The Last Revolutionary

A powerful chronicle of the last year of Malcolm X’s life, and what we can learn today from the legendary activist as he envisioned and built a world-changing coalition in his final days—from the award-winning author of Freedom Season and The Sword and the Shield

The last year of Malcolm Xs life was in many ways the most revolutionary -- as he pursued the radical notion that Black dignity and citizenship could unlock the key to anti-imperialism worldwide. In Peniel Josephs, The Last Revolutionary, he sets out to understand the Malcolm of 1964. The year considered to be the last great American revolution and rebirth -- ushering in the Civil Rights Act, the start of "Freedom Summer," and city wide revolts around the country -- the U.S. was on the brink of a cataclysmic confrontation of Black citizenship and even more -- humanity.

In this year, Malcolm announced plans to publically denounce the United States at the United Nations for violating the human right of 22 million Black persons. He travelled abroad and was received by international governments as something closely resembling an official diplomatic representative of Black America (much to the chagrin of FBI and CIA agents who illegally surveilled and targeted X). He moved away from sharp anti-white rhetoric and intuited a world wherein race might be considered incidental rather than a basis of cruel hierarchy which seeks to willfully debase the Black identity. He eased into his body -- growing out his hair and reddish beard. He dawned free flowing tunics reminisicent of the clothes he witnessed people wear on his visits to Africa and the Middle East. He took photographs, documented his travels, listened to jazz, breathed deeply, and laughed easily -- all while knowing the end was near.

In this elegaic and comprehensive telling Malcolm Xs final chapter, Peniel Joseph tells the story of Malcolm to which we have not before been made privy -- that of a prescient Black man who was deeply aware of his imminent mortality and yet not done -- actively living in his own vision of bringing the globe together in one pursuit, one goal -- to actualize a setting in which Black dignity and citizenship are realized and made permanent. And what made him dangerous is that it was working.