Part I: On the Walk to Death

37: The Curious & Embattled Life of Charles Kenyatta

In the first episode, Lou reflects upon his first interview with Kenyatta, looking back at the difficult days of 1964-65, when Malcolm X was ousted from the Nation of Islam. Malcolm finds himself in conflict with his former brethren over possession of his house in Queens, resulting in Malcolm exposing Elijah Muhammad's sexual abuses of young women to the media. When Malcolm goes abroad again in 1964, his two organizations back in New York City face pressure and strife, prompting Kenyatta to ask Malcolm to return. These circumstances provide the backdrop to the crises leading up to Malcolm's assassination in February 1965, and the aftermath of his independent organizations, the Muslim Mosque Incorporated and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
In "The Curious & Embattled Life of Charles Kenyatta," historian and biographer, Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., narrates the story of his association and friendship with Charles (37X) Kenyatta, a follower of Malcolm X and prominent personality in Harlem from the 1960s until his death in 2005. Reminiscing about his decade-long association with this controversial Harlem personality, Lou weaves Kenyatta's own story into the narrative, revealing the life and struggles of an unlikely Harlem leader, a man whose passion for the poor and the disenfranchised was matched by his own quest for leadership and notoriety--a quest filled with twists, turns, and backflips. Based upon extensive interviews with Kenyatta, the story is juxtaposed against Kenyatta's FBI files and other research.
Louis DeCaro Jr. is a biographer of abolitionist John Brown, but entered his life of scholarship in the late 1980s and early '90s as a student of Malcolm X, and ultimately produced a doctoral dissertation and two books on the Muslim activist, On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X (1995) and Malcolm and the Cross: Christianity, the Nation of Islam, and Malcolm X (1997).

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