![]() ![]() The Autobiography does not project an end of the development with Malcolm X’s conversion to the Nation of Islam, but a continuing transition, his grappling with the rapidly changing domestic and international political and cultural environments of the 1960s. Smethurst argues that The Autobiography also follows Douglass’s three life narratives in that each of the latter not only retells the story chronicled in the first narrative but also unveils Douglass’s evolving positions, his developing political literacy, through later political moments, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the early rise of Jim Crow. ![]() ![]() For Smethurst, the defining chiasmus of Douglass’s first autobiographical narrative, “You have seen how a man was made a slave you shall see how a slave was made a man,” structures The Autobiography, too - at least until Malcolm’s integration into the structure, theology, and ideology of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X redirected his political philosophy after his return to the United States, connecting his criticism of the U.S. Going beyond biography, Black Minded examines Malcolm Xs philosophical system, restoring his thinking to the pantheon of Black Radical Thought. Smethurst argues that the Autobiography of Malcolm X has deep roots in earlier African American autobiography, particularly the Christian conversion narrative and the slave narrative, notably the three life narratives of Frederick Douglass. ![]()
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