Book excerpt: “The Afterlife of Malcolm X” by Mark Whitaker

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In “The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon’s Enduring Impact on America” (to be published May 13 by Simon & Schuster), journalist Mark Whitaker looks at how the influence of the charismatic figure who electrified America with his blunt talk on Black identity and civil rights has continued to grow following his death.

In one chapter, Whitaker writes about the artistic choices made by director Spike Lee and actor Denzel Washington for their masterful 1992 biopic, “Malcolm X,” which dramatized the life of Malcolm Little, from his days as a street hustler in Boston, to his fame at the pinnacle of a nationwide civil rights movement.

Read the excerpt below, and don’t miss Mark Whitaker exploring the life of Malcolm X on the 100th anniversary of his birth on “CBS Sunday Morning” May 4!

“The Afterlife of Malcolm X” by Mark Whitaker

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From Chapter 11, “The Movie”

The filming of Malcolm X began in mid-September 1991 on a block in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn that had been made to look like Dudley Square in the heart of Roxbury, the Black section of Boston where Malcolm moved as a teenager and fell into the life of a hustler. After several contentious meetings with Warner Brothers, (director Spike) Lee had instructed his line producer, Jon Kilik, to cut his shooting budget to under $30 million, which was still more than the studio had committed to spending. But Lee was determined not to stint on the first minutes of the movie, in which he wanted to establish the feel of a cinematic epic.

As much as one million dollars, therefore, went into creating the opening scene in Roxbury. World War II-style subway cars were built and towed along an overhead rail line. Storefronts were remade in the style of the era, and scores of actors and extras were dressed in period costumes. To establish the panoramic look he was after, Lee spent an entire day shooting the first two brief outdoor scenes: when Malcolm’s friend Shorty, played by Lee, gets his shoes shined before heading to a barbershop to conk Malcolm’s hair for the first time; and when the two emerge onto the bustling streets of Roxbury wearing extravagant zoot suits and hats.

In three short months, Lee shot dozens of scenes spanning the thirty-nine years of Malcolm’s life, all at locations within or driving distance from New York City. Flashbacks to the Ku Klux Klan attacks on Malcolm’s childhood home in Omaha were filmed in upstate Peekskill. His hoodlum phase in New York was re-created at the Lenox Lounge in Harlem. A scene of Malcolm and Shorty burglarizing a wealthy Boston family before they are arrested and sent to prison was shot in an apartment on Park Avenue. Malcolm’s jailhouse conversion to the Nation of Islam was conjured up at Rahway State Penitentiary in New Jersey. Denzel Washington delivered the fiery speeches of Malcolm’s NOI ministry on the street corners of Harlem and the campus of Columbia University, and had a first date with Angela Bassett’s Betty at the American Museum of Natural History.

With characteristic whimsy, Lee invited several well-known figures who had interacted with or been inspired by Malcolm to make cameo appearances. Black Panther leader Bobby Seale and activist Reverend Al Sharpton played fellow Harlem street speakers. William Kunstler, the lawyer who had tried to exonerate the two men wrongfully convicted of killing Malcolm, was cast as the Boston judge who sentences Malcolm to prison.

By the second week of December, Lee was finally ready to shoot the climactic scene of Malcolm’s assassination. At first, he had his heart set on filming at the Audubon Ballroom itself, which had been turned into a Spanish-language movie theater after Malcolm’s death and then shut down and left deserted. But after an early scouting trip, Kilik’s line production team discovered that the building’s interior was crawling with asbestos that would require a million dollars to remove. Months were spent configuring a more limited footprint, then it turned out that even that scenario would involve prohibitively expensive environmental cleanup. So with less than two weeks left in the preparation schedule, Lee sent his construction crews back to the Hotel Diplomat to create a semblance of the Audubon interior, leaving only exterior shots of the assassination scene to be filmed at the original building.

A focused, upbeat atmosphere had prevailed on the set until then, with everyone involved determined to “bring their A game,” as Lee put it. But the mood darkened as the week-long assassination shoot began. Lee compared it to a soaring line on a stock market chart that suddenly takes a bearish plunge. In addition to the physical problems the shoot presented, Lee had also set himself a daunting psychological challenge. He wanted to make the movie audience feel something that (Malcolm’s wife) Betty Shabazz herself had confided in him during their interviews: that Malcolm had a premonition he was going to die that day.

Working around the limitations of the location, Lee created that haunting impression with a combination of dialogue, music, and camera work. Taking a page from the climax of The Godfather Part II, he filmed three cars converging on the Audubon Ballroom. One car carried the killers from New Jersey; a second, Betty and her daughters being chauffeured from Queens; and a third, Malcolm driving alone from the New York Hilton, where he had spent the night. Lee chose “A Change Is Gonna Come,” the soulful Sam Cooke classic, to play in the background—sending an ominous message both of personal danger and social prophecy. Once inside, during the tense waiting period before his speech, a weary Malcolm talks to and then hugs his close aide, Brother Earl Grant, as though it’s the last time he will see him. “It’s time for martyrs now,” Malcolm says.

Two more memorable artistic choices underscored Lee’s thesis about Malcolm’s fatalistic state of mind. One was his use of the “double dolly shot,” a camera trick that Spike and (cinematographer) Ernest Dickerson had experimented with in film school and used in two previous films. By placing both Washington and the camera filming him in close-up on a moving dolly outside the ballroom, Lee created the impression that Malcolm was floating through space, in a trance of stoic anticipation. The second effect was the look Malcolm would have on his face when he saw the hit man who is about to kill him. With a subtle widening of his eyes and smiling curl of his lips, Denzel Washington conveyed a sense not of fear but of relief—that the martyrdom Malcolm had so long envisioned had finally come.

From “The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon’s Enduring Impact on America” by Mark Whitaker. Copyright © 2025 by Mark Whitaker. Excerpted with permission by Simon & Schuster, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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