On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X

In On the Side of My People, Louis A. DeCaro, Jr. offers the first religious biography to focus exclusively on Malcolm X. Malcolm X was certainly a political man; yet he was also a man of Allah, struglling with his salvation - as concerned with redemption as with revolution. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including extensive interviews with Malcolm's oldest brother, FBI surveillance documents, the black press, and tape-recorded speeches and interviews, DeCaro examines the charismatic leader from the standpoint of his two conversion experiences - to the Nation while he was in jail and to traditional Islam climaxing in his pilgrimage to Mecca. On the Side of My People explores Malcolm's early religious training and the influence of his Garveyite parents, he relationship with Elijah Muhammad, his often overlooked journey to Africa in 1959, and his life as a traditional Muslim after the 1964 pilgrimage.