1925 — 1965
Malcolm X.
A free resource page for the life, speeches, and writings of Malcolm X. Reading lists, primary sources, and links to public archives. Maintained by people who think the historical record matters.
Primary writings
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X (with Alex Haley, 1965) — the canonical first-person account. Read it before anything else.
- Malcolm X Speaks (1965) — a collection of his major speeches from 1964–65, after his break with the Nation of Islam.
- By Any Means Necessary (1970) — speeches and interviews from the last year of his life.
Public archives
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL) — major collection of papers and recordings.
- Columbia University Libraries — archive of selected speeches and correspondence.
- Manning Marable Project — Columbia's scholarly archive accompanying Marable's 2011 biography.
Major biographies
- Manning Marable — Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011, Pulitzer Prize) — the most thoroughly researched modern biography.
- Bruce Perry — Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America (1991) — earlier critical biography.
- Les Payne & Tamara Payne — The Dead Are Arising (2020, National Book Award) — drawn from interviews conducted over 30 years.