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The Sexuality of Malcolm X

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2016

CHRISTOPHER PHELPS
CHRISTOPHER PHELPS*
Affiliation:
Department of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article engages the controversy over whether Malcolm Little, who would become Malcolm X, had same-sexual encounters. A minute sifting of all evidence and claims, augmented by new findings, yields strong indication that Malcolm Little did take part in sex acts with male counterparts. If set in the context of the 1930s and 1940s, these acts position him not as a “homosexual lover,” as has been asserted, but in the pattern of “straight trade” – heterosexual men open to sex with homosexuals – an understanding that in turn affords insights into the black revolutionary's mature masculinity.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 659 - 690
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

1 Massaquoi, Hans J., “Mystery of Malcolm X,” Ebony (Sept. 1964), 41–42 Google Scholar; Davis, Ossie, “Our Shining Black Prince,” in Clarke, John Henrik, ed., Malcolm X: The Man and His Times (Toronto: Macmillan, 1969), xiiGoogle Scholar.

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8 Perry, Malcolm, 16, 28–29; see also Perry, “Malcolm X and the Politics of Masculinity,” 20. The passage mentions only Bob Bebee as source for this story, but the endnotes (at 396) also credit an interview with Ray Bebee, his brother. The surname of the boy in the woods, Robert, is never stated. The correspondence of the names Bob and Robert, combined with the intimacy with which Robert's family is described, down to the two brothers, hints that Bebee might actually have been “Robert,” although their physical descriptions do not match.

9 The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove, 1966; first published 1965), 32Google ScholarPubMed.

10 Perry, Malcolm, 77. See also Perry, “Malcolm X and the Politics of Masculinity,” 20.

11 Perry, Malcolm, 77. See also Perry, “Malcolm X and the Politics of Masculinity,” 20.

12 Perry, Malcolm, 82–83.

13 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 140, original emphasis.

14 Perry, Malcolm, 414.

15 Perry, “Malcolm X and the Politics of Masculinity,” 20. See also Perry, Malcolm, 85–86.

16 Perry, Malcolm, 83.

17 If alive, Perry would now be approximately 80; despite sending communications to his three alma maters, publisher, and known past addresses, this writer has been unable to determine his present-day whereabouts. Perry, Bruce, “Senator J. William Fulbright on European and Atlantic Unity” (Philadelphia, 1968)Google Scholar; Catherine Griffiths (Bate College), email to author, 20 Nov. 2015; Tim Driscoll (Harvard University Archives), email to author, 11 Dec. 2015. A profile of Perry with a rare photo of him ran in an Illinois newspaper: Edith Lee, “Malcolm's Legacy Not Black and White,” Rockford Register Star, 15 Feb. 1993, 1C, 6C.

18 Bruce Perry, “Blackwash: Behind the Myths of Malcolm X,” Heterodoxy, 1, 7 (Dec. 1992), 13; Perry, Malcolm, 77–78; Perry, “Malcolm X and the Politics of Masculinity,” 20.

19 In his reference to homophobic undertones, Coates may particularly have had in mind Baraka, who never repudiated his anti-homosexual writings as LeRoi Jones. David Bradley, “Malcolm's Mythmaking,” Transition, 2, 56 (1992), 37; Gregory Kane, “A Detailed but Flawed Biography of Malcolm X,” Baltimore Sun, 22 Dec. 1991, at http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-12-22/news/1991356150_1_malcolm-x-assassination-of-malcolm-bruce-perry; Amiri Baraka, “Malcolm as Ideology,” in Wood, Malcolm X: In Our Own Image, 19; Robin D. G. Kelley, “The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II,” in Wood, Malcolm X: In Our Own Image, 176; John Edgar Wideman, “Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography,” in Wood, Malcolm X: In Our Own Image, 111; Carby, Hazel V., “Imagining Black Men: The Politics of Cultural Identity,” Yale Review, 80, 3 (July 1992), 189Google Scholar; Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Sexuality of Malcolm X,” The Atlantic, 11 April 2011, at www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/the-sexuality-of-malcolm-x/237086. Carby's suspicion of Perry as police agent is echoed in Amiri Baraka, “Malcolm as Ideology,” 19; and Abdul Alkalimat, “Rethinking Malcolm Means First Learning How to Think: What Was Marable Thinking? And How?” in Boyd et al., By Any Means Necessary, 39.

20 Perry, Malcolm, xv; and Perry, “Blackwash,” 1.

21 Marable, by comparison, conducted oral histories with only 16 people who all knew him as Malcolm X, not in his youth; Marable, Malcolm X, 565.

22 Perry, Malcolm, xii, 412, 415; Perry, “Blackwash,” 1.

23 United States Social Security Administration, Social Security Death Index (SSDI); The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 30; United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration); Malcolm Little prison file, Department of Corrections, State of Massachusetts.

24 Perry did take notes and record interviews. Perry, Malcolm, xiii, 382.

25 Ron Simmons and Marlon Riggs, “Sexuality, Television, and Death: A Black Gay Dialogue on Malcolm X,” in Wood, Malcolm X: In Our Own Image, 135. See Strickland, William, Malcolm X: Make It Plain (New York: Viking, 1994)Google Scholar; Jenkins, Robert L., ed., The Malcolm X Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002)Google Scholar; and Terrill, Robert E., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Key foundational works include Breitman, George, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Pathfinder, 1967)Google Scholar; Clarke, Malcolm X: The Man and His Times; and Goldman, Peter, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (New York: Harper and Row, 1973)Google Scholar.

26 Dyson, Michael Eric, Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X (New York: Oxford, 1995), 58–59 Google Scholar.

27 Evanzz, Karl, The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (New York, 1992), 8Google Scholar.

28 Russell, Thaddeus, “The Color of Discipline: Civil Rights and Black Sexuality,” American Quarterly, 60, 1 (March 2008), 101–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leonard, Kevin Allen, “Containing ‘Perversion’: African Americans and Same-Sex Desire in Cold War Los Angeles,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 20, 3 (Sept. 2011), 545–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 The source of Evanzz's claim in The Judas Factor, he believes, was Rodnell Collins, Malcolm X's nephew, relaying something he heard from either Malcolm Jarvis or Ella Collins; Rodnell Collins does not believe Evanzz got the story from him but confirms being told the same thing by Jarvis in a Roxbury park. Jarvis, recalled by both Collins and Evanzz as the source, is independent of the merchant marine seamen credited by Perry for the Reverend Witherspoon New York anecdote, suggesting this as a separate Boston instance of Malcolm as sex worker, although the provenance is obviously murky. Karl Evanzz, emails to author, 17 July 2015, 7 Sept. 2015, and 15 Sept. 2015; Rodnell Collins, interview with author, 20 Sept. 2015. For Evanzz's more recent positions see “Jared Ball Radio Interview with Karl Evanzz on WPFW 89.3 FM, April 15, 2011,” in Ball and Burroughs, A Lie of Reinvention, 199–206; and Evanzz, “Paper Tiger,” in ibid., 207–14, also in Boyd et al., By Any Means Necessary, 101–6.

30 The brilliant Yale-educated writer's disappearance at age 34 was a tragic loss for American letters: Kimberly A. C. Wilson, “Birdwatching on Ranier turns fatal for writer, editor Joe Wood,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 31 March 2000, at www.sarinfo.bc.ca/RainierBirdwatcher.htm.

31 Arnold Rampersad, “The Color of His Eyes: Bruce Perry's Malcolm and Malcolm's Malcolm,” in Wood, Malcolm X: In Our Own Image, 139.

32 Simmons and Riggs, 139.

33 Kelley, “The Riddle of the Zoot,” 169, 181. Caro, Louis A. De Jr., On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 65Google Scholar; Perry, Malcolm, 414. Kelley's essay was much reproduced, as in Kelley, Robin D. G., Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 162–81Google Scholar. An important accompaniment is Kelley, “House Negroes on the Loose: Malcolm X and the Black Bourgeoisie,” Callaloo, 21, 2 (1998), 419–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Collins, Rodnell with Bailey, A. Peter, Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of Malcolm X (Secaucus: Carol, 1998), 41Google Scholar. Such Ella Collins quotations were verbatim from tapes: Rodnell Collins, interview with author, 20 Sept. 2015.

35 Collins with Bailey, 71, 76. Neither the 1946 letter from Malcolm in prison nor Ella Collins's tapes and notes have been placed in an archive accessible to scholars; if the Collins family did so, it would make this record more verifiable.

36 Rodnell Collins names Little, Cooper, and Jarvis as being involved in the Lennon powderings, but supplies no evidence for including Jarvis. Cooper and Little are the most likely participants because Jarvis named the other two, not himself, leading Perry to state only that Little and “another man” took part. Perry, Malcolm, 82; “Sentenced for Attack,” Boston Herald, 21 May 1946, 8.

37 Jarvis wrote that his own “association with Malcolm, post-prison, has always been spirituality-based, not monetarily-based,” but that he was “once falsely accused by someone close to him of selling him down the river for money … because I collaborated on a book about Malcolm. I did so out of the goodness of my heart and a deep, abiding respect for Malcolm X and all that he advocated. I was promised $500 and was never paid. The money was supposed to compensate me for my time invested. From the names I was called, you'd think I tried to rob the Brinks. I was called ‘a damn fool and an ass’ … Well, maybe I was, but my intentions were honorable.” Malcolm “Shorty” Jarvis with Paul D. Nichols, The Other Malcolm – “Shorty” Jarvis: His Memoir, ed. Cornel R. West (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, n.d. [2001]), 132–36.

38 Evanzz seeks to explain away Jarvis's attestation that Malcolm Little was involved in the Lennon powdering by saying that he fabricated that claim maliciously, out of resentment toward Malcolm for leading police to him in 1946. This is unpersuasive. Little's prison file does show he cooperated with detectives after they offered to drop a gun-possession charge if he named accomplices, but there is no evidence Jarvis ever knew it. Jarvis's own prison file includes reports from authorities stating that he “attributes his present offense to his own stupidity,” believing his fingerprints gave him away, while in his posthumous memoir Jarvis says that “two address books” found on Little enabled police to find him. (Malcolm X's autobiography, likewise, refers to “some papers they found on me.”) Jarvis spoke fondly, never critically, of Malcolm in his two books and videotaped interviews. Jarvis with Nichols, The Other Malcolm, 52, 132, 134; Malcolm Little and Malcolm L. Jarvis prison files, Department of Corrections, State of Massachusetts; The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 149; Malcolm L. Jarvis, Myself and I (n.p. [Boston], 1979); Strickland, Malcolm X: Make it Plain, 46, 48, 51, 54–59, 62–65, 67; Malcolm X: His Life and Work (videotape, Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, n.d. [1993]).

39 Peter Tatchell, “Malcolm X: Gay Black Hero?” The Guardian, 19 May 2005, at www.theguardian.com/world/2005/may/19/gayrights.usa; Tatchell, “Malcolm X Was Bisexual: Get Over It,” The Guardian, 20 Oct. 2009, at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/20/malcolm-x-bisexual-black-history; “Peter Tatchell: Ignore the Refuseniks: Malcolm X Was Bisexual, Out, and Proud,” The Independent, 18 Feb. 2010, at www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/peter-tatchell-ignore-the-refuseniks-ndash-malcolm-x-was-bisexual-out-and-proud-1902777.html.

40 The discovery is significant, but Marable overreaches by imbuing “home” with sentimental meaning. The phrase “home and a job” merely echoed the parole process's requirements, as in the file's very next letter, when Malcolm wrote his brother of his hope to join him in Michigan: “As you know, I see the parole board again in four months (May), and I may try to get paroled to Detroit. To do this I must have a job and a home there, and this information must be in the hands of the parole board here before I see them.” Malcolm Little to Philbert Little, 19 Dec. 1951 and 15 Jan. 1952, Box 3, Folder 1, The Malcolm X Collection: Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, New York Public Library.

41 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 105–7; Kelley, “The Riddle of the Zoot,” 165–67.

42 “Malcolm X, Part 1 of 38,” FBI Vault, 44 out of 119, at https://vault.fbi.gov/Malcolm%20X/Malcolm%20X%20Part%201%20of%2038/view.

43 Selective Service System file of Malcolm Little, National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis, Missouri.

44 Polk, Khary, “Malcolm X, Sexual Hearsay, and Masculine Dissemblance,” Biography, 36, 3 (2013), 580CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Evanzz, The Judas Factor, 34; Menninger, William C., Psychiatry in a Troubled World (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 562–63Google Scholar.

46 “Mobilization Regulations: War Department, No. 1–9, Washington, March 15, 1942,” in Col. Anderson, Robert S. et al., eds., Neuropsychiatry in World War II, Volume I, Zone of Interior (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966), 788–89Google Scholar.

47 Historians of sexuality have long identified the Second World War as a turning point in homosexuality's bureaucratic definition and repression: Freedman, Estelle B., “‘Uncontrolled Desires’: The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920–1960,” Journal of American History, 74, 1 (June 1987), 83–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bérubé, Allan, Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: The Free Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Canaday, Margot, The Straight State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 2009)Google Scholar.

48 Two Marable points cannot be confirmed. First, he claims that “Rudy,” powderer of the wealthy man in the Autobiography, was Malcolm, but he supplies no evidence for it. Jarvis's memory that Cooper and Little both took part makes “Rudy” seem more likely a composite. Second, Marable cites New York Times classified ads seeking a male secretary defined as a “personable young man with good background; some driving.” He claims these were placed by Lennon, but the ads supply no name, merely stating Apt. 43, 5 Arlington St., Boston. Lennon shared that street address, but Lennon's specific apartment number is not provided in Boston city directories, Brown University records, Little's prison files, or any other known source. His hiring of Malcolm did not occur until two years later. New York Times, 2 Oct. 1942, C43; and 4 Oct. 1942, RE21.

49 “There is no record indicating that Lennon ever became truly wealthy”: Marable, Malcolm X, 65.

50 Jeanne M. Lennon was listed in the Sandwich, Massachusetts town censuses of 1947 and 1948 but not the next, in 1953. Early in 1949, Paul Lennon arrived at “his home” in Palm Beach with no mention of her, as was their custom. By 1950, she was living under her maiden name, Jeanne Marie Scott, at a Park Avenue address, and embarking on annual trips to France. By 1958 she had died, most likely in France since there is no US record except for estate sales. William Paul Lennon died in Sandwich, Massachusetts in 1964, and was buried in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. “Geo. I. Scott Dies Suddenly,” New York Times, 31 Oct. 1915, 17; “George Isham Scott Left $584,225,” New York Times, 10 Nov. 1916, 13; “Ball at the Ritz for Miss Mimi Scott,” New York Times, 31 Dec. 1913, 9; “Miss Mimi Scott's Wartime Romance,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 Oct. 1918, 2; “Hobey Baker Is Beaten in Battle with Cupid,” Tulsa World, 8 Dec. 1918, 3; “‘Hobey’ Baker Dies in Fall of Airplane,” New York Times, 27 Dec. 1918, 7; Salvini, Emil R., Hobey Baker: American Legend (St. Paul: The Hobey Baker Memorial Foundation, 2005), 107, 109Google Scholar; “Miss Mimi Scott Marries L. Cable,” New York Times, 8 June 1919, 20; “Jeanne M. S. Cable Wed in Palm Beach,” New York Times, 26 March 1937, 18; “Paul Lennons Give Palm Beach Party,” New York Times, 11 April 1937; “Society Personals,” Miami Herald, 26 May 1914, 2; “New Hotel Dorset Opens,” New York Times, 22 Jan. 1927; “Former War Vessel a ‘Floating Club’ Here,” New York Times, 23 June 1929; “Diplomat Is Divorced,” New York Times, 30 July 1929, 5; William Paul Lennon, Biographical File, Brown University Archives; “Catches in the Social Stream,” Palm Beach Daily News, 26 March 1937, 2; Alison Arnold, “Boston Folk Attend Reception to Duke and Duchess of Windsor,” Boston Herald, 28 April 1941, 9; “Social Activities in Full Swing in Palm Beach,” Boston Herald, 29 Jan. 1939, 4; “Palm Beach Notes,” Palm Beach Post, 9 Jan. 1943, 2; Susan Lundquist (assistant town clerk, Sandwich), email to author, 24 July 2015; “Catches in the Social Stream,” Palm Beach Daily News, 9 Jan. 1949, 2; “Elegance on the Run,” New York Times, 16 Feb. 1958, 50; “Arts and Antiquities Offered at Sales,” New York Times, 13 April 1958, 124.

51 “Former Houseman Gets Threft [sic] Sentence,” Boston Traveler, 1 Sept. 1943.

52 One gunman, Gordon K. Stewart, 26, received mitigation in sentencing when Lennon testified that during the robbery he fed him a pill to alleviate his blood pressure. Conflicting reports put the ages of Grant as 34 and Chamberlain as 38, but if he was 25, as one states, Grant might have been the same John I. Grant identified in the 1930 census as a Negro born in West Palm Beach, Florida. “$10,000 Holdup on Cape Cod,” Boston Globe, 11 Aug. 1955, 1; “Cape Police Hunt Bandits in $10,000 Home Looting,” Boston Traveler, 14 Aug. 1955; “$60,000 Holds Hub Trio,” Boston Daily Record, 17 Sept. 1955, 12; United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration); “Wounded Convict Hunted, Pals Held,” Boston Evening American, 13 Aug. 1955; “Bandit's Heart Pill Aids Holdup Victim,” Boston Daily Record, 13 Aug. 1955.

53 “Not credible enough”: “Jared Ball Interview with Zak Kondo, April 11, 2011,” in Ball and Burroughs, A Lie of Reinvention, 230; contributors to the book employ the other words with frequency.

54 Lang, Clarence, “Manning Marable and Malcolm X: The Power of Biography,” Against the Current, 154 (Sept.–Oct. 2011), esp. 21–24 Google Scholar.

55 One excellent, brief exception is Kevin McGruder, “Our Malcolm, Ourselves,” in Boyd et al., By Any Means Necessary, 230–34.

56 Marable, Malcolm X, 65–66, 78, 96; Patricia Reid-Merritt, “Malcom X: What Measure of a Man?” in Ball and Burroughs, A Lie of Reinvention, 30.

57 Chauncey, George, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 83Google Scholar; Reay, Barry, New York Hustlers: Masculinity and Sex in Modern America (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

58 Kaiser, Charles, The Gay Metropolis (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, 1997), 10Google Scholar; Chuck Rowland interview, 22 Aug. 1989, Eric Marcus Papers, New York Public Library Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division; Len Evans interview of Samuel Steward, 1983, published as Kissack, Terence, “Alfred Kinsey and Homosexuality in the ’50s,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 9, 4 (Oct. 2000), 482, 487Google Scholar.

59 Henry, George W., Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns (London: Cassell,1952; first published 1941), 36–37 Google Scholar, 155, 346, 378–79; Chauncey, Gay New York, 21–22, original emphasis; dictionary quoted in Reay, 12; Allan Bérubé, My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community, and Labor History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2011), 71Google Scholar.

60 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 30, 56, 58–59; Malcolm Little to “Dearest Pal,” 18 Nov. 1941, Box 1, Folder 15, Malcolm X Papers, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit. On Massey see Collins, Seventh Son, 65–66; and Malcolm Little to Ella Collins, 14 Dec. 1946 and 28 March 1948, Box 1, Folders 16–17, Malcolm X Papers, Wright Museum.

61 Kinsey, Alfred C. et al. , Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1948), 168–71Google Scholar.

62 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 91, original emphasis; Taylor, Douglas, “Showdown: Symbolic Violence and Masculine Performance in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told to Alex Haley) ,” Men and Masculinities, 11, 5 (Aug. 2009), 558–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bill Fletcher, “Manning Marable and the Malcolm X Biography Controversy,” in Boyd et al., By Any Means Necessary, 125, 129; Imani Perry, “‘Malcolm X,’ by Manning Marable,” San Francisco Chronicle, 23 April 2011, at www.sfgate.com/books/article/Malcolm-X-by-Manning-Marable-2373944.php.

63 Henry, Sex Variants, 36–37, 154–55, 346, 378–79; Henry, George W., “Social Factors in the Case Histories of One Hundred Underprivileged Homosexuals,” Mental Hygiene, 22 (1938), 606Google Scholar; The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 143; Steward, Sam, Understanding the Male Hustler (New York: Harrington Park, 1991), 68–71 Google Scholar, 74; Baldwin, James, Giovanni's Room (London: Michael Joseph, 1964; first published 1956), 112Google Scholar.

64 For a pertinent exposition, see Zatz, Noah D., “Sex Work/Sex Act: Law, Labor, and Desire in Constructions of Prostitution,” Signs, 22, 2 (Winter 1997), 277–308 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Baldwin, 112; Butts, William Marlin, “Boy Prostitutes of the Metropolis,” Journal of Clinical Psychopathology, 8, 4 (April 1947), 674Google ScholarPubMed; “H. Laurence Ross, “The ‘Hustler’ in Chicago” (unpublished mimeo mss. [1958?], Loeb Library, Harvard University); Raven, Simon, “Boys Will Be Boys,” Encounter, 15, 5 (Nov. 1960), 20Google Scholar; Reiss, Albert J. Jr., “The Social Integration of Queers and Peers,” Social Problems, 9, 2 (Fall 1961), 102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deisher, Robert W. et al. , “The Young Male Prostitute,” Pediatrics, 43, 6 (June 1969), 936Google ScholarPubMed; Humphreys, Laud, Tearoom Trade (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1970), 47, 121Google ScholarPubMed.

66 On contemporaneous lesbian prostitutes see, for example, Reitman, Ben L., Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box-Car Bertha (New York: Sheridan House, 1937), 66, 69–70Google Scholar.

67 Henry Gerber to Leopold Wexburg, 18 July 1946, Box 44, Jonathan Ned Katz Papers, New York Public Library Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division.

68 Kromer, Tom, Waiting for Nothing (New York: Knopf, 1935), 59, 61, 72Google Scholar.

69 Jersild, Jens, Boy Prostitution (Copenhagen: C. E. Gad, 1956), 7, 59Google Scholar; West, D. J., Homosexuality (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968; first published 1955), 130Google ScholarPubMed.

70 Mumford, Kevin J., Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia, 1997)Google Scholar; Heap, Chad, Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885–1940 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McGruder, Kevin, “Pathologizing Black Sexuality: The U.S. Experience,” in Black Sexuality: Probing Powers, Passions, Practices, and Policies, ed. Battle, Juan and Barnes, Sandra L. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 101–8Google Scholar.

71 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 108.

72 Quoted in De Caro, On the Side of My People, 64.

73 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 109.

74 Creadick, Anna G., Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2010), 90–117 Google Scholar.

75 “Playboy Interview: Malcolm X,” Playboy, 10, 3 (May 1963), 60Google Scholar.

76 Rader, Dotson, Gov't Inspected Meat and Other Fun Summer Things (New York: David McKay, 1971), 191Google Scholar.

77 Malcolm Little prison file, Department of Corrections, State of Massachusetts.

78 “Malcolm X's Daughter Disputes Claims in New Bio on Father,” 20 April 2011, at www.npr.org/2011/04/20/135570322/malcolm-xs-daughter-addresses-controversial-claims-in-new-bio-on-father ; Bailey, Peter interviewed by Tuck, Stephen, “I Literally Laughed When I Read It,” Journal of American Studies, 47, 1 (Feb. 2013), 45Google Scholar.

79 Wyatt Tee Walker, “Nothing but a Man,” in Clarke, Malcolm X: The Man and His Times, 64. Black nationalism in the United States bears comparison in this respect with European nationalism: Mosse, George, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985)Google Scholar.

80 Sanchez in Strickland, Malcolm X: Make It Plain, 231.

81 “A Visit from the FBI,” in Clarke, Malcolm X: The Man and His Times, 201. On Baldwin see Benjamin 2X's comments in Lee, Spike, Malcolm: By Any Means Necessary (London: Vintage, 1993), 37Google Scholar.

82 On Malcolm X and women see Mack-Williams, Kibibi V., “Malcolm X and the Woman Question,” Abafazi, 1, 1 (spring 1991), 9–13 Google Scholar; Ransby, Barbara and Matthews, Tracye, “Black Popular Culture and the Transcendence of Patriarchal Illusions,” Race and Class, 35, 1 (July 1993), 57–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Griffin, Farah Jasmine, “‘Ironies of the Saint’: Malcolm X, Black Women, and the Price of Protection,” in Collier-Thomas, Bettye and Franklin, V., eds., Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights–Black Power Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 214–29Google Scholar; Rickford, Russell J., Betty Shabazz: Surviving Malcolm X (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2003)Google Scholar; and Sheila Radford-Hill, “Womanizing Malcolm X,” in Terrill, The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X, 63–77.

83 Space prohibits citation of this vast literature, but start with Mumford, Kevin J., Not White, Not Straight: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, which is invaluable despite the errors in its small segment on Malcolm X, such as referring to William Paul Lennon as “Dennis Newman” and attributing to him a statement made by Malcolm Jarvis (at page 79).

84 King, J. L., On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of Straight Black Men Who Sleep with Men (New York: Harmony, 2005)Google Scholar.

85 “A third of young Americans say they aren't 100% heterosexual,” YouGov, 20 Aug. 2015, at https://today.yougov.com/news/2015/08/20/third-young-americans-exclusively-heterosexual; Anne Balay, Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2014).

86 Rev. Irene Monroe, “Malcolm X Was ‘Gay for Pay,’” Windy City Times, 13 April 2011, 18. Regrettably, this brief, excellent article was not included in either of the collections of responses to Marable.