(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

We are honored to be joined by Tamara Payne, who is the co-author of an extraordinary book.

It's actually a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Co-author of the book, "The Dead Are Arising, the Life of Malcolm X."

Ms. Payne, thank you so much for joining us.

- Pleasure to be here, Steve.

- Put in perspective the writing of this book by itself.

Before we got on the air we were talking about your late great dad, Les Payne.

Talk about his writing the book, you picking up the book and finishing, please.

- Well, actually, it started in 1990 and my father had asked me to join him on this project.

So he had already interviewed one of the brothers, actually both of the brothers, two of the brothers of Malcolm X.

And he originally did not want to write a book about Malcolm.

He felt that we knew everything we needed to know from Malcolm's speeches, cassette tapes, as well as the books, "Malcolm Speaks," and the autobiography.

But when he interviewed with one of the brothers, he just learned that there was these rich details about their childhood, being children of Earl and Louise Little, and growing up in that household, being his parents were followers of Marcus Garvey.

They were organizers in his UNIA organization.

And this rich details that we just did not know.

And it was an opportunity to get to know who Malcolm was as a person.

So this project became really a process of seeing Malcolm, who he is as a man, but also the world he was born into and later navigated as an adult.

So that was the purpose of it.

And I worked with my father for 30 years on this.

We worked together for 28 and I ended up finishing the book post his untimely passing.

- And for folks who wanna learn more about Les Payne, an extraordinary journalist, a giant in the world of media who I was honored to work with over at CBS 2 New York on a debate program, a Sunday round table, please look up Les Payne and then get a sense of why he mattered then and matters even more now.

So Ms. Payne, let me ask you this, in reading the book, couple things, I'm gonna ask about Malcolm and.

Malcolm and Dr. King, please talk about that relationship.

- Certainly.

They were phases to that relationship.

They didn't really have a relationship with one another.

They met once at a news conference later in Malcolm's life in 1964.

But earlier on, when Malcolm was a member of the Nation of Islam, he was a minister traveling, he wasn't really working with the Civil Rights Movement.

He was really talking against it.

And the media also saw the Nation of Islam kind of in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement leaders who were preaching non-violence.

And they felt that what Nation of Islam was preaching, which Nation of Islam was really preaching self-determination on the Black community, but also self-defense, especially when facing violent acts, which they were receiving, they were at the receiving end of.

So they were not about turning the other cheek.

And so that's kind of where you see the media just placing Malcolm and Martin against each other.

But later on in life, Malcolm, as he is learning more and traveling more and learning the insidiousness of racism in this country and how it's even moving into the institutions and already had with Jim Crow South laws, but also with the laws that even his family had to face with moving in places like Detroit, Michigan, where they can own land, but they can't live on it.

And so they were forced off the land.

And so this is institutionalized already.

And so he's looking at how do you face this and how do you deal with that?

And he's organizing, he's learning how to do that and he's growing and expanding his mind.

So later on when we find him traveling outside of this country, when he leaves the Nation of Islam and he's learning more even about racism outside, dealing with African countries and meeting with African leaders, he comes up with this idea of looking at our fight here and bringing in the idea of human rights to the Civil Rights Movement.

And Martin Luther King agrees with this, as do other civil rights leaders.

And that's where you see them coming kind of closer in their discussion points on how to deal with racism in America and the Voters Rights Act and so on and so forth.

But you also see King after Malcolm's passing- - In 1965.

- On issues that are like Malcolm X, sorry.

- Yeah, no, no, no, in 1965.

And obviously, at 39 years of age, Dr. King is assassinated.

- In 1968.

- '68.

You mentioned the Nation of Islam, let's get into it.

So the book is an, the detail of, and the horror of Malcolm X's life with Betty Shabazz, his wife.

and their daughters there, I think they had four daughters.

- While he was alive.

She was pregnant with twins when he was assassinated.

- So Malcolm X's break from the Nation of Islam, largely about, if I'm mistaken, you'll correct me, largely about Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, and Malcolm X's concerns about what he perceived to be the hypocrisy of Elijah Muhammad, given the fact that Elijah Muhammad had relationships with young women who he impregnated, who worked with him, and Malcolm X thought it was against everything that the Nation of Islam was supposed to be about and he started to break from them and things became crazy after that and violent and dangerous, correct?

- Well, I'd like to go back a little bit.

It was a bit more nuanced, the separation.

And what we say in our book, Malcolm's upbringing, as his parents were followers of Marcus Garvey and self-determination and pride in being Black and organizing and building your own businesses in your community, Nation of Islam also had these traits and tenets in the organization, which was what was attractive- - That's right.

- To the Littles, the Little brothers, in particular, Wilfred and Philbert, who my father interviewed originally- - Malcolm's brothers.

- His brothers, right.

And Wilfred is the first one to join the Nation of Islam and he brings his other siblings along with them.

And so it is kind of a family's organized effort to bring Malcolm along.

Malcolm was in prison at that point.

And so he comes along and they do really well in organizing this organization.

I'm trying to be short and I'm moving fast to this, but let's fast forward to when things start to fall apart.

Malcolm is coming to understand that his ideology, his ideas of how to face racism, they're expanding, and they go beyond what Elijah Muhammad's beliefs are.

Elijah Muhammad's a lot more narrow, but he's building- - The blue-eyed devil, the white, blue-eyed devil, which at some point Malcolm X started to question, is that fair?

- Yeah, of course he questioned that at some point.

But when he first joined it, he didn't really believe that.

His brothers actually had to kind of really convince him that this is a point of the Nation of Islam, and a valid point.

But, when we talk about...

This is the language of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam.

But when you see Malcolm coming outside, when he leaves the Nation, he's not using that language.

But what we see, what we're saying in our book, for example, we talk about, in 1960, there is the meeting with the Klan and Malcolm is doing as an ambassador for the Nation of Islam, along with Jeremiah Shabazz.

They meet with the Klan for the Nation of Islam under the orders of Elijah Muhammad.

And it's kind of in this situation where Malcolm really starts to see differences between him and Elijah Muhammad about how to conduct ourselves as Black people in this country and our survivability here in this country.

He doesn't believe in making deals with the Klan.

He has bad experiences with the Klan.

The Klan raided his family's homestead when they were in Omaha, Nebraska and he was in utero in his mother's belly.

And also, his belief that the Klan murdered his father.

So he doesn't want anything to do with the Klan, and here Elijah Muhammad's directing him to meet the Klan.

And he wants to have a fight with them and Elijah Muhammad's directing him to say, "What do they want?

We may be able to do something and work together.

We have our agenda, they have their agenda.

Let's see if we can help each other out."

And Malcolm has a big problem with it, and this is where we start to see the separation.

And it just kind of grows from there, too.

So it's not simply that Elijah Muhammad had- - It's very detailed, and get this book and find out more detail, but let me ask you this.

When Malcolm X decides to break from the Nation of Islam and create his own separate organization, two organizations, here's the question.

The book reveals that there was a very clear plan, a plot to assassinate Malcolm X.

And it's very detailed in the book that while he was in Harlem at Mosque Number 7, if I'm not mistaken, that there were those in Mosque Number 25 in Newark, New Jersey, my hometown, Brick City, I knew where that mosque was, that there were those who were in the Nation who went from Newark to that mosque to the Audubon Ballroom to assassinate Malcolm X.

Is that a fair assessment?

- Yeah, and let me just make it also clear.

Malcolm, he was forced out.

He was expelled from the Nation of Islam by Elijah Muhammad.

And also, Elijah Muhammad had handed down a direct order to have him assassinated, which is how they deal with their number one enemies.

So there's that kind of order.

It's cultural, it's how that organization operates.

As far as, yes, the assassination, we do go through extenuating detail of how this plan unfolded out of the mosque in Newark.

But beyond that, we also have two people who had served time for Malcolm's murder who were out of the Harlem Mosque who were not even on the scene, but they served over 20 years.

But they were exonerated in 2021.

And what we found and the reason why they were exonerated was because the Innocence Project Got involved.

and they came across this treasure trove of unredacted documents from the FBI and the New York Police Department.

Now, we interviewed the New York Police Department Gene Roberts, who was a agent for the New York police agent- - He was undercover for the police department.

- He infiltrated Malcolm's organization.

But this treasure trove also revealed that the FBI actually had a report saying that the killers were transported into New York.

And this report was dated the day after the assassination.

- Let me ask you this, I wish we had more time.

But Malcolm X is especially important now, Ms. Payne- - Absolutely.

- Given race in this country and race relations in this country and racial trauma that continues to go on.

He's more important now than ever before.

Please share.

- Well, Malcolm's language and the way he would talk about how do you deal with this system that's set up against you and how do you navigate it and how do you deal with the hatred that's set against you?

And while also how do you deal with the hatred that you are turning against yourself as a result of this?

And he speaks to that.

And young people pick him up for that.

They pick him up for how he talked about the system, how he talked about how we could use voting, the Black vote in this country.

He talked about this in the 1960s, 1964 and '5, about using the Black vote as a voting block.

And this was before the Voters' Rights Act was even passed.

And so he saw the power structure and how he analyzed what was going on in this country.

But also when we look at how he talks about the human rights struggle, and he really got this infiltrate.

You see Fannie Lou Hamer using that when she goes back and works with SNCC after visiting Africa and meeting Malcolm and her friendship, developing a fast friendship with Malcolm.

His language is still alive today, the way he uses, how do you read people, how do you read people who are coming at you with oppression, and then how do you confront it, how do you deal with it, but also, how do you see yourself and how do you walk through this world?

- Tamara Payne, together with her late father Les, who passed in 2018, if I'm not mistaken.

- Yeah.

- Too soon, an extraordinary journalist and made a great impact, is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

"The Dead Are Arising, the Life of Malcolm X."

Ms. Payne, I wanna thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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