak. We have to know each other. We have a similar cause. Together we can solve the problem. We need jobs that will feed, clothe and house our families. Nothing else is sufficient.ý




2. In reading "Bring a Crowd," I was struck at how much this book goes beyond biography. It spans most of the 20th century and covers things that are almost never taught in most high school and college American history curricula. Mrs. Lumpkin touches on all of the core issues that continue to haunt modern-day America: capitalism, racism and opportunity. If this book doesn't present an honest depiction of these issues through the eyes of one man, then few books do. Frank Lumpkin has done everything from boxing to sharecropping. Everything he does has been won with a lot of courage, hard work and sheer pluck. He is a role model for most aspiring Americans, who having come from some other place-- probably not as accomodating as the U.S.--simply want something better. From racist rural Florida to the labor battles of South Chicago, Frank Lumpkin has been an active part of history that continues to be a mystery to most working Americans. How did we get a 40-hour week? How did we get paid vacations? How can we protect ourselves from dangerous workplaces? How are we protected if our employers abuse our labor and loyalty? In Frank Lumpkin, we can see how these issues evolved and how one man's struggle benefited us all. This book should be taught in every course on American history and made into a movie. Morgan Freeman should play the part of Frank Lumpkin. I can't remember the last book I read where I felt this was an essential reading into my own identity as an American. Read and rejoice that people like Frank Lumpkin have fought so bravely and for so long despite horrendous odds.



3. This is the story of an extraordinary "common man." Sounds like a logical impossibility, doesn't it? But in Always Bring a Crowd, the story of steelworker Frank Lumpkin, you will meet such a man, a hero for our times. You will read a life story that emerges from the blast furnace of American history-the part of American history that is generally shielded from our eyes. (And speaking of shielding, if the AFL-CIO doesn't promote and mass-produce this book, it's not serious about gaining strength in American politics.) In these days of wealth and luxury for a few, we all see the decline of our cities, farms, industrial base, schools, health care system and pensions. Our mass media, our public intellectuals, our politicians wring their hands and say, Too bad, but there is no way to counter the "global" and "high-tech" forces sending the majority of us on this pell-mell descent in a handbasket bound for economic hell. Or they say, Just be patient and await the "trickle down." Or they ignore the growing numbers of poorly paid and insecure salary and wage workers and say, That's just the way things are. Yet here stands the example of Frank Lumpkin. His life story shows us how to get out of the handbasket and start building up a better society. It will take union power. No other social force has its potential influence. Lumpkin demonstrated this in the campaign he's best known for in the Chicago area-the 17-year fight that prevented a giant steel firm and its holding companies from cheating 2,700 workers in a corrupt plant shutdown scheme. That's just his longest fight, however. The book recounts the effective role he has played in every other kind of social justice struggle our country has seen, including police brutality, oppression of women, fair housing, fair employment and tenants rights, among others. The insight, charisma, patience, and motivation needed to "bring a crowd" takes creativity and genius possessed by very few. As union man Ed Sadlowski says of Lumpkin in the foreword, "Maybe, if you're lucky enough, you'll cross paths with someone like him within your own lifetime." What path is Lumpkin on? As this book shows, people like Frank Lumpkin don't just happen. Born in 1916, Lumpkin comes from a family whose upward mobility began on plantations and sharecropping land in Georgia and then in the orange groves of Florida at a time when Afro-Americans did most of the picking. Big, powerful and smart-and fortified by a family that prized work, study and standing up against racism-Frank worked in fields, chauffeured, boxed as "K.O." Lumpkin and moved to Buffalo and became a steelworker in the early 1940s. Author Bew Lumpkin uses a unique structure to tell the story. The ordinary chronology of biography is there. But also, assembled like a collage, are the voices of workers and neighbors and friends joining those of the family. Those who know of the American Communist movement only through the "Russian spies" and "dupes of aliens" and "fellow travelers" stereotypes of the J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy/Nixon/Reagan line, or from the more liberal strains of anti-communism, will get an entirely different and more complex view of that history in this book. Bea Lumpkin captures the excitement of the challenges that brought the best out in Frank and his fellow workers, spouses and neighbors as they fought in word and deed to make a steel company obey the law and the union contract. The company kept shifting corporate skins like a snake, but Frank and the young labor attorney Tom Geoghegan (GAY-gen) finally cornered it. The workers won $4 million, thanks to bankruptcy laws designed to help corporations skip out workers and their communities, but that was only about a sixth of what they were owed. (Also see Geoghegan's Which Side Are You On?) Lumpkin shows that the worker's point of view is a far broader and wiser perspective than the caricatures like Archie Bunker, Ralph Kramden and the wolf-whistling, racist and profane construction workers of our commercials and movies. A reader will enjoy imagining what achievements could be won on a national scale if the confused, disheartened and insecure working people of this country had a leader, a movement, an organization with this political effectiveness.

   John Woodford




4. This is the story of an extraordinary "common man." Sounds like a logical impossibility, doesn't it? But in "Always Bring a Crowd," the story of steelworker Frank Lumpkin, you will meet such a man, a hero for our times.

   Lumpkin is best known for leading the 17-year fight that prevented a giant Chicago-area steel firm and its shell-game holding companies from cheating 2,700 pink-slipped workers in a corrupt plant-shutdown scheme.

   That's just his longest fight, however. The book recounts the effective roles he has played in every other kind of social justice struggle our country has seen, including police brutality, oppression of women, fair housing, fair employment and tenants rights, among others. Lumpkin wins most of them because he learned how to bring a crowd.

   If you're interested in organizing or joining any concerted effort to improve our country for all of its people, reading this book lets you serve a sort of apprenticeship under Lumpkin. As union man Ed Sadlowski says of Lumpkin in the foreword, "Maybe, if you're lucky enough, you'll cross paths with someone like him within your own lifetime."

   What path is Lumpkin on? As this biography shows, people like Frank Lumpkin don't just happen. Born in 1916, Lumpkin comes from a family whose upward mobility began on plantations and sharecropping land in Georgia and then in the orange groves of Florida at a time when Afro-Americans did most of the picking. Big, powerful and smart-and fortified by a family that prized work, study and standing up against racism-Frank toiled in fields, chauffeured, boxed as "K.O." Lumpkin and moved to Buffalo and became a steelworker in the early 1940s.

   Lumpkin is one of 10 brothers and sisters. And Always Bring A Crowd is a family saga as well as a story that represents the best qualities of the Afro-American people and Americans in general. All of the Lumpkins appear throughout the book, and author Bea Lumpkin, Frank's wife, paints their portraits and captures their characters in speech as deftly as any novelist. Led by the examples of their parents, who never quit struggling to improve the family's conditions, and of young activist siblings like sister Jonnie, most of the Lumpkins got involved in union and other progressive work. Several joined or worked in tandem with the Communist Party of the United States. The WWII-era lynching in uniform of Taft Rollins, a Black soldier, was a catalyst that set them on the path of seeing a different socioeconomic system as key in fighting racism in the many forms they encountered it.

   Bea Lumpkin has devised a flexible structure to tell her husband's story. The ordinary chronology of biography is there, plus 67 photographs of tremendous documentary and emotional force. Also, assembled like a collage, are the voices, voices of workers and neighbors and friends joining those of the family.

   The book explains how, despite its failures and weaknesses, the American Communist movement attracted a great many workers and activists during and after the Depression Era when Lumpkin was growing up. Any fair-minded reader will conclude from this book that a lot of warm-heartedness, gumption and humanity formed the motives and objectives of many patriotic Americans attracted to the party and the socialist/communist ideology.

   Bea Lumpkin captures the excitement of the challenges that brought the best out in Frank and his fellow workers, spouses and neighbors, as they fought with weapons of word, deed, votes and law to make the Wisconsin Steel Co. fulfill its contractual obligations to them. The company kept shifting corporate skins like a snake, but Frank and the young labor attorney Tom Geoghegan (GAY-gen) finally cornered it. The workers won $4 million. As a result, however, of bankruptcy laws designed to help corporations skip out on workers and their communities, that sum was only about a sixth of what they were owed. (Also see Geoghegan's "Which Side Are You On?", another great account of this struggle.)

   Lumpkin was also active in Chicago politics, ran for unsuccessfully for the state legislature, and continues to fight for job-creation and living-wage programs to this day.

   Along the way, Frank and Bea visited Chile, Cuba, Mozambique, Senegal, Western Europe and other countries. His observations about these countries, their economies, the labor movement and progressive politics are splendid travelogues from a worker's point of view. How many times do you read of local strike activity as a feature of foreign journeys? It tells you more about a country than does reading about cuisine, hotel rates and great views.

   The worker's point of view is a far broader and wiser perspective than the caricatures like Archie Bunker, Ralph Kramden and the wolf-whistling, racist and profane construction workers of our commercials and movies would lead us to believe.




5. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, or so it has been said. Sometimes, luck can hit you by just being in the right place at the right time. Whichever the case maybe, I consider myself to be an extremely lucky guy. Not only have I crossed paths with Frank Lumpkin, I have "walked the line" with Frank in support of many, many just causes.

   For anyone who makes the choice to stand up for something in which they believe, "Always Bring A Crowd" is a must read. This is a book that chronicles the eighty year lifetime of a common working man who, with great ease and enjoyment, rises to meet each new challenge that our society throws his way. Reading Frank's journey provides one with not only a sense of where we have been, but where we need to go. The prominant issues which have confronted our society, and the movements to rectify the wrongs are all captured in this book, told through the eyes of Frank's wife and comrade Beatrice. This important story teaches us that through solidarity, we can change the course of history and overcome the wrongs inflicted by our societal greeds.

   The hard won victories of which "Always Bring A Crowd" records, serves to inspire and regenerate the batteries for the ongoing struggle of economic justice, peace, and freedom. Much like Frank Lumpkin, this book captures what is the best about the working class.

1 comments about Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography.

1. I read this book right before my first journey to Ghana. I was participating in a study abroad program, and I was advised to read some books about Ghana and West Africa before I left. I stumbled upon this book on Amazon, and I'm so glad I did. Marita Golden is a brilliant storyteller, and she is so honest. I love her writing style, and I could relate to so many of her experiences. I also love the way she relayed her precarious position as a black woman in America, as well as her anxiety about her place in African society. Her book has also helped me understand some of the cultural divides btwn Africans in Diaspora, and those on the continent. I highly reccomend her book!

1 comments about A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten.

1. There was a Revolutionary War sailor who was captured by the British and was offered British citizenship instead of being a prisoner. He insisted he was a loyal American. He went on, as if in a Horatio Alger story, to become a successful Philadelphia businessman, but he was nonetheless encouraged, because of his heroic service in the war, to apply for the pension that he deserved from the country he had helped make. He replied that he did not want money from his country. He wanted only one thing from America, and if any American deserved it, he surely did. What James Forten wanted was to become an American citizen, and he never in his long life got his wish. The simple reason was that he was black. Forten has largely been forgotten, which is too bad, since as a war hero, businessman, and abolitionist, he played commendable roles which one doesn't have to be of any particular race to admire. He is now rescued from obscurity by a large, detailed, and well-researched biography, _A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten_ (Oxford University Press) by Julie Winch. Winch has dug deep inside such ephemera as the social history of Philadelphia, the economic forces of the time, and even the trade of sailmaking by which Forten made his living, to give the first complete picture of one of the first outstanding black Americans.

   After his service in the war, Forten was apprenticed by the white, slave-owning sailmaker who had employed his father. He did so well that upon retirement, the owner left him the business. He branched out into real estate and money-lending. As a successful businessman, he became a civic leader, helping to administer his church and assisting in creating schools for black youth. He administered a mixed-race workforce, with some black managers supervising white workers. He could not vote, but he had no compunction about telling his workers how they were to vote and making sure they did so. He knew that he had an easier life in Philadelphia than he would in other parts of the nation, but he endured the contempt of many white people, a contempt that cycled inversely with prosperity; when times got tough, it was easy to blame blacks for taking jobs. Such blame could easily take the form of violence against the person or the property of blacks. There was a kidnapping ring that could spirit black children to Delaware and ship them into slavery in the south. Forten served in the American Anti-Slavery Society and lent his considerable finances and managerial skill to various abolitionist causes. He lent Garrison the money by which the famous abolitionist paper _The Liberator_ was begun. He wrote for the paper. He campaigned against the use of alcohol. He had a lifetime fight against blacks and whites who were pushing to move black people back to Africa, for he wanted America to be a nation without regard to color. He was not without controversy, even among blacks, but when he died in 1842, thousands of black and white mourners turned out to the funeral of an American original. Winch's biography, hefty and academic but not ponderous, brings that original back to us in his proper place in history.

No comments about Sun Ra: Collected Works Vol. 1 - Immeasurable Equation.

4 comments about The Death and Life of Malcolm X (Blacks in the New World).

1. Was there really a bit of Malcolm X in every black man? Martin Luther King is said to have confessed to a friend once that, yes, even he felt an empathic twinge of hatred when he saw Malcolm railing at white folks on television. I tried this out on a close associate of King's; he doubted that it was so. But later in the same conversation, he told me that King had visited Mr. Muhammad in Chicago one day and had, during the course of a "very friendly" conversation, asked the Messenger: "Do you really believe that all white folks are devils? I know a lot of white people have a lot of devil in them, but are you going to say that all of them are devils?" Mr. Muhammad smiled. "Dr. King," he said, "you and me both grew up in Georgia, and we know there are many different kinds of snakes. The rattlesnake was poisonous and the king snake was friendly. But they both snakes, Dr. King." And the two of them, the Messenger of Allah and the apostle of Christian love, had a hearty laugh (Goldman 65).
   
   Malcolm X must be turning in his grave right now. What do you mean "Black" and "White"? "Coffee is the only thing I like integrated" (Goldman 6). So, to prevent Brother Malcolm from turning in his grave, I will explore the life, times, untimely death, and legacy of Malcolm X from a "Black" and in contrast, a "White" perspective. Are there really two different versions though? In his preface Peter Goldman writes, "This is a white book about Malcolm X. That makes it an anomaly by the politics and aesthetics of color in our time; one ought accordingly to say it before anything else, so that those who believe a white writer incapable of dealing honestly or compassionately with a black hero can tune out immediately. Obviously, I disagree with this proposition, but a lot of black people do believe it, and they have persuaded a lot of white people that it is so" (Goldman xv). This examination of Malcolm X is really an examination in mediation between two writers, one black and the other white. Ultimately, there will be no difference in terms of whether one is more significant or more authentic... but there could arguably be a difference vis-à-vis texture, attachment, and finally - perspective. Both, I would argue to be equally valid but ultimately with the same goal in mind, and this is where the coffee gets disintegrated, they both, in their own unique way, reveal Malcolm X as multi-dimensional and a man of consequence.
   
   Alex Haley's "version" of Malcolm X is about the highly charged, highly complex struggle of African Americans and is not made any easier but certainly well articulated in this 1960s "first person" account. One of the few books whose celebrity of the subject buries the celebrity of the author - despite his later success with "Roots." In this short book, one is introduced to a small but influential sector of the African American discourse. To reduce the struggle to Martin Luther King and Civil Rights struggle in Alabama would be a real disservice to the ongoing struggle. Having said all that, it does ring loud that if there was one man who defined the anger, the true potential for violence and often conflicting emotions surrounding that era, Malcolm X can be representative of that era and we ignore it at our own peril. Full of pathos, the book is really the epic journey of Malcolm Little to himself. The journey begins in poverty and ends with the tragic death of a wiser and more at peace Malcolm X. In this sensitive rendition we read more about the live and death of Malcolm X. In contrast, in Goldman's version we will focus on the death and life through the eyes of an outsider. Not to undermine Malcolm X's life work, clearly that violence was the defining character of his discourse and Malcolm X's attempts to reverse his involvement, not in spirit but in form, should be a lesson to us all. The story also proves that we are in a constant state of becoming and that change is inevitable - and maybe even desirable. Malcolm X is an inspiration not because of the violence, anger and rage he provoked. He is an inspiration for the call to personal greatness he personified, the freedom he tried to provide, and the courage he possessed. The dualities of good vs. bad do not apply here - just Malcolm X's "project." Malcolm X personifies beyond good and evil. He is a mix of passion and reason and Alex Haley does a brilliant job as a modern day scribe. A must read for anyone who wishes to fully understand the African American struggle. Maybe when we say "...by any means necessary..." in the future we will be given pause to think. In an effort to be efficient, the book that inspired the famous movie is really the "life and times" of Malcolm X. In stark contrast to Haley's version of the Malcolm X story, Goldman is really more concerned with the death, rather than the life (although there is extensive narrative to this effect), and studies the mystery and cover up of the facts relating to the killing and several other important issues relating to the Nation of Islam.
   
   Goldman limits himself to the last year and half of Malcolm X's life, the crucial time after he made is break from the Nation of Islam, this long tome is worth the price of admission not just deconstruct the sensationalism but because the death was not so "black" and "white." Early in the text, Goldman zeroes in on what Malcolm X believed to be the greatest of tragedies - that the white man had taught the black man "self-hatred" (Goldman 11). Almost an echo to Franz Fanon, Goldman explores Malcolm X engagement with Harlem simply as a reflection and articulation of the rage that already existed in Harlem. The question remains was Harlem a child of Malcolm X? Was Malcolm X a child of Harlem? Was the phenomenon of urban unrest a combination of both the Harlem streets and the personality and life history of Malcolm X? Goldman ventures but does not really give a direct answer in his exploration of the "The Parable of Hinton Johnson" (55-65). Goldman argues, "... wanted from Malcolm and the Muslims was proof that they were as big and bad as they claimed to be" (55). In April of 1957, a Muslim, Hinton Johnson had chanced on a police beating a black suspect. Challenging them to stop and refusing to keep quiet, the police turned their rage upon him. In an exchange that was to become more urban legend than actual fact, Malcolm X and a group of Muslims descend on the police and force them to provide badly needed medical treatment for Johnson, as the police had "...torn his head off..." Long story short, Goldman argues that this event and the subsequent notoriety swelled the ranks of the Nation of Islam (60). According to Goldman, "Malcolm claimed years later to have been in on organizing every temple after No. 10 in Atlantic City. The temple numbers ran to 35 by the time he left the Nation, and the writ of Allah ran from Boston to Miami to South Bend to Fresno" (60).
   
   This revolution with an urban flavor, it is argued here that, "Harlem was stirred by the civil-rights revolt then wakening out of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott - there are more pictures of Martin Luther King than of Malcolm X on its walls even now - but at a vast distance: the style of the revolt was Southern and churchly and the goal of desegregation abstract for people who saw no way out of the ghetto anyway" (Goldman 51). What this previous quote does is put side by side the goings on in Harlem against Montgomery and situates Harlem within but in the periphery of the civil rights struggle. Livingston Wingate of the New York Urban League argues, "The black cat in Harlem wasn't worried about no damn bus - he'd been riding the bus for fifty years. What he didn't have was the fare" (Goldman 51). The dry forest was just waiting for the spark that Malcolm X was all too destined to provide.
   
   Goldman's book is thematically organized along three lines: the hype, the life, and the case - the last forming the bulk of the book. Section one on the hype is explored above. In what I see as a section two, Goldman takes great pains to explore Malcolm X - the man. Borrowing extensively from the Autobiography Goldman places in bits and pieces about Malcolm X's thoughts about integration, King, his initial rejection of the Civil Rights movement (and eventual embrace), his relationship and falling out with Nation of Islam notable Elijah Mohammad, his trips abroad, and his eventual inclusion of Caucasians into the fold.
   
   Malcolm X early on argues that integration was a scam. Arguing along simplistic racial lines, Goldman writes, "The attempt to integrate blacks into this society was, by Malcolm's lights, to advocate their destruction as a race" (72). Goldman argues that as far as Malcolm X was concerned (at least the early Malcolm X) integration would be possible only under the auspices of Islam (72). Along the same lines, and in reflection of Martin Luther King as an "Uncle Tom" (Goldman 75), the difference should be rather obvious. Malcolm X could not ideologically join the Civil Rights project of segregation (Goldman 92). Goldman writes, "If integration was a sham, the style then in vogue for seeking it - nonviolent protest - was a degradation; a beggarly style roughly equivalent, Malcolm said, to the sheep reminding the wolf that it was time for dinner" (73). For those of you familiar with Franz Fanon, this very notion that one's identity and self-esteem is not a gift from the colonizer but rather should be taken and taken forcefully makes the parallel so stark that one would think Malcolm X had read Franz Fanon. Goldman argues however that, "He [Malcolm X] was a Fanoniste without having read Fanon: he lived the spirit if not literal fact, in the native quarter and understood the vocation of destruction" (185). Not until his break with Elijah Mohammad - in a dirty war between punishing Malcolm X by taking back his house and Malcolm X in turn making public the long term affairs (Goldman 120-125) - would Malcolm X realize his shortcomings as an organizer as well as the limits and capacity of his strident demagoguery (Goldman 138, 142, and 168-169). After his extensive trips to the Middle East and Africa Malcolm X becomes more willing to accept Caucasians but is not willing to give up on the self defense. It will not be until his meeting with Algerian Ambassador to Accra Taher Kaid (a Caucasian Muslim brother) in Ghana that Malcolm X will face his demons and open up to the prospect that whites can help with the cause (Goldman 179-180).
   
   Closing out with the case (part 3), similar to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, this case came up with more questions than answers. Goldman, speaking to the issue of Talmadge Hayer (the lone "Muslim" inconsistency - except for the photo of him with other Muslims in the Newark Mosque (Goldman 338)), "It is said in the conspiracy literature that, because he was arrested, there had to be a trial. What "had to" happen is an infinitely plastic feature of assassination conspiracy theories, malleable to fit any circumstance; thus Lee Harvey Oswald "had to be" shot and James Earl Ray "had to be" pleaded guilty, to silence them respectively about the plots against John Kennedy and Martin Luther King; thus in his turn, Hayer "had to be" tried - one guesses because he was tried (366-367). Although Goldman does not add anything to the outcome of the case that Norman Butler, Thomas Johnson and Talmadge Hayer killed Malcolm X, "I found that neither in sufficient quantity to discredit the official verdict - that is, that a plot against Malcolm was a Muslim plot, initiated by officially unidentified men at some officially undetermined level of authority in the Nation" (362). The closure of the case is its own haunting question - no one within Malcolm X's entourage was implicated, no fingers pointed to planners, suppliers, and people in authority with motive and resources to pull this off - a so public an execution. In the end, that not even these three could have planned it alone or had sufficient motive, and the resources. Lone gunmen plan and execute in secret - everything in this case points to a plan waiting for, in a macro sense, the right time and conditions. The lack of police protection and protection internally points as well to complicity from within (the Judas Factor (Goldman 315-318). If Malcolm X had indeed taken one of those (if the offers were real and serious) job offers in Africa - would things have been different... or much like others martyred before him, did this modern Socrates have to drink his version of hemlock to make such a strong statement for all time. In an irony to end all ironies, it seems like the chickens did come home to roost... maybe at least this way Malcolm X did have some closure... those damned chickens.
   
   Works Cited
   Haley, Alex. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987.
   Goldman, Peter. The Death and Life of Malcolm X 2nd Edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.
   
   Miguel Llora



2. Reviewed by Dr. Abdul Salaam first health professional (Dentist) to join the Nation of Islam (1957), dentist to Malcolm X, Minister Louis Farrakhan and (The Honorable) Elijah Muhammad.
   
   This book was for me one of the more thoughtful and clear expositions looking at a short segment of his life pre Malcolm X but focusing primarily on the last year and a half after Malcolm had left the Nation of Islam and a short time after his death that took a close look at his overall economic as well as his conjectured mental state during that time. The fact that Goldman was both a well respected journalist and a Whiteman who had known and was writing about Malcolm, in my opinion, produced a book of unusual insights and depth. Goldman was interviewed in the film An American Experience PBS documentary "Malcolm X Make It Plain" (a film containng segments from my collection on Malcolm and the Nation of Islam) to discuss his perspective on Malcolm. If anyone is still into the "Whiteman is the Devil" thing I suggest care be exercised by holding that bias in abeyance so as not to be blinded by that belief when reading the book. They may miss an important contribution to understanding Malcolm X. and the hardships he endured both in spite of and because of his fame. We all wear some kind of blinders as I tried to indicate in the chapter on "My Story" in my own soon to be released publication, Myths vs Realities, (The Honorable) Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X, an Islamic Perspective. We should always keep that in mind.



3. On all of the chapters what happen back then is still very alive today.



4. Anyone who has read Alex Haley's "Autobiography of Malcolm X" would be interested in this account by Goldman. Notice the title puts the word "death" before "life". The author delves into the mystery connected with Malcolm's assassination and the resulting coverup of the facts. Issues with the Nation of Islam are also addressed in a non-bias approach. Goldman also intelligently presents his case as being qualified to write about Malcolm X, despite the fact that he is a white man. Although there is no "smoking gun" as to who was truly behind Malcolm's assassination, this book is a good read.

No comments about Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (Suny Series in Afro-American Society).