Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little in Omaha in 1925, was a Black nationalist leader, Muslim minister and human-rights activist. After joining the Nation of Islam while imprisoned, he became one of its most prominent speakers. He later left the organization, embraced Sunni Islam and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was assassinated in New York in 1965.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X grew from extensive interviews with journalist Alex Haley. Its voice is direct and argumentative, but its structure is also a sequence of transformations: a childhood marked by racism and family disruption, street life and prison, religious conversion, public leadership, and a final reconsideration of earlier beliefs. Haley shaped the interviews into a sustained first-person narrative and added an epilogue describing their collaboration.

Published after Malcolm X’s death, the book became a classic of American autobiography. The Library of Congress included it in its Books That Shaped America exhibition, noting its enduring expression of Black anger and frustration with racial injustice. Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X, starring Denzel Washington, was based on the autobiography.

Start with The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It is the essential book under this joint credit and the clearest introduction to Malcolm X’s changing thought, public voice and self-understanding, while Haley’s careful narrative construction keeps those changes visible rather than smoothing them away.