The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

In the introduction, Tamara Payne writes:

The title refers to Malcolm’s description of conversion to the Nation of Islam. Before they joined the Nation of Islam, members were ‘dead’ because they did not know their true selves. Elijah Muhammad’s teachings—particularly those aimed at strengthening black communities through improving their diet and removing distractions of prostitution, gambling, drugs, and alcohol, enabled members to free themselves from the false sense of inferiority imposed by the larger society. (xviii)

Life in The Dead Are Arising coincides with intellectual and spiritual awakenings. The members of the Nation of Islam have no real identities before their conversion. When Malcolm goes to Mecca, he realizes that to an extent he is still one of the dead because Elijah’s teachings were not the whole truth.

Marcus Garvey encourages all people with dark skin to think of Africa as the homeland, advocating that “indigenous peoples in Africa, India, and the rest of Asia should rise up and reclaim their occupied homelands from the illicit white settlers—and leave them Europe, with the United States and the West Indies apparently to be shared with indigenous people of the American landmass” (33). While Fard worked as a silk merchant, he “would link his exotic merchandise to a Negro ‘homeland across the sea’” (246).

The idea of a homeland is both literal and figurative in The Dead Are Arising.

Garvey, Fard, and others encourage black people worldwide to see their struggle as a global one. The Nation of Islam exists within the nation of America, but seeks to carve out a black homeland for its followers within the state. The idea of a literal homeland is a reminder that black people were stolen and displaced. The creation of a homeland within an existing nation was a more realistic project than full repatriation to Africa.

The KKK is the most brutal emblem of white supremacy in the book. The organization symbolized everything that was poisonous in the Jim Crow era South. They ostensibly work on behalf of Christianity as they terrorize, torture, and kill black people whenever they can. The KKK is emblematic of state-sanctioned discrimination and oppression. The impression that the Klan leaves on Malcolm is so strong that he blames his father’s death on the KKK long after the evidence points to an accidental death. His eventual meeting with W.S. Fellows shows his commitment to the idea of black separatism. At that time, he would rather meet with the organization whom he believes is responsible for his father’s death than pursue integration.

The Jim Crow era of the south was a symbol of systematized oppression. Its structure was a body of laws that enforced segregation. President Woodrow Wilson, “a native Virginian with ingrained racist views, screened The Birth of a Nation in the White House” (26) and supported Jim Crow. Black people were not fighting only against individual racists, but against the government that supported racist views.

The Jim Crow era also illuminates the stark contrast in the approaches of Malcolm X and MLK. Many Black activists sought to work within the system to integrate with it. Booker T. Washington preached that the acquisition of skills would prove to white people that black people were capable of usefulness. Malcolm X preached, initially, that full separation was the only solution.