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] shared with Marcus Garvey a commitment to building strong black institutions. He shared with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a commitment to peace and the freedom of racialized minorities.

Anne Romaine [ is ]folk singer and a skillful historian, even though she was not formally trained in the field [of Malcolm X].

The guards didn't carry weapons. Malcolm X had insisted that the guards not carry firearms that day [February 21, 1965].

The NYPD was ubiquitous. They were always around Malcolm X. Whenever Malcolm spoke, there would be one or two dozen cops all over the place.

There's a hidden history. You see, Malcolm X and [Alex ] Haley collaborated to produce a magnificent narrative about the life of Malcolm X, but the two men had very different motives in coming together.

[Alex Haley] objective was to illustrate that the racial separatism of the N.O.I. was a kind of pathological or a kind of - it was the logical culmination of separatism and racial isolationism and exclusion.